The Ducks are so close to being a top-25 baseball team in the country right now.

Going into Oregon’s road series last weekend against No. 2 Stanford, all nine D1 Baseball staff members picked Stanford to win. The Ducks pulled off an upset, winning two out of three — a strong step in the right direction. 

But the series didn’t come without its glitches. Walks and hit batters continue to haunt Oregon pitchers, and the starting rotation is in a dire state of uncertainty.

With ace Adam Maier injured, the Ducks had to patch together a pitching staff in Friday’s series opener. Caleb Sloan gave Oregon two innings of work, allowing two unearned runs. It was reliever RJ Gordon who shined and played hero in that game. He was the only Oregon pitcher all series who went more than 2 1/3 innings, giving the Ducks 4 2/3 innings of scoreless ball.

Pitching coach Jake Angier said Gordon will start in Friday’s series opener against Utah.

“Just being able to throw strikes,” Gordon said of his success. “I think my first outing against San Diego, even though I got an inning with a double play, I wasn’t really competitive and I just got lucky. But the last three, focused on just throwing strikes, getting after the guys and just trusting my defense.”

The Ducks ultimately won on a dramatic ninth-inning home run by Tanner Smith. All-American closer Kolby Somers narrowly worked around a pair of walks to shut the door in a tense final frame.

“It was really cool to see the resilience of our team over the course of the weekend,” Angier said.

That resilience continued into Saturday’s wild 16-13 affair. It certainly didn’t go the way the Ducks scripted it, as their best remaining pitcher Isaac Ayon gave up eight runs in 1 1/3 innings. The offense rallied from a 9-3 deficit, scoring six in the eighth to complete a miraculous comeback.

Despite two impressive wins, Oregon couldn’t sustain the blow of having to use so many pitchers. On Sunday, freshman starter Tommy Brandenburg gave up five runs on only one hit thanks to four walks, a hit batter and an error in the field. The Ducks put together a solid offensive day but still lost 10-6 in the series finale.

“I felt like our bullpen felt that burden on Sunday,” Angier said. “I really just need to start getting some good starts. It starts with me. I need to help these guys more in practice and ultimately get these guys in position to where they can be successful during the games.”

Sloan’s two-ining spot start on Friday ended up being the longest start for Oregon all weekend. Overall in the series, the Ducks walked 22 and hit six batters in 26 innings. That’s 28 free passes total — more than one per inning.

“It could be a number of reasons,” Angier said of where Oregon’s walk issues stem from. “It can be mechanics. It could be just the mentality of that pitcher in that moment… We’ll attack it this week, but it’s gonna be different depending on the guy that you’re talking about.”

This season, Oregon pitchers are averaging 5.19 walks per nine innings. That ranks 207th out of 293 Division 1 teams. They’re also tied for the 22nd-most hit batters with 27. These numbers have resulted in a 5.12 team ERA, which ranks an aggressively mediocre 138th in the country.

Still, the Ducks beat Stanford in their first Pac-12 series of the year. If the pitching staff had posted more respectable walk numbers, they likely would have swept Stanford. The offense has been nothing short of terrific, scoring a whopping 148 runs in 16 games, tied for the 16th-highest mark in the nation.

Almost everyone contributed offensively against Stanford, including some under-the-radar players like Jack Scanlon, Sam Novitske and Gavin Grant.

“We have that ‘next man up’ mentality,” Novitske said. “We just want to do anything we can to win. Last year especially, our pitching staff carried us, and I know our guys this year are gonna turn it around too.”

Replacing Aaron Zavala, Kenyon Yovan and Gabe Matthews was the biggest worry going into the year, but it appears they’ve done that with ease. 

Freshman first baseman Jacob Walsh has filled Matthews’ shoes beautifully, batting a monstrous .386/.442/.614. Transfers Drew Cowley and Brennan Milone have been dominant as well in the early going. Cowley was silenced by Stanford, but he still owns the 12th-highest OBP in the country. Colby Shade has stepped up in a huge way, going from a backup player to a .429 hitter.

The offense has been everything this team could have hoped for, and certainly strong enough to earn the Ducks a top-25 slot. The hurdle they need to cross is their disastrous pitching woes.

This weekend, the Ducks will be back home against Utah. They’ll once again be without their ace Maier, who exited with an apparent forearm injury on March 4. Angier said Maier is still in the “figuring out stage” and that he has some meetings he needs to take care of, but they’ll know more soon.

After Gordon’s first start of the year this Friday, Ayon will look to bounce back Saturday. Sloan will get another start Sunday as he looks to build his innings up.

“They’re a good team. They’re older,” Angier said of the Utes. “They’re striking out some guys; they’re limiting the walks, opponent batting average is down… They’re gonna put together some really good at-bats. And so it’s gonna be a tough, tough matchup for us.”

The Ducks (10-6) and Utes (11-4) will begin their three-game series Friday at 6 p.m. in Eugene.