(Photo: Sydni Griffin/WCSN)
The story of Arizona State baseball’s offseason was all of the new faces. 28 of the team’s 38 rostered players were not Sun Devils last year. A good chunk of those new faces are freshmen looking to contribute to a college baseball team for the first time in their lives.
It is a lot of pressure for 19-year-olds to handle, especially when they are tasked with being producers early in a season. But, in ASU’s (1-0) 6-5 victory over San Diego State (0-1), when the freshmen were trusted to make big plays, they came through. On the first night of the season, head coach Willie Bloomquist trusted four freshmen to make big plays, something that has brought the youngest guys together.
“I love everyone in our grade,” freshman outfielder Kien Vu said. “I love playing beside them, so it feels good. Obviously, just that we can do something to help the team win. I’m super pumped all of us got that opportunity, and we all came through.”
Throughout the fall season, all eyes were on who would replace starting shortstop Sean Mclain after he was drafted by the Dodgers. Surprisingly, it was freshman infielder Luke Hill who took the biggest jump in the fall, claiming the all-important shortstop position for himself.
It did not take long for Hill to make an impact at the college level. In the first at-bat of his career, Hill calmly stepped in the box and turned on a 2-1 pitch, driving it off the wall in left field, just a few feet short of a home run.
“It was pretty dope. I’m not gonna lie,” Hill said about his first career hit. “It was fun, (to) kinda get it out of the way, got the first collegiate at bat.”
In the offseason, Hill made an immediate impact, so much so that Bloomquist decided to play some mind games with him, benching Hill in the last scrimmage of the season. Hill’s response? Two home runs in that scrimmage.
“I’m happy for Luke,” Bloomquist said. “He’s a kid that has a lot of talent, a lot of tools. We just have to make sure he thinks along with the game. For a true freshman to come in and start at shortstop at Arizona State is, we obviously believe in him that he can do some special things.”
Hill finished the night 2-for-3, following up his double with a fourth-inning rocket that went up the middle for a single. But perhaps the biggest play he made all day was on the defensive side. With the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the sixth, Hill bodied up on a hard ground ball and casually flipped it over to second base for the third out of the inning, saving a game-tying run.
“I think the biggest play of the night was the rocket one-hopper that he bodied up and kept in the infield,” Bloomquist said. “That’s the play of the night for me defensively. Because a normal freshman maybe sideswipes that ball, and it gets past him, but he bodied it up.”
After a wild eighth and top of the ninth inning that saw SDSU take the lead two separate times, the Sun Devils were down 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth. Down to his last three outs, Bloomquist decided to lean on a freshman, pinch-hitting Vu to lead off the ninth.
Like Hill before him, Vu was ready from the moment Bloomquist told him he might be leading off the ninth.
“A whole ‘nother Kien came out, I guess,” Vu said. “He told me that I might be leading off, and right then, I just grabbed all my gear and put it on, and I tried to lock in the best I could.”
Whatever he did to lock in worked – as in the biggest at-bat of the game – Vu battled all the way to a 3-2 count before knocking a single up the middle, getting the all-important leadoff guy on base. Two pitches later, Vu was rounding third, scoring from first on a game-tying RBI triple from junior infielder Luke Keaschall.
“Oh, (it was) huge, huge,” Keaschall said of Vu’s leadoff single. “I mean, we needed a baserunner, needed someone to score, and he leadoff the inning and for his college debut and comes in and does a job. I mean, can’t write it better than that, can you, guys a stud.”
