If there’s anything to take away from Oregon baseball’s offense this year, it’s that production has come in waves, bursting onto the scene like fireworks one second and evaporating into lifeless gas the next second.
That trend was no more apparent than this past weekend in the Ducks’ first road trip of the year, where they took two out of three against a good Washington State team. But there were several moments in the series where one might have laughed if they’d been told Oregon would end up taking the upper hand.
While the lineup hasn’t quite clicked the way they’d hoped it would, the Ducks exploded for 14 runs on Saturday and 13 runs on Sunday, making a statement in their first conference series victory of the year.
“It was a great series win. To start with, I was really excited to get on the road with the team,” head coach Mark Wasikowski said. “You just forget how important it is to come together as a team and what road trips do for you. And there were things that happened on the road trip that really helped our ball club, and so from a cultural standpoint, it was exciting to get on the road and have the results we had.”
However, it took the Ducks until Saturday to flip the switch. They began the series with a meager 7-1 loss on Friday, which followed an 8-5 loss to Niagara and a 16-0 beatdown to UCLA earlier in the week. At that point, Oregon was 9-7, had a four-game losing streak and was just 1-3 in Pac-12 play.
“Collectively as a group, we just got sick of that feeling,” left fielder Tanner Smith said. “We realized, ‘We’re better than this.’ We have a lot more talent on this roster than basically anybody in the country. So we figured it was about time to step up and play for each other, and make the most of the opportunities.”
Wasikowski shook things up in the lineup: Rikuu Nishida played all three games in right field, while freshman Carter Garate got his first three starts of his career at shortstop, and Owen Diodati sat out. He also played with the order, moving the hot Colby Shade up to the two-hole while Smith moved down to the No. 5 spot.
Nishida thrived in right field, especially on Saturday when he made an efficient relay throw to nab a runner at home plate.
“He can really run and go get the ball,” Wasikowski said. “The relay was a huge momentum play. He hit [Gavin] Grant right in the chest on a ball that was in the corner.”
Nishida also hit his second home run since coming to the United States, dismantling the narrative that he has 20-grade power. He poked it to left field using a wood bat — although, as Smith pointed out, it was a different wood bat than the one he used to hit his first homer.
“I don’t know how different the model is, or the weight, but I’m sure he’s probably got 15 different reasons why it’s different,” Smith said. “He loves every one of them. There’s just no method behind the madness on that one.”
Garate joined Nishida and Smith in the home run party on Sunday, hitting his first collegiate long ball. He made an error earlier in the game that cost Oregon two runs, but he continued his strong series with a three-run bomb that extended the Ducks’ lead to six. Still, he said he feels like he didn’t play to his full potential and has a lot he could improve on.
“I personally don’t feel like I played the way I could have,” Garate said. “Tighten up offensively, could have a better approach at the plate… But any way that I can help the team find a way to get more wins is gonna be huge.”
Wasiowski said he felt the same way, indicating that he sees a lot of talent in the youngster but knows he still has a long way to go. He said Garate’s competitiveness reminds him of Alex Mejia, a shortstop he coached at Arizona.
“Intensity. Didn’t back down,” Wasikowski said of Garate’s performance. “I thought he swung the bat with intent… He brought energy, and he brought a conviction with him that was just tremendous. And people feed off of it even though he’s young and he’s just a freshman.”
With Garate and Grant up the middle, and Nishida in right, that left Diodati entirely out of the equation. He didn’t get so much as a pinch-hit at-bat, as the team operated and ultimately thrived without him.
Diodati was expected to be one of the most key parts of this Oregon offense, one of the principal cogs in the machine. He had a great fall, and a good performance on opening day, but he’s batting .171/.239/.293 overall with just one home run. As the Ducks fell into a lull and struggled to find that offensive spark, they couldn’t afford to give up at-bats.
“He hasn’t gotten off to the start that he’s wanted,” Wasikowski said. “He’s had a lot of opportunities. At this point in time, we’re into Pac-12 play now. It’s no longer, ‘Let’s experiment.’ There is a production level that needs to occur, and an expectation.”
So Oregon went with a slightly different lineup, and it worked. Nearly all of the starters contributed in some way, especially Josiah Cromwick and Colby Shade.
Cromwick, who had a monster opening series and then fell into a slump, got back on track by batting .636 with a 1.091 slugging percentage over the three-game series. Just like that, his overall numbers are back to elite levels, with a .390 OBP and .750 slugging.
Shade batted over .500 this weekend as well, and leads the team with a .375 batting average. Sabin Ceballos has continued to be a consistent force as well, hitting .353/.476/.647 in his Oregon career thus far. He’s also played a slick third base and taken over Drew Cowley as the starting third baseman.
The Ducks combined for 27 runs on 33 hits over the final two games of the series, feeding off of each other and finally igniting the massive rallies they’ve known they’re capable of.
“It kind of felt like last year’s offense a little bit as far as that comeback, that morale,” Smith said. “It was really cool just to see everybody build off the momentum piece. That phrase all the time is thrown around that hitting is contagious… That’s what we expect from this offense.”
