Oregon couldn’t get a thing going offensively Tuesday night, managing just three hits in a 4-1 loss to University of San Francisco. On the flip side, the Dons were efficient with the opportunities they were afforded, earning the win behind small ball and scrappy pitching.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” head coach George Horton said. “We weren’t ready to put real pressure on [Sheldon Lee] early, and I think that got him deep into the game. The bottom line is their mid-week pitching did better than ours.”
Connor Hofmann led off the game with a high chopper into the devil’s triangle and beat out shortstop Daniel Patzlaff’s throw by a half-step. Hofmann quickly swiped second, then Brendan Hendriks drove him home on a two-out double to put San Francisco a run up early.
Dominic Miroglio, who came into the game hitting .415, crushed a frozen rope to left in the fourth inning that left the ball park in a hurry and extended the Dons’ lead to 2-0.
Joe Reta, who made his first career start for Oregon, left shortly after the big fly, having thrown 56 percent strikes on 71 pitches in 3.1 innings. Only 40 percent of his first pitches were strikes, which translated into three hits and two walks for two earned runs in 15 batters faced.
Sheldon Lee shut Oregon down for five innings but imploded in the sixth, walking Mitchell Tolman and Phil Craig to start the inning. He left the game with the bases loaded and the most powerful hitter in the Pac-12 at the plate, Shaun Chase, who was bumped to sixth in the batting order.
San Francisco Reliever Travis Ulvestad was able to preserve Lee’s clean line, though, as he first got Chase to fan on three strikes. Then pinch hitter Jakob Goldfarb was robbed on a diving stop by the second baseman that surely would have scored two, but instead resulted in a fielder’s choice to end the inning.
“I just think I was trying to do a little bit too much, swing a little bit too hard,” Chase said of the strikeout. “All I needed to do was make contact with the ball to score a run and I didn’t. I’ve got to sit with that tonight.”
Nico Giarratano lined a single to right off Stephen Nogosek to start the eighth and Miroglio followed suit two outs later. With two outs and two strikes, Manny Ramirez Jr., son of the 2004 World Series MVP, clobbered a double to left-center, knocking in both runners and increasing the Dons’ lead to four.
“Tip your cap to Manny Ramirez Jr. who hit a scud 0-2 pitch that was too fat,” Horton said. “I’d like to have those two runs back and see if the complexion of the game might change a little bit.”
With the exception of Mark Karaviotis’s two-out triple to put a run on the board in the eighth, the San Francisco pitching staff stymied the Oregon offense, which hit just .133 on the night.
The Ducks struck out 14 times in the losing effort, their first home loss this season. They’ll look to split the two-game series with San Francisco as they did last season in the finale tomorrow at 3 p.m. at PK Park.
Follow Kenny Jacoby on Twitter @kennyjacoby