Years from now, Oregon’s Christian Ciuffetelli will be the answer to an obscure trivia question: Who was the first player to throw a pitch in Pac-12 Baseball Tournament history?
The 2022 Ducks will also be the answer to a trivia question — one they’re far less proud of. They left Scottsdale on Thursday as the first team to be eliminated in the young history of this inaugural tournament.
So for a team that led the conference in runs scored during the regular season and was projected to host a regional, what happened?
Put simply, the Ducks’ struggles come down to their inconsistencies finally catching up with them.
Oregon’s offense clicked near the end of the season, but a couple of weeks prior they had a brutal stretch against Cal, Oregon State and UCSD. The hitters put up a solid showing on Wednesday, but they couldn’t execute late in the game. Then they struggled badly with runners in scoring position Thursday against the worst pitching team in the Pac-12. They couldn’t get out of their own way at times; a double play, a baserunning error and some untimely outs all proved costly.
Oregon’s lack of an ace starting pitcher certainly didn’t help either. While the combination of Christian Ciuffetelli and RJ Gordon was successful near the end of the regular season, relying solely on the bullpen isn’t a sustainable way to win games.
Gordon was inconsistent in his first year as primarily a starter, and Ciuffetelli didn’t have much of a track record before this season. They both made strides and gave it their all, but expecting them to lead Oregon past the top teams in the Pac-12 was a tall task.
The injury to Adam Maier looms larger now than ever. The right-handed sophomore transfer would have given them a go-to option as potentially one of the best pitchers in the country. Robert Ahlstrom provided that for Oregon last year, and nobody was able to fill that role.
The closest to taking on that job was Isaac Ayon, who finished the regular season with the most dominant outing of his career. He performed like a Friday night starter at home this year, posting a 2.98 ERA at PK Park. The problem was he struggled mightily on the road, with an 11.41 ERA away from Eugene. He improved his walk numbers, especially late in the season, yet he still gave up too many hits.
The right-hander gave Oregon a respectable effort on Thursday despite the Sun Devils racking up 10 hits off him. It’s hard to blame Ayon for the Ducks’ shortcomings; he was easily their most valuable starting pitcher, and he wasn’t bad against a strong Arizona State offense. The issue was their lack of depth behind him and the fact that they had to rely on him with their tournament hopes on the line.
The biggest problem for the Ducks throughout the season was walks. Interestingly, they only walked three in the two tournament games. It was still general inconsistency that plagued them, especially in the seventh inning on Wednesday when Rio Britton hit a batter with the bases loaded and fell behind 3-0 on the next guy.
Some of the Ducks’ most thrilling wins came when they were able to respond to adversity. Ayon gave up eight runs in 1 1/3 innings to Stanford early in the year, yet the offense roared back to take down one of the top teams in the country. Perhaps their most notable comeback was April 22 against Washington State when they came back from 7-0 to win 8-7 in 10 innings.
That response just wasn’t there in the desert, especially on Thursday. Their biggest hit was Anthony Hall’s three-run homer on Wednesday to give them a 5-4 lead, but the offense was mostly quiet thereafter. They couldn’t complete a late-inning comeback attempt Wednesday, and they stumbled feebly in the late innings of Thursday’s matchup. It was reminiscent of their 3-0 loss to UCSD on May 10, when they were nearly no-hit at home.
Head coach Mark Wasikowski gave the same reasoning for the team’s lack of offense on both occasions. He said it fell on the coaching staff not doing a good enough job of preparing the hitters.
The details of that preparation process are vague, but the players have continually professed that the program’s preparation is “unreal” and “unbelievable.” Moments after smacking walk-off hits, they’ve credited it all to the “insane” preparation. For them to supposedly be unprepared is quite a stark contrast, and obviously something they need to figure out if they want to compete.
The Ducks’ abrupt finish in the Pac-12 Tournament is somewhat mystifying considering they assembled the best offense in program history. It’s easy to point fingers at their weak performance on Thursday, and there’s certainly no easy excuse for falling short against a mediocre pitching staff.
But the overarching problem goes back to the inconsistent starting pitching and the lack of depth in that spot. They’ve done their best to patch things together, and Ayon has shown promise as a sophomore, but it was apparent even in some of Oregon’s best wins that there wasn’t enough pitching to make a deep tournament run.
Pitching will have to be a focus of the Ducks’ recruiting process over the offseason. In a perfect world, they’ll get Maier back too.
Of course, things aren’t over in 2022 just yet. They still have a regional coming up, although their hosting chances vanished with Thursday’s loss. Theoretically, they could still make a run. But the Pac-12 Tournament was a glaring glimpse at what could go wrong for this team, with its weaknesses getting exploited in postseason competition.
