(Photo: Spencer Barnes/WCSN)
PHOENIX — On the heels of Arizona State baseball’s wild tenth-inning victory over Washington — its eighth in its last nine contests — head coach Willie Bloomquist had a clear and direct message.
No matter the conditions, his team will always refuse to quit.
His passionate comments were fitting at that moment, as the Sun Devils had entered the bottom of the tenth inning trailing by two after leading for most of the night, with Washington tying the game in the ninth. However, ASU battled back to draw even before redshirt sophomore Nick McLain delivered an iconic moment, clubbing a walk-off grand slam to stun the Huskies.
“I’ve been written off plenty of times in my career,” Bloomquist said following Friday’s win. “A lot of people wrote us off, but you’re either two feet in or you’re two feet out. And when we get this thing right, there’s going to be a lot of people that wished they were on board the whole time.”
A day later, Bloomquist’s group showed that same resiliency, albeit in far different circumstances with a far different result. The Sun Devils (25-23, 13-13 Pac-12) trailed Washington (18-21, 9-14 Pac-12) 14-1 in the fifth inning, but eventually found a rhythm on both sides of the ball, turning a beatdown into a competitive 14-9 loss.
Thrilling finishes to games have become somewhat common for ASU across the last two years. This season, there are several examples of the Sun Devils overcoming seemingly insurmountable deficits.
On March 25, they were outscored 7-1 in the first inning at UNLV but escaped Las Vegas with a dramatic 10-9 victory. Three days later against California, they fell behind 4-0 after one inning but stormed back, holding the Golden Bears to four runs the rest of the way to win 14-8. Regardless of the deficit they face, ASU’s players know they are capable of making an improbable comeback. They’ve done it countless times.
The effort put forth in the late stages of Saturday’s game was only the latest source of validation for Bloomquist. His team didn’t win but made things far closer than anticipated through the first four frames.
“We dug ourselves into a 14-1 hole, tough to bounce out of that,” Bloomquist said. “That obviously was ugly, but we battled back and made it kind of interesting there late… Our guys continue to battle. That, I’m happy about, but disappointed in the way that we dug ourselves a hole early.”
A large component of the Sun Devils’ early hole was an uncharacteristically implosive start from senior lefty Connor Markl, who conceded seven hits, five walks, and ten runs — eight earned — in 2 ⅔ innings of work. When he exited the game in the third, ASU trailed 10-0, and things got worse before becoming better.
Cornelius relinquished four runs in 1 ⅓ innings, but Washington’s momentum was halted once junior righty Jonah Giblin took the mound. In five near-spotless frames of work, the Seattle native shut down his hometown team, allowing two baserunners and tossing seven strikeouts.
“It all starts with the first guy out of the (bullpen),” Giblin said, crediting Cornelius. “The goal is just to keep us in it enough to let our offense go to work, because anything’s possible with these guys. That’s the mindset.”
Indeed, the Sun Devils are more than capable of swinging their way back into any game, as they showed once again on Saturday. After the lineup initially struggled against Huskies starter Calvin Kirchoff, it made the right adjustments, tagging the senior righty with eight hits and seven runs in the final two frames of his 5.0-inning night.
ASU’s relentless offense didn’t let up against the Washington bullpen despite slowing down and only scoring two more runs. Even with his squad’s back against the wall in the bottom of the ninth, freshman second baseman Ethan Mendoza gave the fans at Phoenix Municipal Stadium a glimmer of hope, as he launched a solo shot into right field to bring the Sun Devils within five runs.
At its core, Saturday’s game proved a disappointment for ASU, which needs all the victories it can get while attempting to put together a late-season push. However, the fight that the Sun Devils displayed provides a sense of optimism that they are poised to parlay their comeback effort into a third straight series victory on Sunday and the eighth win in their last ten games.
“I can probably show you a huge handful of teams in the nation that go down 14-0 and just kind of give in,” junior first baseman Jacob Tobias said. “So just being able to put up as many runs as we did, and then the amount of zeros that we did after that as a bullpen… We didn’t get (as much) out of it as we wanted to, but I feel like it was a good end to the game and hopefully it’ll lead us into a good day tomorrow.”
