Oregon State baseball falls to San Francisco 5 to 1

Ah, mid-week games. Oregon State came out flat, San Francisco came out firing, and umpire's strike-zone seemed hit and miss. And this continued to be a bad combination as the Beavs could not find a spark at all this evening.

Batting for the Beavs was off all evening, with eleven OSU batters go down with strikeouts. San Francisco pitcher Haden Hinkle led the way for the Dons, allowing only one hit. OSU's Dylan Davis was the lone highlight hitting a solo shot over the left field fence in the 6th inning, and the Dons disappointed the 1,759 chilly Beaver fans in attendance with a 5-1 win.

Boxscore

Really though the pitching set the tone for the Beavs tonight with Dan Child off with his pitches either in the dirt, missing low, or getting up in the zone to allow for some hard hit balls by San Francisco batters. Child went only two innings, giving up five hits and three earned runs. Tyler Painton came in to give the Beavs 4 2/3 innings of solid enough relief, but when he needed to go out the Beavs had a hard time finding the right match ups with Zach Reser coming in for two batters (allowing a single and hitting another batter) then Cole Brocker came in to strikeout one batter who was able to load the bases anyway on the pitch going wild. Finally Tony Bryant came in, but he allowed a two out two run single up the middle, but Bryant was able to finish the game. It was just one of those nights.

The Beavs defense played overall an okay game, but did give up some plays such as a dropped ball on a double-play attempt early on that could have helped turn a bit more momentum the Beavs way. That said OSU actually outplayed the Dons who defensively who had three errors to the Beavs no errors, but it was not enough as the pitching set up too big of a hole for a struggling at the plate performance for Oregon State. Indeed it was a night that saw Michael Conforto go 0 for 3 with three strikeouts. Tyler Smith, the Pac-12 Player of the Week, also saw his 9 game hitting streak come to an end.

Disappointing as it was the hopes are that the Beavs bounce back to take it to the Dons for the second mid-week game tomorrow night, 5:35 PST first pitch, and get back on track going into their first conference series against Arizona this upcoming weekend.

Go Beavs!