Sun Devils win — after another scare
Arizona State baseball repeated Friday’s plot and the result Saturday night.
The No. 23 Sun Devils built a 10-4 lead over No. 7 Oregon, suffered an eighth-inning meltdown due to a tiring starting pitcher but held on for an important Pac-12 win with the help of some freshman hitting.
Oregon scored five runs in the eighth, knocking out Ryan Kellogg and putting the tying run on second before Matt Dunbar retired two to stop the rally.
ASU came back with four in its eighth, the first two scoring on a passed ball and wild pitch then freshman Dalton DiNatale putting a 14-9 win away with a two-run double.
On Friday, the Sun Devils lost a 5-1 lead in the eighth but won 6-5 in 11 innings on a walk-off single by freshman R.J. Ybarra.
ASU (19-8-1, 6-5 Pac-12) clinched its second consecutive conference series win with freshman Ryan Kellogg improving to 7-0 despite giving up six earned runs in 71⁄ innings.
Dunbar worked the final 12⁄ innings for his first save.
“We needed to win today, that’s
Oregon Oregon Arizona St.
Arizona St. Thomas lf 5 0 0 1 Coffman cf Packard rf 5 1 1 0 Benjamin 3b Healy 1b 5 2 2 1 McDonald 2b Tolman 3b 5 1 3 0 Esmay 2b Heineman cf 5 0 1 1 Rossiter c Baumgartner dh 5 2 2 1 Peevyhouse lf Chase c 3 0 1 0 Allen rf Hambright ph 1 1 1 1 Ybarra dh Graham c 0 0 0 0 Stankiewicz ss Payne 2b 1 2 0 0 Graybill 1b Altobelli ss 4 0 3 3 Dinatale ph 002 031 4210 6332 4112 0000 5131 4211 1200 5122 3210 3000 2023 150 — 240 —
9 14 the bottom line,” he said. “We played well two days in a row. Coming in and getting those two outs were very huge.”
The senior left-hander struck out leadoff man Brett Thomas and got a foul pop-up from Steven Packard to end the eighth.
Max Rossiter doubled leading off the ASU eighth and Jake Peevyhouse became the sixth ASU hit by pitch.
Trever Allen dropped down a sacrifice then Ybarra struck out but reached on a passed ball with Rossiter scoring. Peevyhouse came in on a wild pitch, and DiNatale delivered the Sun Devils’ seventh double to cap the scoring.
“Obviously we don’t want to give up eight runs in the last four innings, but we scored (seven),” ASU coach Tim Esmay said. “We just matched them and did a great job of separating what they were doing as an offense. Our guys settled in and still continued to have really good at-bats.”
Right fielder Allen threw out two Ducks, one at the plate and another for a double play.
Allen also was hit three times as Oregon pitchers hit five batters total.
Oregon (22-8, 8-3) saw its Pac-12 lead drop to a half-game over No. 6 Oregon State. ASU is two games behind the Ducks going into today’s 12:30 p.m. series finale.