(Photo: Karli Matthias/WCSN)
On a day when Arizona State baseball (37-17, 16-13 Pac-12) crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s on the 2019 regular season opposite the No. 4 Stanford Cardinal (41-11, 22-7 Pac-12), with Saturday afternoon’s matchup at Phoenix Municipal Stadium seemingly having little impact on either team’s postseason standing, the outcome of the game for once wasn’t the most important part of what took place on the field.
Sun Devil starter Boyd Vander Kooi turned in perhaps his best start in now-two complete regular seasons as he hurled seven shutout innings while scattering five hits and striking out a career-high 11 in a tough-luck no decision.
Everything was going the Sun Devils’ way until the final frame when freshman Blake Burzell allowed a single to Will Matthiessen and plunked Duke Kinamon before departing in favor of RJ Dabovich with one out still to record.
Dabovich let a 2-1 fastball catch too much of the plate against Cardinal shortstop Tim Tawa, who deposited it over the fence in left field to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 lead for the visitors.
Jacob Palisch retired Hunter Bishop for the first out of the bottom half before Cardinal closer Jack Little entered and redeemed himself from Thursday’s disastrous final frame to earn his tenth save of the season.
“There’s 27 outs, and it ain’t over ’till it’s over, clearly,” Carter Aldrete said post-game. “There wasn’t a person in the stadium or the stands, on our team or even on their team that thought they were going to come back in that game. But it comes down to one pitch.”
“But at the end of the day, we’re still a team, and we’re just going to move forward.”
Vander Kooi’s 2019 campaign was as up-and-down as they come, with one such high coming in the form of a complete-game 114-pitch victory on the road at Utah to secure a series victory while a notable low was lasting just 2.2 innings while allowing five walks and four earned runs against Oregon to end ASU’s 21-0 unbeaten streak to begin the season.
Despite the 5.26 ERA for the regular season, Vander Kooi was viewed by the coaching staff in the preseason as having the ability to wrangle the Friday night starting position away from staff ace Alec Marsh, and Saturday’s performance was a perfect example why.
Vander Kooi’s fastball command was superb in this performance against the Cardinal, which trickled down throughout his entire off-speed repertoire, resulting in the no walk-11 strikeout outing.
“When you’re able to go in and out with the four-seam and the two-seam, it expands everything,” Vander Kooi said. “You can tunnel pitches like your slider and your curveball, and it just keeps every hitter off-balance.”
“[Vander Kooi] was fantastic today,” Sun Devil head coach Tracy Smith said. “When you get that performance and he starts doing that at this time, I think that bodes well for us as we get into postseason. He was simply phenomenal today, and he’s actually been pretty darn good the last few outings, so that was a huge plus for us.”
On a day that was admittedly from Smith just as much about getting through healthy as it was securing the victory, Vander Kooi wasn’t the only Sun Devil giving himself momentum heading into regional play next weekend.
Junior right fielder Carter Aldrete has been a point of consistency in his three years on campus, having started in 157 of the 164 team games since 2017.
In a year that saw him transition seamlessly into the starting right field position after being an infielder the previous two years, the Monterrey, Calif. native endured an up-and-down season at the plate, seeing his batting average drop as low as .243.
Saturday was all about Aldrete at the plate however, as he drove in both Sun Devil runs with an RBI single in the second inning and a sixth-inning solo home run that was launched an estimated 426 feet to left-center field. He’ll finish the regular season at a .286 clip.
“What I’ve been focusing on, and I’ve even made it my screensaver, is kinda just stack my backside,” Aldrete said. “I think earlier in the season, I was inconsistent because I was coming forward, and the ball was getting on me. Stacking my backside has really helped me see the ball before I make a decision on whether to swing or not.”
With Aldrete coming off a 2-for-3, two-RBI day and Vander Kooi riding the high of seven shutout innings against a top-5 team in the country, combined with other promising performances over the weekend from the likes of Gage Workman, Alika Williams, Brady Corrigan and Blake Burzell, the Sun Devils seem more than ready for the task that now lies ahead of them.
“Now, everybody starts 0-0,” Smith said. “Right now, all that we’re looking forward to is seeing our name called as one of those 64 on Monday. It doesn’t matter what has happened up to this point, it doesn’t matter what happened last year, the year before, or quite frankly, the last 30 years here. It does not matter.”
“I feel good about our chances, I really do. Boyd [Vander Kooi]’s throwing well at the right time, [Blake] Burzell, [RJ] Dabovich, those guys are more than capable… bottom line is, get in the tournament and then go settle that stuff on the field.”
Nothing is assured yet, with Selection Monday and the reveal of the 64-team field still on the horizon, but every metric available points to Arizona State snapping its two-year absence from postseason play following the two worst years in program history, with consecutive 23-32 records marred by a volatile clubhouse environment.
Every player on the Sun Devils’ shorthanded 26-man roster, save for Cole Austin in his time at West Virginia, will be heading into postseason play for the first time in their careers. The painful memories of the last two seasons at one of the crown jewel programs in college baseball are still driving them every day to blaze a new path for both the present and the future.
In a turnaround season that some might not have predicted in February, the players on this team see what they’ve accomplished this season and what potentially lies ahead of them as all the motivation they need.
“I came in and had no idea what college baseball was,” Aldrete said. “I didn’t get a good representation of that when I first got here. And then sophomore year it was kind of a little bit more on me, but we still had some seniors in [Eli] Lingos and [Grant] Schneider and all them… I think I’ve done a pretty good job of molding this team, me and the rest of my class, molding this team and this program into what we wanted it to be.”
“Today was the last home game, I was crying after the game. My freshman year I couldn’t wait to get out, I was like ‘Come on, let’s go. Summer ball.’ Crying, it’s the last time hopefully I take the field at home. But I mean it’s just one of those things where it means so much once you go through all those tough times… I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
