Resilience helped Beavers win CWS
OMAHA, Neb. — The popular narrative has been that the Oregon State baseball program’s run to its latest national championship was fueled by the Beavers’ desire to redeem themselves for fizzling out in last year’s College World Series.
Coach Pat Casey doesn’t dispute that. But he said there is more to it.
“I think the fuel started these guys’ freshman year in ’16, when we weren’t in the tournament,” Casey said. “I sat there and looked at those guys, and I said: ‘There’s only one way to respond to that, man. We make a decision.’
“Those guys were committed to that. We came back last year and had the greatest season ever. Came here, played a really good LSU club and didn’t get it done. That didn’t keep us from saying, ‘Let’s do it again.’”
The 2016 Beavers went 35-19 and came close to making the NCAA field. That roster included 2018 first-round MLB draft picks Cadyn Grenier, Trevor Larnach and Nick Madrigal, plus three other players who were taken in the first 10 rounds.
The 2017 team turned in one of the best seasons in college baseball history. Oregon State went to the College World Series with a 54-4 record and as the No. 1 national seed. The Beavers won two games in Omaha, including a 13-1 romp against LSU; then, with their offense having gone dormant, they lost twice to the Tigers.
This year’s club was more resilient than dominant. Madrigal, the No. 4 overall pick by the Chicago White Sox, missed 26 games with a wrist injury. The Beavers lost back-to-back midseason series at Utah, which finished last in the Pac-12, and at sixth-place Arizona.
And as the postseason neared, national attention was focused on Luke Heimlich, the star pitcher whose guilty plea to molesting a young relative when he was 15 was revisited in profiles by Sports Illustrated and the New York Times. Heimlich, who mostly struggled in three CWS appearances, denied wrongdoing in interviews with both publications, saying he pleaded guilty to spare his family the ordeal of a trial.
On the field, the Beavers swept through their regional and super regional before losing their CWS opener. They then won four straight elimination games to reach the bestof-three finals against Arkansas.
In the second game of the finals, they were the beneficiary of a colossal bad break for Arkansas as a foul ball dropped among three fielders with two outs in the ninth inning. Had the Razorbacks caught that ball, they would have won their first national championship.
“Once that ball dropped, I said to myself: ‘We’re not done,’” said Larnach, a junior outfielder.
After being down to their last strike, Grenier delivered the tying single for the Beavers and Larnach hit the winning two-run homer to even the series. Freshman Kevin Abel then took the mound Thursday night and earned a record fourth CWS win by pitching a two-hitter and retiring the last 20 batters he faced in a 5-0 win that locked up the national championship and a 55-12-1 season.
“It all starts with Coach Casey and his staff,” Larnach said. “As soon as we got on campus, they really enforce the mentality that you need to win a national championship. They enforce it every single day. When we went through adversity, injuries, losses, just kept saying the same thing.
“We kept developing. We kept getting better. We kept winning. We finally finished the job.”