‘It’s got to be better’: Pitching struggles continue to stifle offense

(Photo via Sun Devil Athletics)

PHOENIX — Through the first six series of Pac-12 play, Arizona State baseball relied on a combination of its pitching and hitting to win ball games, propelling them atop the conference standings. In a pivotal series against No. 7 Stanford, the offense has provided a total of 17 runs through two games, while the defense has allowed 20.

Entering the Eugene road trip, the Sun Devils had just beaten then No. 23 Oregon State and sat at 28-13 (12-4 Pac-12), inching closer to win No. 30. While the victories were stacking up, Willie Bloomquist and his coaching staff were left with a difficult decision regarding junior left-hander Ross Dunn, who has served as the Friday night starter all season. But after struggling in recent outings — including a five-walk, eight-run appearance at Washington and a six-walk, seven-run performance against Oregon State — the staff decided to move him to Sunday, opening Friday’s starting spot. Since the change, ASU has pitched junior righty Jonah Giblin against Oregon and junior southpaw Timmy Manning versus Stanford.

“That situation, we’ll talk as a staff and see if it’s better moving forward to make a change. The question becomes who,” Bloomquist said on April 21, following Dunn’s Oregon State outing. “We need (Dunn) to pitch the way he’s capable of because he’s better than that. He knows that. The staff is outstanding, but it doesn’t do a whole lot of good if you’re gonna walk a lot of guys and fall behind hitters.”

While most programs send their best pitchers to the mound on Friday and Saturday and use other arms and the bullpen to get through Sunday, Bloomquist and his staff decided to move Dunn to Sunday, effectively turning the first night of the series into the series finale. In the opening game of the Stanford and Oregon series, ASU pitched four relievers in each contest, and both starting pitchers provided 3.2 innings of service in each contest.

Evaluating the weekend series against Stanford — which could determine the Pac-12’s regular-season champion — the starting pitching staff struggled through the first two contests. Matching up against the Cardinal almost certainly requires solid pitching, as they boast a team batting average of .303, good for third in the conference.

Junior righty Khristian Curtis worked through the first three innings giving up two solo shots, allowing for the deficit to be made up by the offense, which responded with a six-run second frame. After a 1-2-3 third, Curtis allowed four runs in the inning, effectively erasing ASU’s 6-2 lead and forcing Giblin to inherit a bases-loaded situation.

“It’s got to be better,” Bloomquist said. “We’re playing better teams right now than we were early on. There’s a reason [why] Stanford’s a top 10 team in the country, they can hit a fastball. And if we can’t locate a breaking ball, we’re going to be in trouble.

“So we can’t work behind, we can’t throw breaking balls over the middle of play. We got to be able to locate [pitches] and if we can’t, we’re going to give up big numbers like we did today. So the end of the day, you can get away with that against other teams, but against top 10 teams like them, you can’t.”

Although the Sun Devils have picked up losses at a quicker rate, Bloomquist believes the pitching mistakes are not new, and nothing the rotation cannot fix.

“We get burned on the same stuff,” Bloomquist said. “It’s falling behind in the counts. We didn’t walk many guys tonight, which is a positive but you got to take it to the next step to beat these better teams, you have to be able to limit damage and get guys off your fastball and be able to locate breaking stuff you know when you need to because they’re clearly pretty good fastball hitting team.”

After losing redshirt senior righty Jesse Wainscott, Bloomquist has searched his bullpen for a pitcher to guide the Sun Devils through the middle innings until he inserts the closer. Finding the answer to that question has forced the second-year skipper to experiment with different arms in a plethora of situations.

But playing a team like the Cardinal, who are in a prime spot to make a postseason run, increases the difficulty and importance of that challenge. Instead of turning to a go-to player, Bloomquist must also consider which pitcher is best in certain situations.

“It makes it tough — especially, again like I said not to give Stanford too much credit, but their lineup’s pretty good. And so we have to try to match up guys that we think are going to be able to get us through certain parts of their order without giving up too much damage. That makes it makes it very challenging when your starter goes three and you got to spit and glue six innings and go to your closer in a tie game, you know to just to give your offense an opportunity to try and win late.”

In the ninth inning, junior right-hander Owen Stevenson was inserted into the game to get the final Stanford outs, and in this scenario, Bloomquist admitted he’d prefer to go to his closer with a lead to achieve a possible save, but explained how he wanted to give the offense a chance to win the game in the home half of the ninth.

As Curtis’ performance continued, his pitch count rose, in large part, due to him getting into hitter’s counts. In years past, pitchers could take a moment to slow their tempo on the mound, but that’s not possible with the new rules, according to Bloomquist.

“Can’t, you got a 20-second pitch clock,” Bloomquist said. “So we took our mound visit and that’s as much as we can do. But you got a pitch clock that you got to keep the tempo up and that’s part of it. Obviously, you’d like him to stop the bleeding there if you can, but they were seeing him pretty good tonight.”