(Photo: Susan Wong/WCSN)
The bottom of the seventh inning almost felt like the last gasp.
With Arizona State Baseball down 5-3 against No. 20-ranked Stanford entering the frame, offense that had seemingly been hard to come by throughout the night manifested.
ASU freshman pinch hitter Blake Pivaroff singled up the middle, and redshirt freshman and fellow pinch hitter Nate Baez grounded a base hit to the same spot the at-bat after, putting two men on with one out in the inning.
What followed was a roller coaster of success and set-backs for the Sun Devils. Freshman outfielder Kade Higgins – Baez’s pinch runner – was caught stealing at second base. But Pivaroff made it to third on a wild pitch, and redshirt freshman center fielder Joe Lampe walked in the following at-bat, giving ASU the corners with two outs.
After an outing in which he struck out eight Sun Devils in 6.2 innings and gave up four runs, Stanford senior right-hander Brendan Beck was removed. His replacement was freshman right-hander Tommy O’Rourke, who quickly made the move look questionable.
O’Rourke balked Pivaroff home to inch ASU closer, making it 5-4 Cardinal. As the momentum seemed to shift, and redshirt junior shortstop Drew Swift came up to the plate, ASU’s back and forth and battle with the Cardinal figured to continue. But Swift’s fly out to left sourly ended the wild inning, and ASU’s left the plate down 5-4.
But the Sun Devils made up for it an inning later.
With Stanford fifth-year right hander Zach Grech now on the mound, ASU stirred up another rally. Redshirt junior left fielder Hunter Jump was hit by a pitch, but redshirt freshman second baseman Sean McLain’s hit to the pitcher forced Jump out at second. Freshman first baseman Jack Moss then singled, putting two Sun Devils on the basepaths with one out.
ASU then found the hit it was looking for.
Freshman designated hitter Ethan Long hit a deep double, scoring two runs and giving ASU a 6-5 lead just an inning after it seemed to squander a chance to take control.
“The [Stanford] reliever was awesome,” ASU head coach Tracy Smith said. “I don’t think he’d given up an extra-base hit until that one. I’d be lying to you if we sat here and said, ‘Yeah, we knew we were going to knock him around.’”
Freshman third baseman Hunter Haas later singled, bringing Long home and extending ASU’s lead to 7-5. For the second time Friday night, the contest felt over. And this instance, it was.
“The win is great,” Smith said after the Sun Devils’ (20-9, 9-5 Pac-12) 9-5 win over Stanford (20-8, 6-5 Pac-12). “But what’s even more rewarding is the number of contributions that contributed to winning. Numerous guys.
“It was rewarding from a coaching perspective because so many guys contributed to the result.”
Long said of his big hit: “We watched some video on that guy [Grech] before the game. A lot of righties from other schools didn’t have a lot of success off of him because they’re using their normal swing against a guy who doesn’t throw normal. In the cage before the game I was going no stride, because I knew if I had a stride off that guy, he’d beat me.”
The Sun Devils knew what it was like to rally against the Cardinal prior to their eighth inning explosion. Failing to record a hit through the first two innings, ASU woke their bats following a three-run third from Stanford.
After Lampe singled and redshirt junior shortstop Drew Swift timed up a curveball, ASU redshirt junior left fielder Hunter Jump delivered yet another big hit in a season that he’s continually come up clutch in. The slugger doubled down the right field line to score Lampe and Swift, cutting Stanford’s lead to 3-2.
While McLain didn’t extend his 23-game hit streak in the at-bat – or in the game overall – the redshirt freshman’s sac-fly moved Jump to third base – a crucial advancement as Moss’ infield single brought Jump home in the next at-bat to tie the game at three.
Lampe acted as though he wasn’t surprised by the Sun Devils’ rallies.
“Even though we’re a really young team, I think we have a lot of mature guys when it comes to the baseball side,” Lampe said. “They’ve played in big games. They’ve played above their talent level and their age level for their whole life, so pretty much everyone wants to make that play, or is like ‘I want the ball hit to me late in the game.’
“Everyone [on this team] wants the ball in that situation.”
The lengthy back and forth inning – along with Stanford’s three piece – was the end of the night for ASU redshirt freshman left-hander Graham Osman, who was replaced by freshman right-hander Brock Peery in the top of the fourth. Osman allowed three runs and three hits in his three innings of work, while also striking out three Cardinal.
After a clean fourth inning from Peery, Stanford’s rabid offense came screaming back. In the top of the fifth, the Cardinal put men on the corners with one out in the inning. Senior right fielder Christian Robinson then drove the ball into the ground on the border of the infield dirt in front of McLain, who had trouble with the bad hop and was charged with an error after mishandling the scoop. The hiccup allowed Stanford freshman second baseman Tommy Troy to score from third base and gave the Cardinal a 4-3 lead.
The Cardinal added a run in the top of the sixth inning when sophomore first baseman Brett Barrera hit a solo home run. The towering blast to left gave Stanford a 5-3 lead, and subsequently ended Peery’s outing on the mound after he gave up a single in the next at-bat. The freshman gave up two runs and five hits in his 2.1 innings pitched and was replaced by redshirt junior right-hander Brady Corrigan.
Stanford threatened enough that Corrigan was removed without recording an out, but the Cardinal didn’t put any more runs on the board in part due to a major hold by redshirt freshman right-hander Christian Bodlovich, who entered with the bases loaded and his team down two runs.
“I thought that was the game,” Smith said of Bodlovich’s ability to get out of the inning. “You could feel our dugout at that time when they jumped up a run or two on us, because he held it there and they could have broken that thing open. We weren’t really hitting on all cylinders offensively.”
Long added: “Bod came in bases loaded, [down] 5-2, and he shut it down. I knew right there we were winning this game. Our bats were hot, we just hadn’t been scoring when we needed to. Once he came in, I was like, ‘We’re going to come back and win.’”
After a quiet first two innings of the game, Stanford broke open the scoring valve in the top of the third with a pair of home runs. First, a solo shot by Troy made it 1-0 Cardinal. Troy’s homer was taken to dead center, and Lampe collided with the wall attempting to track it down.
Stanford continued to attack Osman early. The lefty hit the next batter he faced – sophomore outfielder Brock Jones – and gave up his second home run of the inning to Robinson in the next at-bat. Robinson’s two-run shot was a bomb to right, travelling well over the ASU bullpen to make it 3-0 Cardinal.
In the postgame press conference, the theme from Smith and his players was apparent: the Sun Devils knew they earned Friday night’s victory, not because of any one performance in particular, but because of everyone’s effort as a whole.
“This whole team, when we’re clicking, when we’re swinging the bat, it’s hard to stop us,” Long said. “We have so much talent in our lineup, so much talent in the bullpen, so much talent on the mound in general that once everyone gets clicking, once we start rolling, it’s going to be hard to stop us.”
