CORVALLIS — It was about two hours before the first pitch of the Corvallis Super Regional when the disheartening decision was made.
Oregon State ace Cooper Hjerpe, the Golden Spikes Award finalist, the national leader in strikeouts, the bulldog of the Beavers’ pitching staff, would not make his scheduled start.
He had caught a bug earlier in the week and the illness, combined with his taxing performance in the regional, was enough to give Mitch Canham pause. So the Beavers’ coach approached Hjerpe in the early stages of up his pregame workout and told him his night was over before it started.
“I figured the best thing would be to hold off another day, let him feel a little bit better and see how it goes,” Canham said. “We’ll see how he feels (Sunday).”
No matter who much his health improves, Hjerpe won’t feel good about this: The Auburn Tigers punished the Beavers on offense early and flexed their bullpen throughout, stealing an impressive 7-5 victory in the super regional opener before 4,112 at Goss Stadium.
The 14th-seeded Tigers (41-19) are one win away from advancing to the College World Series. The third-seeded Beavers (47-17), meanwhile, are facing elimination for the second time in the last three games.
“You know how we operate,” Canham said. “We come back, (show) lot of fight. Obviously, no one’s happy about dropping the first game. But that’s just the way we roll. We’re going to fight back tomorrow. There’s no doubt about it.”
On Saturday, there wasn’t much doubt that Auburn was the better team. The Tigers took an early lead, pounded out 10 hits, played flawless defense and rode exceptional pitching from their bullpen, stunning the third-largest crowd in Goss history. Slugger Sonny DiChiara belted two-run homer in the first, Bobby Peirce crushed a solo home run into the left-center field parking lot in the fifth, Brody Moore went 3 for 5 with an RBI and Mike Bello added two hits and an RBI as Auburn pushed its four-game run total to a robust 58.
After DiChiara’s two-run blast in the first, the Beavers responded with four runs of their own, building a 4-2 lead on Garret Forrester’s three-run home run and Kyle Dernedde’s bases-loaded walk. The eruption chased Auburn starter Trace Bright after just two outs and sent Tigers coach Butch Thompson scrambling, forcing him to bring in walk-on freshman John Armstrong for an early relief appearance.
“I thought they were going to score 40, so we were just trying to get out of the first,” Thompson said. “It was like, ‘Yep, we’ve got to punt here.’ I just (wanted) John to be around the plate and get us out of here.”
He answered the call. Justin Boyd hit a harmless pop-up to first base to end the inning — leaving the bases loaded — and it was just a taste of what would come from the Tigers’ bullpen the rest of the night. Over the next seven innings, the Beavers mustered just two more hits against Auburn relievers. Armstrong worked the first two outs of the second inning and then, after a walk, gave way to left-handers Tommy Sheehan and Carson Skipper, who cruised through the Beavers lineup, combining to strike out eight and allow just two hits over 6 1/3 innings.
After their four-run first, Oregon State did not score again until the ninth, when Jacob Melton ripped a run-scoring double with two outs. The run proved meaningless, as Auburn closer Blake Burkhalter worked around two hits to earn his 14th save, shutting the door on Sheehan’s second win of the season.
“Tommy Sheehan and Carson Skipper were kind of the story of tonight,” Thompson said. “I thought we found a solution when we got to Tommy.”
The Tigers had an even easier time finding a solution for Jake Pfennigs (4-1), who started in place of Hjerpe. The 6-foot-7 right-hander didn’t make it out of the third inning, as the Tigers touched him up for five runs, four hits and four walks in 2 2/3 innings. The Beavers’ bullpen pitched well, allowing just one run the rest of the way, but the damage had been done.
And now the Beavers are one win away from elimination, facing a red-hot team and an uncertain situation with their ace. They overcame a late-season skid, recovered from a marathon Pac-12 tournament and survived an elimination game against Vanderbilt to get here. But this will be their biggest challenge yet, even if they tried to down play it.
“I wouldn’t even describe it as a challenge,” Melton said. “I think it’s more of an opportunity for us. Like I said last (week), we’ve been batting through stuff all year long. I think it’s just another one of those opportunities. We get to go out and show who we are and just play Beaver baseball. That’s really all we can do is come out and play our brand of baseball.”
Auburn faced its own unique challenges Saturday. It is graduation weekend in Corvallis, so every hotel room and rental house in Central Western Oregon is booked, forcing Auburn to stay in Wilsonville. The Tigers are bussing back-and-forth throughout the series, making the hourlong trek along Interstate 5 twice each day. What’s more, they didn’t learn that Hjerpe would be sidelined until Canham told Thompson as his team was taking pregame batting practice, sending coaches and players scrambling to laptops to scout Pfennigs at the last second.
Of course, none of it mattered. And it certainly didn’t dampen their mood after the game.
Sheehan sported a hat that read “Top Gun,” which the Tigers award to their player of the game. Thompson admitted to having a “man crush” on Melton and praised the energy and intelligence of the Goss Stadium crowd, saying his visit here allows him to check an item of his “bucket list.”
A trip to the College World Series is surely another item on that list and Hjerpe’s health will play a factor in determining whether Thompson can cross that off, too.
When Canham approached the All-American left-hander two hours before Saturday’s game, he urged him to err on the side of caution and think big-picture. “‘Hey man,’ Canham told him, ‘you threw a couple (innings) on Monday. So let’s take it easy. No need to throw you out there when you don’t feel your best.’”
When asked if Hjerpe would be back to his best — or even be ready to play — for Sunday’s series encore, Canham could only say he planned to wait and hope.
“We’re going to see how he’s feeling tomorrow,” he said.
— Joe Freeman | jfreeman@oregonian.com | 503-294-5183 | @BlazerFreeman | Subscribe to The Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
