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(Photo: Maya Diaz/WCSN)
As football season fades away and basketball season comes close to its midpoint, Arizona State baseball season has arrived. The last sport to start their inaugural season in the Big 12 will be head coach Willie Bloomquist’s. Hungry to return to the NCAA tournament, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished the last three seasons under Bloomquist.
In order to get ready for their first series against Ohio State University on February 14th, ASU will begin their spring season preparations with a three-game set of intrasquad scrimmages at Phoenix Municipal Stadium on Friday.
There are plenty of unsolved questions moving into the spring. Middle of the order bats such as outfielder Nick McClain and catcher Ryan Campos were selected in the first few rounds of the MLB draft, while Ryan Schiefer, last season’s team ERA leader, was chosen in the latter rounds. Bloomquist and the coaches are hoping to gain a sense of who will fit these new roles by watching the players in action this weekend.
In a game in which senior catcher Josiah Cromwick wore the wrong jersey and runners were placed on and off bases at the start of innings, it was about as close to a practice scrimmage as you could get, and it was hard to get a fully accurate picture of the 2025 team.
The game was a pitcher’s battle throughout, with top-of-the-rotation arms like senior right-handed pitcher Jack Martinez and junior left-handed pitcher Ben Jacobs on the mound, and after seven innings, the maroon and gold were knotted at 3-3.
Here are two takeaways from the first scrimmage of the spring season.
Jack Martinez and Ben Jacobs look to be workhorses this season
Martinez is one of the new pieces added to this Sun Devil squad this season in order to bolster a rotation that had to retool due to lost pieces like Connor Markl and Thomas Burns. The team’s pitchers are relatively young this season, as ten of the arms on the roster are either freshman or sophomores, so an experienced veteran to rely on was an important get for the Sun Devils.
In his first outing of the spring, Martinez sat 95-96 MPH with his fastball. He cruised to a final line of four innings pitched, five hits, one walk, one strikeout, and one earned run in a somewhat confusing game in which he got six outs in one inning while pitching with runners on base at the start of innings.
While Martinez is a new piece with a few questions behind him, Jacobs is the bonafide star of the rotation and is looking to make a huge jump into his junior season. Named to D1Baseball’s preseason All-American team, Jacobs began the game for the maroon squad following a successful summer that included appearances for USA Baseball and the Cape Cod League.
Jacobs clearly had the tougher lineup of the two, starting the game against sophomore infielder Nu’u Contrades, redshirt sophomore outfielder Brandon Compton, and senior infielder Jacob Tobias, whom he struck out swinging on a nasty offspeed pitch. Despite the somewhat more difficult top of the order, he went four innings, allowing three hits, one walk, four strikeouts, and no earned runs.
Jacobs sat 92-93 with his fastball on Friday, maintaining a pitch which helped him accumulate 102 strikeouts over 66.1 innings pitched, as well as a 33.4% whiff rate. If Jacobs can expand on what was already an impressive sophomore season, there’s a lot to be excited about for the ace of the staff.
Some of the returning bats
The bats were a huge part of the team’s success last season, as always. However, the Sun Devils lost a few of those important bats in the draft, but they also get to keep players like junior outfielder Kien Vu, an All-Big 12 Preseason player who led the Pac-12 in batting average at .413, ahead of last year’s first overall pick in the MLB Draft, Travis Bazzana.
Back at the plate, Vu looked like himself. He walked in his first at-bat against Martinez and then hit a ball that leaped the fence for a double over junior outfielder Isaiah Jackson in the left center gap.
Compton had a good first scrimmage back, in the field, he threw out Vu while attempting to advance from second to home on a play at the plate, a great throw on the money that should boost his confidence in his outfield play as he gains more experience, and he singled sharply in his first at-bat against Jacobs.
Finally, if there are two guys Bloomquist would like to see improve offensively from the previous season, it would be senior outfielder Isiah Jackson and sophomore infielder Jax Ryan. They certainly looked the part, and the pair might have been the day’s standouts. Jackson hit the game’s only home run to left-center field off junior left-handed pitcher Sean Fitzpatrick in the top of the seventh inning. Ryan had three hits, multiple stolen bases, and one RBI, which could have been more if Compton hadn’t thrown Vu out.
These scrimmages may be a little messy in format, but they could be very telling for how the lineup and rotation shake out to become the beginning of February. It was an optimistic first game back for the Sun Devils after a long break, including success from their stars and improvement from the players who need to step up.