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#1 Oregon State Baseball Comes Back For A 5-4 Win Over Abilene Christian

Jack Anderson’s RBI single in the 11th got the win for the Beavers.

By Joe Londergan
Twitter - @BeaverBaseball

Oregon State narrowly got the win over Abilene Christian on Friday to go up 2-0 in the four game series.

The day was a tough one for starting pitcher Jake Thompson, who came in with the nation’s best record of 12-0. The ACU offense nabbed ten hits off of him with four earned runs. The win went to Brandon Eisert who pitched five innings in relief and closed out the victory and got three strikeouts of his own.

The first of those runs came in the third inning when shortstop Mark Pearson drove in third baseman Cole Solomon. Snohomish High School product Russell Crippen scored Pearson with an RBI ground out shortly after. ACU added two more in the fourth with a two RBI single from center fielder Scott. The Oregon State offense got on the board in the bottom of the sixth with a three run homer to left center from Trevor Larnach.

Then in the bottom of the ninth, with their backs against the wall, OSU caught some lucky breaks. A combo of walks and wild pitches set up Elliot Cary to get walked with the bases loaded, tying the game at four a piece. Then in the bottom of the eleventh, Jack Anderson singled to left field and Andy Atwood beat the throw home from second to complete the comeback and win it for OSU.

The win went to Brandon Eisert who pitched great five innings in relief, closing out the victory and got three strikeouts of his own. The storm cloud in the silver lining of OSU’s comeback was their relative lack of offense against ACU’s starting pitcher, righty Drew Hanson. Hanson allowed just four hits and one walk in 5.2 innings.

The only extra base hit the Beavers accumulated all day was the home run by Larnach. You could chalk it up to overconfidence, a lack of concentration, a few questionable at bats from the home plate umpire. Whatever the problem was, OSU didn’t have the same spring in their step early that they did on Thursday. Nevertheless, this team once again proved their resiliency and depth with Friday’s win.

Game three is set for Saturday afternoon at 1:35 PM PT.

Side note: BTD extends our congratulations to Mitch Hickey and his fiance on their engagement!