It’s rare to see a team put up seven runs and walk away feeling like the offense was out of sorts.
On Tuesday morning at Scottsdale Stadium, Arizona State didn’t do nearly enough with the bats to win their first game in pool play in the final Pac-12 Tournament.
Third-seeded Arizona State (32-25) fell 8-7 to eighth-seeded Stanford (21-32) in a game where the Sun Devils pitched a shutout for eight of the nine innings. A disastrous fourth inning spotted the Cardinal an alarming 8-0 lead before ASU had even recorded a hit.
“Just too many miscues,” Arizona State head coach Willie Bloomquist said.” “We had a chance to get out of [the inning] with very minimal damage and we just didn’t make the routine play.”
That hit finally came on a double by sophomore right fielder Nick McLain in the fourth, which later scored on a sacrifice fly by junior first baseman Jacob Tobias.
In the sixth, graduate student Eamonn Lance, who pinch-hit in the fifth and later scored, hit a booming two-run homer to deep left field to pull the Devils within four. Lance, who Bloomquist deemed the “sparkplug” off the bench, was ready for the early call to pinch-hit.
“Now that I’ve done it a few more times, it’s gotten a little bit easier,” Lance said. “Envisioning success and getting my breathing going, you know. I’m ready for it and got it. It worked out.”
What never did work out for the Sun Devils was their offense with runners in scoring position, in which ASU hit just 2-for-10. The Devils left a combined 13 runners on base in the game, including leaving the bases loaded to end an inning twice.
The lack of firepower offensively was surprising, to say the least. ASU swept the Cardinal in Palo Alto nine days ago, outscoring them 39-9 in three games.
“[I’m] disappointed just on the fact that it was a winnable game for us,” Bloomquist said. “We got down eight, and we battled, and had a chance to win it there in the ninth again. So, extremely proud of the guys’ willingness to continue fighting all the way till the end. And at this point, we’ve got to control what we [can] control, and that’s coming out on Thursday and trying to beat Oregon State, and we’re obviously going to need a little bit of help.”
“We knew we couldn’t take them lightly,” Lance said. “They’re going to come out in these postseason games and anything can happen. I thought we swung the bats alright early in the game, just hit a lot of balls right at guys and that’s baseball. It’s going to happen.”
Arizona State managed to make the game interesting in the bottom of the ninth after four walks opened the inning to push a run across. Senior shortstop Steven Ondina hit a sacrifice fly and junior catcher Ryan Campos hit an RBI single to shallow center to bring home two more and make it a one-run game with two outs. However, sophomore Kien Vu flew out to end the game with the tying run sitting 90 feet away.
Bloomquist, whose Sun Devils entered the game on a season-high six-game win streak, said the team’s momentum took a hit with the loss but still liked what he saw from their fight throughout the game.
“It stings because we were playing good,” Bloomquist said. “It’s a little disheartening but that doesn’t diminish anything we’ve accomplished in the last month and a half. We’re still a very capable team and, like I said, you never know what’s going to happen.”
The Sun Devils face a must-win scenario on Thursday to keep their NCAA tournament hopes alive against sixth-ranked and second-seeded Oregon State at 10 a.m. at Scottsdale Stadium.
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