(Photo: Sammy Nute/WCSN)
Arizona State Baseball has won their first four games of the season for just the fourth time since 2013. In each of those other three seasons, ASU Baseball won 32, 38, and 36 games, all three very respectable win totals that would likely see the Sun Devils into the postseason.
It is a little early to start thinking about the postseason, though, as the season still has a lot of track ahead of it. Much of that will be proving their worth in a challenging Big 12 conference with seven unbeaten teams, including the Sun Devils. There’s still a lot of work to be done, especially considering ASU’s poor pitching performance thus far, which has brought back unpleasant memories from the last three seasons.
ASU will look to continue their early season winning streak against the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles, a team coming off a startling 19-0 victory that was stopped due to mercy, outscoring their opening series opponent 25-2 in the three games they played.
Oral Roberts isn’t exactly a household name in college baseball, but they’ve recently seen a program resurgence. Their 2023 squad was historic, finishing with over 52 wins, only losing one conference game, and reaching the college world series, where they went on an 18-game winning streak into the CWS before losing to No. 2 Florida.
That success resulted in three players being selected in the first ten rounds of the upcoming MLB draft, their most since 1981. However, that 52-win total was nearly split in half the following year as the Golden Eagles were unable to capture the same magic from the 2023 campaign. Due to talent loss, the squad won only 27 games and appeared to be a shell of its former self.
Their team ERA was inflated by over a run and a half, and their OPS was down by about 200 points, a down season that the Golden Eagles are aiming to put behind them and bounce back from in 2025.
A battle against one of the country’s greatest offenses, ASU, will serve as a good measure of whether any offseason changes made can get the program back on track, or whether 2023 was just a one-time Cinderella run.
ASU baseball itself has had a fine start to the season, winning each of their first four games, but fans of last year’s team may say there’s still plenty of room for improvement given how each game went.
In their first four games, the Sun Devils outscored their opponents 38-27, a highly promising offensive number but an extremely concerning opponent offensive number. Last year, ASU had the Pac 12’s second best offense in terms of runs per game, but finished dead last in terms of team ERA.
A true tale about two drastically different sides of the ball.
So far in the Big 12, ASU is fifth in runs scored but 12th in team ERA, a concerning figure given where the same numbers got the Sun Devils last season. ASU may have reason to be patient with the pitching, however, because both Ohio State and Austin Peay are predicted to have extremely high powered offenses. In fact, Austin Peay led the nation in team batting average last season.
Looking ahead to the series against Oral Robert, ASU should keep an eye on junior right-handed pitcher Nathan Love, who was named Summit League pitcher of the week last week after making his first Division I start in game two of ORU’s series sweep of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, going seven scoreless innings and striking out six Golden Lions.
Love’s transfer from a junior college and his lack of experience at the D1 level make him more of a question mark than junior right-handed pitcher Brooks Fowler though, who began his collegiate career as a true freshman for Oral Roberts and had his best season in 2023 with a 3.26 ERA in 80 innings pitched.
However, like the team as a whole, he finished 2024 far worse than 2023, with a 5.54 ERA owing to lingering injuries and poor team performance.
On the offensive side, two bats who stood out in the Golden Eagles’ first series were Kansas transfer senior right-handed outfielder Cooper Combs and Yavapai transfer junior catcher Wailele Kane-Yates. They combined for 12 RBIs and 16 total bases in their first series and are newcomers who, despite Kane-Yates’ inexperience at the D1 level and Combs’ inexperience as a starter, expect to improve on last year’s offensive struggles.
A brand new Oral Roberts team with lower expectations than previous years could benefit the club by allowing them to retool to replace the parts they lacked to succeed last year. However, they will face a difficult task against an ASU squad that believes this is their year and has made the necessary improvements to compete in their new conference.
ASU will not begin conference play until March 11th against Arizona, but these early season non-conference games can serve as a chance to gain momentum heading into a strenuous season against a slew of ranked opponents, especially for a pitching staff that will be critical to whether or not the Sun Devils were serious about their offseason development.
