Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN
Coming off a 20-7 win the previous night, the Arizona State baseball kept up their intensity by finishing their first series of the season with a sweep.
Making his Sun Devil debut was sophomore starting pitcher RJ Dabovich, joining the program after transferring from Central Arizona College.
Dabovich gave up two hits in the first inning to Spencer Myers and Daniel Jung. Notre Dame’s Ryan Cole grounded out into a double play. Dabovich got out of the inning with a strike out looking from Niko Kavadas, giving him his first inning under his belt.
The Sun Devils got on the board in the bottom of the first with a two-run homerun from Hunter Bishop. This gave ASU a quick 2-0 lead at the end of the first inning.
“We really just had to dial it down, take a deep breath, and realize how good we are,” said Bishop following the game.
Notre Dame scored in the top of the second with a single from Zach Prajzner. The Sun Devils answered back in the bottom of the inning, scoring two runs on a hit up the middle from Drew Swift. Notre Dame got out of the inning when ASU’s Spencer Torkelson tried to stretch a single into a double. Notre Dame’s starting pitcher, Cameron Junker gave up three hits in this inning and ASU now led 5-1.
Dabovich struggled in the third, giving up a double and two walks. After a visit to the mound the team got out of the inning with a fielder’s choice and two strike outs.
Notre Dame pulled Cameron Junker after 2.2 innings and 53 pitches. He gave up seven hits and six runs to the Sun Devils. The Fighting Irish brought in Zach Martin to relieve Junker.
Dabovich settled down in the fourth with a three up, three down inning. His performance continued on through the fifth inning, only allowing four batters up at the plate. After the fifth inning Dabovich had thrown 88 pitches with 51 of them being strikes.
In Dabovich’s first start he pitched a total of five innings. He gave up four hits, three earned runs, and five walks. He also had four strike outs. Head coach Tracy Smith said “he battled, it wasn’t his best performance, but he battled and gave us five, that’s what we needed him to do.”
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Torkelson came up to bat with runners at second and third and two outs. He scored both runners with a double to left field, forcing Notre Dame to make another pitching change. This scored Arizona State’s 40th run of the series.
The Arizona State team was led offensively by Torkelson and Bishop. Both players went 4-5 and lead the team in Runs Batted In (RBI). Torkelson finished the game with four RBIs and .643 batting average. Bishop trailed Torkelson with three RBIs and a .571 batting average.
“It’s huge, it really made a statement I think, who we can be and who we want to be down the road,” Bishop said after the game in regard to the team’s performance.
Over the course of the three-game series the team scored a total of 46 runs. When Smith was asked about the team’s offensive performance he stated “…we talk about it all the time. Stay in your approach and I thought they did an excellent job of staying in the approach.”
Smith also discussed the challenges they have to overcome when scoring a surplus of runs.
“The tendency is when you’re up umpteen runs is to relax and I thought I saw that a lot out of our pitchers. It’s not like a lot of concentration, your job in that point is go in an pound the strike zone, our guys are capable of pounding the strike zone I’ve seen them do it and I just thought we relaxed mentally for the most part this weekend, particularly on the pen,” said Smith.
Notre Dame kept fighting until the last out. In the last inning Eric Gilgenbach homered to right field.
The Sun Devils came away with a 16-5 win and a sweep over the Fighting Irish.
“Now we put our focus on San Diego and try to throw together quality at bats, said Smith in regard to their next home game on February 20, 2019.
