Home is definitely where the heart is for the Oregon baseball team. In their second home series of the year, the Ducks took three of four from the Santa Clara Broncos and crawled their way back to .500 for the year. The series win game them five wins at home in seven games.
“We are excited to get three in a row,” senior left fielder Caleb Tommasini said. “We had lost a few coming in, so it’s a feel-good thing getting back to .500.”
Granted, it wasn’t easy for the Ducks (6-6). They dropped the opening game on Friday 4-1, then battled the cold, rain, darkness and even snow flurries in the remaining games.
“I think it was a positive weekend,” Oregon head coach George Horton said. “The weather was cold and crummy, but we got all four games in. We wouldn’t have played today if we would have had a grass field, and conditions were bad, and it was snowing, but we got it in. Duck weather, I guess.”
Freshman pitcher Tyler Anderson (1-1) started the Friday game and got the loss, going 6.2 innings, on seven hits and four runs. Junior pitcher Nate Garcia (2-1) went all nine innings for the complete game win. The only run he gave up was in the first inning after Tommasini led off with a triple, and junior center fielder Curtis Raulinaitis singled him home.
Tommasini finished the first game 2-for-4 with two triples and a run scored.
Saturday was supposed to be a double-header, but the Ducks won the front end 12-3, and the second game didn’t start until 3:10 p.m. It was halted after seven innings with the score tied at two, and the teams started again at noon Sunday. The score remained tied until the 13th inning when freshman shortstop KC Serna hit home Tommasini for the game-winning run in the bottom of inning.
“That’s a real big win,” sophomore closer Drew Gagnier said. He threw 4.2 innings of shut-out baseball in the extra innings.
“That win gave us the momentum going into the last game. For our confidence it was big, too.”
“We were just trying to get that win,” Tommasini said. “We needed that. We wanted that game. To go 13 innings and lose would be a shame.”
Junior left-hander Bennett Whitmore started the game, going 6.1 innings, giving up two runs on seven hits, and striking out three batters.
Tommasini led Oregon in the win, going 4-for-5 with a walk, two stolen bases and two runs scored.
The extended game, along with a 15-minute delay for snow, forced the fourth game of the series to be pushed back to 2:45 p.m., almost two full hours after the game was supposed to start. Santa Clara had travel plans, and it was decided that no new inning could be started after 4:30 p.m. It takes five innings for a game to be considered official, so both teams were working under time constraints.
However, the Ducks jumped out on the Broncos in the bottom of the first, getting three runs on two Santa Clara errors. Duck freshman starter Madison Boer (1-1), gave up one run in the top of the second, but Oregon got the run right back in the bottom of the second, with freshman second baseman Danny Pulfer scoring on a single to left field from Raulinaitis.
Oregon loaded the bases in the bottom of the fourth, cutting the time close, but sophomore catcher Mitch Karraker grounded out to end the inning, and Boer and the Ducks squeaked out the time-shortened win.
“We’ll take it,” Horton said. “But you hate to see it come down to that. I think they were considering stalling in the bottom of the fourth, but once we got to the fifth, I told our guys without being ridiculous to take your time because we win no matter what. I wish we had played nine innings though.”
In the 12-3 rout, junior pitcher Erik Stavert (2-1) started on the mound for the Ducks. He went seven innings and gave up two runs on five hits, and struck out 10 Broncos. From the plate, Karraker went 3-for-5 with a home run and four RBIs. Freshman third baseman John Adamson was 1-for-4 with a triple and two RBIs.
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