The Oregon State Beavers will simultaneously look to recover from a rough weekend and improve their seeding in the Pac-12 Baseball Tournament this week, when they host the Arizona Wildcats for a three-game series at Goss Stadium.
The 22nd-ranked Beavers were on cruise control last weekend, sporting an eight-game winning streak and charging up the conference standings, before suffering back-to-back body blows during Saturday and Sunday defeats against the Arizona State Sun Devils.
The losses dropped OSU into sixth place in the Pac-12 with three conference series remaining. In addition this weekend’s series against Arizona, Oregon State will host the Utah Utes and visit the UCLA Bruins to conclude their conference slate.
Here’s a primer for the Arizona series, which opens Friday at 7 p.m. in Corvallis:
THE WEEK THAT WAS
The Beavers’ winning streak and run of four consecutive Pac-12 series victories ended with a pair of weekend defeats at the No. 17 Sun Devils. But the Beavers rebounded with a 13-2 win at Grand Canyon in a midweek matchup Monday in Phoenix.
THE POLLS
Despite the series loss, Oregon State remained in three of the six major college baseball polls. They fell one spot — from No. 21 to No. 22 — in the D1Baseball Top 25, which The Oregonian/OregonLive uses for its rankings.
A LOOK AT THE WILDCATS
Arizona enters the series playing perhaps its best baseball of the season, riding a six-game winning streak that includes a sweep over Utah and a dominant 20-0 midweek win over Arizona State. The hot spurt has helped ease the sting of a disastrous start to the Pac-12 season. After opening conference play with three wins over Cal, the Wildcats lost 10 consecutive Pac-12 games, suffering sweeps to UCLA, Arizona State and Oregon along the way. Arizona has won just three of seven conference series so far this season and has been particularly bad on the road, going 1-8 against three Pac-12 opponents. But the Wildcats are playing well now, thanks in part to a prodigious offense that is averaging 14.5 runs per game during their winning streak. Arizona leads the Pac-12 in a host of offensive statistics, including batting average (.325), runs (334), hits (456), doubles (106), on-base percentage (.405) and slugging percentage (.555). Five regulars are batting .316 or better, including first baseman Kiko Romero (.375), center fielder Mac Bingham (.371) and left fielder Chase Davis (.366). Romero leads the Pac-12 in RBIs (56) and slugging percentage (.757), ranks third in homers (12) and fifth in batting average. Davis brings a 14-game hitting streak into the series, during which he’s batting .463 with 19 runs scored, 18 RBIs and 11 extra-base hits. The Wildcats’ No. 3 hitter — who leads the conference with 14 homers — won Pac-12 Player of the Week honors on Monday after batting .688 with nine RBIs, seven runs scored, two homers, two doubles and one triple last week.
THE LATEST WITH THE BEAVERS
Oregon State opened the entertaining Arizona State series with a memorable Friday night win, building a 10-run lead and hanging on for a 13-2 victory to push its winning streak to eight games. But the weekend was not kind to the Beavers — and their bullpen — as the Sun Devils rebounded with 11-7 and 12-10 wins to take the series. Both came via late-game comebacks, as ASU won the opener with a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth and overcame five-and four-run deficits to win the rubber match. OSU followed the challenging losses with a lopsided 13-2 win over Grand Canyon on Monday. The Beavers have been swinging hot bats (see below), which has helped fuel an April surge (see below), but their almost-always reliable bullpen imploded in Phoenix, costing OSU a chance to win an important series versus the conference-leading Sun Devils. The bullpen entered the ASU series with a 17-2 record and 2.74 ERA, which included an impressive 6-1 record and 1.81 ERA in April. But the Sun Devils pounded the Beavers’ bullpen in the launching pad that is Phoenix Municipal Stadium, scoring 20 earned runs, slugging 16 hits and drawing nine walks over 13 1/3 innings.
WHO’S HOT
Travis Bazzana, who has been hot at the plate and a menace on the base paths for most of April, brings an eight-game hitting streak and a seven-game stolen base streak into the series. The sophomore second baseman is batting .500 (16 for 32), with 18 runs scored, 15 stolen bases, seven RBIs and 10 walks over the last eight games. He ranks sixth in the Pac-12 in batting average (.375), first in walks (41), second in stolen bases (24) and on-base percentage (.513), and third in runs scored (48) this season. Meanwhile, Mason Guerra boasts a nine-game hitting streak and has driven in at least one run in 10 consecutive games, producing 17 of his 30 RBIs since April 9. The sophomore third baseman/outfielder is batting .349 (15 for 43) with 10 runs scored, eight walks, three doubles and two homers over the last 10 games.
SIZZLING OFFENSE
Bazzana and Guerra are hardly the only Beavers swinging a hot bat. Five OSU batters bring hitting streaks of at least five games into the series, with Kyle Dernedde (eight), Brady Kasper (seven) and Micah McDowell (five) joining Bazzana and Guerra. And Garret Forrester, who has reached base safely in 39 consecutive games, has a hit in 10 of the last 11 games. Oregon State’s offense has been rolling since a 12-2 win at Oregon on April 9, averaging 9.7 runs per game and reaching double digits in scoring six times. After a dreadful March, when the Beavers batted just .228 with 134 hits, 87 runs — and 173 strikeouts — in 18 games, the offense has turned things around. In 15 April games, OSU is batting .288 with 148 hits, 114 runs and 136 strikeouts. The Beavers are averaging nearly three more runs a game — 4.83 to 7.6 — from March to April.
A MONTH TO REMEMBER
After that miserable March, when the Beavers languished at the bottom of the Pac-12 standings and flirted with a lost season, OSU has enjoyed a renaissance in April. Oregon State is 11-4 in the month with three games left, earning much-needed series wins over Oregon and USC in conference play. The pitching has been exceptional, outside of last weekend’s letdown at Arizona State, and the offense (as noted above) has enjoyed a resurgence.
PROBABLE PITCHING MATCHUPS
Friday: OSU RHP Trent Sellers (6-3, 4.25) vs. UA RHP Cam Walty (3-0, 3.92)
Saturday: OSU RHP Jacob Kmatz (2-4, 3.81) vs. UA LHP Bradon Zastrow (4-2, 4.66)
Sunday: OSU TBA vs. UA RHP Aiden May (4-2, 6.00)
PAC-12 STANDINGS
1. Arizona State Sun Devils (13-4)
2. Stanford Cardinal (13-5)
3. Oregon Ducks (11-7)
3. USC Trojans (11-7)
5. UCLA Bruins (9-7-1)
6. Oregon State Beavers (11-10)
7. Washington (8-9)
8. Arizona Wildcats (9-12)
9. Washington State Cougars (7-10)
10. Cal Bears (6-15)
11. Utah Utes (4-16-1)
SERIES HISTORY
The Wildcats have won four of the last six meetings against OSU, taking a 42-41 all-time lead in the series. But the Beavers own a 24-12 advantage in Corvallis, which includes three-game sweeps in two of the last five years the teams have played.
— Joe Freeman | jfreeman@oregonian.com | 503-294-5183 | @BlazerFreeman | Subscribe to The Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
