With a chance to clinch a conference title with a series win this weekend on the horizon, the Oregon baseball team turns its attention to the final two nonconference games of the season against the Pilots.
The Ducks (41-14, 19-8 Pac-12) travel to Portland on Tuesday and play the Pilots (25-23, 12-12 West Coast Conference) again on Wednesday night in a makeup of what was supposed to be Oregon’s home opener. Oregon enters the week ranked fifth by Baseball America — the highest ranking since reinstatement. @@http://www.pac-12.org/SPORTS/Baseball/Standings.aspx@@ @@http://www.wccsports.com/sports/m-basebl/west-m-basebl-body.html@@ @@http://www.goducks.com/SportSelect.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&SPID=11401&SPSID=94835@@ @@http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/college/top-25-tracker/2012/2613431.html@@
The games present a brief diversion from the pivotal Civil War series this weekend, but head coach George Horton says playing two games might be too much of a good thing.
“There’s nothing like playing to stay sharp, as long as it doesn’t wear you out,” Horton said. “In retrospect I’d rather we didn’t schedule the first rainout of the year this week. I’d rather have one game than two, but we have two so we’re going to do the best we can with it.”
Horton said sometimes complacency can be a factor in midweek games when one team is the stronger squad on paper. While those games may be seen as easy wins, Horton says the reality is anything but.
“I don’t enjoy coaching games that everybody thinks you should win,” Horton said. “You’re kind of playing not to fail.”
Complacency didn’t seem to play a role when the teams last met in Salem on April 18, as Jordan Spencer turned in the first no-hitter in modern program history, but Horton cautions that the Ducks can’t focus on that success as they prepare for a Pilots team that has given them trouble over the past several years. That’s a message not lost on his players. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPID=11401&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205416016@@
“We’ve always struggled against them in the past so we need to come out and play our game,” second baseman Aaron Payne said. “Hopefully the scoreboard rewards us.”
Horton said he expects to give Spencer the start again on Tuesday night and use a staff effort on Wednesday, as he has done in many of the Ducks’ midweek games this season.
The Oregon skipper hopes another under-the-radar player will step up against Portland the way Spencer did in his spectacular performance at Volcanoes Stadium — not that he expects another no-hitter. Horton says that the season has been full of similar instances of role players stepping forward, and that’s no small part of the team’s success.
Portland currently sits in sixth place in the West Coast Conference and has struggled against the Pac-12 this season, losing eight of its nine games against Pac-12 teams. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Pilots pitching staff has a WCC-low ERA and two Portland pitchers — Travis Radke and Kyle Kraus — are ranked 31st and 32nd nationally in ERA. The Pilots’ combined ERA of 3.00 is just a hair worse than the Ducks’ Pac-12 leading ERA of 2.93, with both clubs ranked in the top 25 nationally in that statistic. @@http://portlandpilots.com/schedule.aspx?path=baseball@@ @@http://portlandpilots.com/roster.aspx?path=baseball@@ @@http://www.wccsports.com/sports/m-basebl/stats/2011-2012/lgteams.html@@  @@http://www.pac-12.org/portals/7/images/baseball/stats/2011-12/HTML/lgteams.htm@@ @@http://www.ncaa.com/stats/baseball/d1/current/individual/205@@ @@http://www.ncaa.com/stats/baseball/d1/current/team/211/p1@@
Oregon and Portland play Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. before returning to Eugene on Wednesday for a 6 p.m. game.