Recap: Oregon State Baseball Bounces Back, Downs San Diego State

While yesterday’s loss was disappointing, today’s game provided a much more upbeat story to the Oregon State Beavers. The Beavs took down the San Diego State Aztecs 8-1 to split the two game series. Even though yesterday wasn’t an ideal way to kick off the series, coming back and winning in a convincing way is still good to see. Here’s how it all went down...

Oregon State elected to play this game using a pitching-by-committee approach to tonight’s game; meaning they rotate pitchers after a few short innings so no one would throw out their arm before this weekend’s series. Christian Chamberlain started on the mound for the Beavs, and pitched well in his brief two inning appearance. Fortunately for Chamberlain and the rest of the relievers, the offense was ready to roll from the get-go.

The Beavers struck quickly in the bottom of the first inning and piled on four runs to start the game. Oregon State nearly batted around the entire lineup in the first inning alone in their quick four run blitz. San Diego State quickly responded with a run of their own in the top of the second, but were promptly shut down the rest of the night afterwards.

Andrew Walling stepped in to pitch for a few innings in the third and continued to stifle the Aztec lineup. The Beavs tacked on another run in the bottom of the third in thanks to a sac fly from George Mendazona. Jake Pfenning would come on in relief in the fifth with Dylan Pearce and Joey Mundt wrapping up the last three innings. In the meantime, the offense pushed across three more runs in the seventh inning thanks to singles from Troy Claunch and Adley Rutschman.

All in all, this was a well-rounded game from everyone on the OSU roster. The offense played well and gave the pitchers plenty of support. The pitching-by-committee strategy was interesting to watch and a joy to see pay off. The Beavs used five pitchers from the bullpen, and all five pitched well in their appearances. This is a great boost of confidence to these relievers to get some effective innings in. Just look at their stat lines below...

This was a good win for the Beavs and a nice bit of momentum to get the team going. Oregon State will now shift focus to a three game series against the Utah Utes in Goss Stadium starting on Friday.