The offensive struggles for the Oregon Ducks continued in against the Washington Huskies, as the team dropped all three games and were outscored 19-5. They have also lost 13 of their last 14 games, including five in a row.
Oregon (13-28 overall, 3-12 Pacific-10 Conference) lost by scores of 11-2, 2-0 and 6-3, and they have yet to win a Pac-10 series. The Huskies (18-22, 7-8) completed the sweep with a mixture of power and pitching, getting five home runs, including two from the Pac-10 leader Kyle Conley.
Conley, who now has 16 home runs on the year to go along with a batting average more than .340, hit a blast over the left field wall in game one, and then he hit one off the scoreboard on Sunday. He finished the weekend 5-for-12 with five RBI’s and three runs scored.
“It’s a tough way to go down,” second baseman Josh Hogan said. “We played hard, we just had some tough breaks. We had good at bats and hit balls square, but they were caught. I thought our pitching was solid too except for a few mistakes. But that’s baseball. It was just tough.”
The tough breaks were piling up for Oregon through most of the weekend. After scoring a run in the seventh inning of game one, they went 18 straight innings without a run until center fielder Caleb Tommasini had a two RBI triple in the eighth inning on Sunday. That hit put Oregon down 6-2, and after pinch hitter Antony Kreitz singled in Tommasini, the Ducks were only down 6-3.
However, the team couldn’t get any more runs in the ninth inning, and freshman pinch hitter Colby Sokol struck out swinging with two runners on to end the game.
“Coming back and putting the tying run in scoring position was pretty significant,” head coach George Horton said. “We haven’t even been able to put pressure on people lately. We played a lot tougher.”
Freshman Tyler Anderson (2-5) started Sunday for Oregon, going six innings and giving up five runs on five hits.
After giving up 11 runs in game one, the Ducks managed to hold the Huskies scoreless until the ninth inning in game two. With emerging ace Erik Stavert (4-3) on the mound, the teams were tied 0-0 going into the last inning. Stavert was dominant, giving up four hits through the first eight innings, while striking out nine batters.
But with one out, the Huskies got a double off of Stavert, then a walk to put men in position. Freshman shortstop KC Serna then threw the ball away on a routine grounder to load the bases, and lead off hitter Brendan Gardner-Young roped a line drive past Serna’s outstretched glove to score both runners. The two runs were enough as the Ducks went down quietly in the bottom of the inning.
“How much more can you do?” Horton said of Stavert. “Poor guy. He did everything he needed to do to give us a chance to win but we just weren’t good offensively.”
Now the Ducks look ahead to a game against the Oregon State Beavers on Tuesday in Corvallis, followed by another home series, this time against UCLA.
“It’s not going to get any easier for us,” Horton said. “Oregon State is a very good ball club, and UCLA throws very good pitchers at you. So we can’t expect things to be easy, because they’re only getting harder.”
But Tommasini thinks that the Beavers are exactly who the Ducks need to play right now.
“I think it’s the right team we need to play right now,” he said. “What better team to play to get us fired up than our rivals? This is the right time to come in and play a team like them. They’ve been playing good ball all year. Honestly, we play better ball against better teams.”
Hogan is confident, too.
“We need a win, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “But if we just keep playing the new Duck baseball we started down in Irvine we’ll be OK.”
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