Grayson Grinsell went the distance.
A bullpen arm the last time Oregon pulled off a win over a top-10 opponent in the regular season had the outing of his lifetime as the No. 16 Ducks topped the No. 10 UCLA Bruins 2-1.
With Grinsell’s complete-game effort, the Ducks have now used a grand total of two pitchers over their last two games. Ian Umlandt pitched a seven-inning win against Georgetown on Monday and Grinsell shut down No. 10 UCLA on Friday.
Oh, and Dominic Hellman drove in both of the Ducks’ (26-10, 13-6 Big Ten) runs in the series-opening win. There was no shortage of headlines on Friday as the Bruins (28-9, 12-4 Big Ten) fell to Grinsell.
“You’re only as good as your starting pitcher… that’s a cliche,” Oregon head coach Mark Wasikowski said. “Grayson was really good today.”
Former Pac-12 teams have dominated the Big Ten in their inaugural season, and that pattern has carried over to the diamond. Entering the weekend, UCLA sat atop the Big Ten standings at 12-3 in conference play while Oregon entered third with a 12-6 Big Ten record. It was common knowledge that the weekend series would be a pivotal one for both squads’ RPI rankings and Big Ten Tournament seeding.
“It was a fun, competitive Friday night game,” Hellman said. “We all know that in the world of college baseball, Friday night’s going to be the toughest matchup in the whole series, so it was nice to just have the boys come together.”
The ball was flying off the bats pregame and the wind was blowing out at PK Park so, naturally, a pitcher’s duel broke out.
The Ducks sent their ace to the bump to try and get the crucial series off to the right start. Grinsell retired the first six batters he faced and only relented one hit during his first time through the Bruins’ lineup.
UCLA’s Wylan Moss toed the rubber in the series opener with his 2.43 ERA. He allowed the first Oregon batter to reach in each of the first four innings, but worked a lot of weak contact from Duck hitters to keep them off the scoreboard until the third.
Hellman got the scoring going by plating Ryan Cooney on an RBI single, who led off the bottom of the third with a single and stole second to put himself in a scoring position.
Aside from Hellman’s single, Oregon had trouble capitalizing against Moss. Despite having their leadoff man reach in four-straight innings to start the game, the Ducks were just 1-11 (.091) with runners on base during Moss’ outing.
“He throws his changeup well,” Wasikowski said of Moss. “He had heavy sink on his changeup and it was a really effective pitch that we weren’t able to lay off of and he got some really critical double-play balls. We needed to try to work a little bit more into deeper counts and we tried to mix that in. It might’ve helped us a little bit in terms of pitch count, but the kid’s really good.”
Grinsell, meanwhile, didn’t have to deal with nearly as much traffic on the bases. Through his first six innings, the Bruins only had the third-inning hit and walk to their name on 70 pitches from Grinsell, who was incredibly efficient in his sixth win of the season.
Moss went five innings and allowed just the one run before getting relieved for Chris Grothues to start the bottom of the sixth inning. UCLA’s lefty surrendered a towering homer to Hellman — his 10th of the season — on just the second pitch he threw as Oregon doubled its lead.
“It was a barrel, but I was out in front,” Hellman said after his laser blast.
Meanwhile, Oregon’s lefty retired a string of 10-straight hitters spanning from the third inning into the seventh that was finally broken up as Roch Cholowsky led the frame off with a solo homer to left to immediately erase the Hellman homer.
The Bruins almost got another homer in the frame — one that would have tied the game — but Drew Smith made a leaping catch to bring a ball back over the wall in right and keep Oregon ahead as the adequate crowd stretched at PK Park.
“As a pitcher, when you think you gave up a home run it’s not a great feeling,” Grinsell said. “But when your outfielder brings it back, you’ve gotta give props to him. He made one heck of a play.”
Grinsell retired the final seven batters he faced to end the game. He got Cholowsky to ground out to short to end the contest and cap off his career outing. He fanned seven and issued just two hits in a walk across his career-high nine innings and 105 pitches (71 strikes).
“It means everything,” Grinsell said. “As a starting pitcher, you want to go out there and throw all nine [innings], so you get out there and that’s what you try to do every time and today was my lucky day.”
With the win, Oregon picked up its first regular-season victory over a top-10-ranked opponent since April 15, 2023, when the Ducks topped No. 7 Stanford in an 8-1 win. Grinsell was a freshman at the time, an arm used sporadically out of the bullpen in a season where he tallied 48.1 innings of work.
“Obviously, [Jace] Stoffal and [Logan] Mercado going back-to-back complete games in that series was fun to watch,” Grinsell said of a 2023 series win over No. 7 Stanford. “It’s always fun playing against top-10 ranked teams. We’re right there with them. We can compete with anyone in the country.”
Grinsell became the first Oregon pitcher to throw nine full innings since Kevin Seitter did it on June 2, 2024, in a 3-0 win over UC Santa Barbara in the Santa Barbara Regional of the NCAA Tournament.
Collin Clarke takes the mound for the Ducks on Saturday as they go for the series win, but Grinsell says there’s not too much pressure on the righty.
“I know Clarke’s going to go out there and shove,” Grinsell said.
First pitch is set for 2:05 p.m. at PK Park.
