ASU Baseball: TCU evens series against Sun Devils, rubber match on Sunday

(Photo: Nicole Hernandez/WCSN)

The Arizona State baseball team came back down to Earth on Saturday afternoon, as they dropped the middle game of their three-game series with the consensus No. 1 team in college baseball, the TCU Horned Frogs.

After slugging their way to a 13-9 win on Friday night, ASU came out strong in the first inning of game two, loading the bases and plating the first run of the game on a Tyler Williams sacrifice fly.

Junior starting pitcher Ryan Hingst gave the lead right back in the bottom of the first, when sophomore first baseman Luken Baker clocked a three-run home run to put TCU ahead 3-1.

After an Elliott Barzilli RBI double in the fourth inning made the score 4-1 and chased Hingst, the teams were quiet until the bottom of the seventh.

Shortstop Ryan Merrill singled home Baker, followed by designated hitter Evan Williams’ bases-clearing three-run double to expand the lead to 8-1, with all four runs scored against junior Jake Godfrey.

Freshmen Carter Aldrete and Lyle Lin continued to stay hot however, as a pair of RBI singles from the two of them pulled the Sun Devils to within 8-4 in the top of the eighth, but that’s as close as the team would get.

Freshman left-hander Nick Lodolo picked up his second win of the season with five innings, four hits one run and six strikeouts, while Hingst’s record evened up at 1-1, after he tossed 3 and 2/3 innings, allowing four earned runs, four hits, and walked five.

Freshman Spencer Van Scoyoc is scheduled to take the mound for ASU in the rubber match of the series Sunday, coming off throwing 2 and 1/3 innings in his first collegiate start last week against Northwestern, a game that was played over the course of two days due to rain.

First pitch from Lupton Stadium in Fort Worth, TX is set for 1 PM.

Bobby Kraus is a baseball beat writer for the Walter Cronkite Sports Network. You can follow him on Twitter @bobbykraus22