After a pair of tight, competitive games between the two best baseball teams in Oregon, in front of season-high crowd numbers, Sunday’s rubber game was a completely different story.
With a noon start on a rainy Easter Sunday, hardly anybody showed up to PK Park. The energy disparity was apparent from the outset, with Oregon facing a sizable early deficit and falling meekly into the afternoon with a 12-2 thumping. After winning 11 consecutive games, the Ducks lost their second in a row and dropped the series to their rival Oregon State.
“I thought they did very well with their pitching,” head coach Mark Wasikowski said. “I don’t know if we matched their quality pitching with quality hitting or not, but I’ll take a look at the tape on that. But the bottom line is I thought they pitched very well.”
Starter Leo Uelmen had an atrocious first inning. He set the tone by starting the game with a four-pitch walk, then allowed a single on a 3-1 count. Oregon got two outs on a sacrifice bunt and a smart fielder’s choice turned by Drew Cowley, but Uelmen walked the next two batters.
With the bases loaded, backup catcher Wilson Weber smacked a grand slam, giving the Beavers a 5-0 lead before the Ducks even had a chance to bat.
That was all the rope Uelmen got. He threw 35 pitches, just 14 of which were strikes.
“He didn’t throw the ball over the plate,” Wasikowski said. “That’s what went wrong for Uelmen in the first. Was it nerves, or whatever it was, the bottom line is he wasn’t sharp to start the game, and they got on top of it pretty quick.”
Oregon called on Turner Spoljaric, the team’s usual long relief man. He allowed a run in the second inning on a pair of singles and a sacrifice bunt, then surrendered another on a solo bomb in the third.
Spoljaric lasted just two innings. The Ducks elected to bring in their usual setup man, Matt Dallas, despite Oregon trailing 7-0 without even recording a hit yet.
Dallas retired the first seven batters he faced, striking out the side in the fourth. He went on to throw three scoreless innings, working around a couple free passes in the sixth.
The offense, meanwhile, showed very little life in the first seven innings, outside of a first-inning walk by Rikuu Nishida and a pair of walks by Dominic Hellman. The Beavers took starter Jaren Hunter out after two innings, not even bothering to keep him in with such a large lead. Reliever AJ Lattery shut the Ducks down though, firing four hitless innings with four strikeouts.
Oregon turned to another one of its better relievers, Austin Anderson, for the seventh. He struck out two, working around a walk in a scoreless frame.
“We weren’t just giving innings away to anybody that was out there, or throwing bullpens today or whatever in a game,” Wasikowski said. “No. The objective was to try to win and to keep a zero on the board when we could do that.”
Jacob Hughes came in next, and walked both batters he faced in the eighth. One was erased on a caught stealing where the runner overran the bag, but the Ducks replaced Hughes with Ian Umlandt.
The lefty surrendered a two-run homer to Garret Forrester, extending the Beavers’ lead to 9-0.
With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Gavin Grant drew Oregon’s fourth walk. Nishida then put up a fight, fouling off multiple 3-2 pitches before lining one off pitcher Ben Ferrer’s glove for an infield single. It narrowly broke Oregon State’s no-hit bid with four outs to spare.
A run came home on a catcher’s interference call, erasing the shutout. But the Ducks couldn’t turn it into any kind of rally.
Dylan McShane faced three batters in the ninth and didn’t retire any of them, giving up two runs on a Dallas Macias double. Jackson Pace came in and allowed McShane’s inherited runner to score on a sacrifice fly, extending the Beavers’ lead to 12-1.
With Oregon down to its last out, Tanner Smith hit a double, extending his hitting streak to 13. Jacob Walsh followed with another double to drive in the Ducks’ second run of the afternoon.
That’s all the Ducks got, as they lost by 10 runs and dropped the series finale by a landslide.
“You gotta tip your hat to them. They pitched very, very well,” Wasikowski said. “Was there still fight in us? Yeah, I mean, we’re hitting doubles in the last inning, so yes, there was still fight in the team, but they outpitched us today considerably. And that was the story of the day.”
Oregon (20-9, 7-5 Pac-12) will look to get back on track with two midweek games against the University of San Francisco (13-3). First pitch is scheduled for 5 p.m. Tuesday at PK Park.
