It has been a tough year for Beaver athletics. There will be plenty of time over the summer to look back, but as spring sports reach their climax Oregon State Baseball can do a lot for Beaver Nation by bringing home a Pac-12 title in the sport OSU has excelled at in recent years. They have their work cut out for them, a single Arizona win is enough for them to clinch the regular season title, but the Beavs are on a hot streak and as Mitch Canham knows well, a run to Omaha requires winning with your back against the wall.
The desert was where the Beavers hopes of hosting a regional went to die last season. The Beavers lost a last season series at Arizona State in the middle of what was otherwise a solid run up the Pac-12 standings, then lost two slugfests to Arizona and Arizona State in the Pac-12 Tournament in Scottsdale to get bounced early and end up a 2 seed in the LSU regional.
Head Coach Chip Hale took over the Wildcats in 2022 after former head coach Jay Johnson left to take over LSU and has led Arizona to a regional appearance in both of his seasons to date. The former Arizona Diamondbacks head coach has put together another impressive team in 2024 that is outperforming pre-season projections by a substantial margin largely thanks to an impressive performance on the mound.
Arizona has lost series to Arizona State (at home), Oregon (on the road), and Washington (on the road). They have not been swept which accounts for the difference in the standings to OSU. The series win at Utah was probably their best performance to date. They lost non-conference games early in the year to good teams in TCU, Dallas Baptist, and Alabama, and swept Cal, Washington State, and Stanford in Pac-12 play.
The weather should be exactly what you expect from desert baseball, with highs in the upper 90s, lows in the mid 60s, and gametime temps right in between. All games will be shown on the Pac-12 Network and carried via the Beaver Radio Network
- Thursday May 16th @ 6:00 PM PT
- Friday May 17th @ 6:00 PM PT
- Saturday May 18th @ 6:00 PM PT
Offense
Trent Caraway may be back for this series from his broken wrist suffered against Utah in the first Pac-12 series of the year. That would bring the Beaver lineup back to full strength for the first time since the start of the Arkansas game back on February 23rd. Jabin Trosky has done a fair job of filling in but has a .200/.276/.360 slash line in the last 14 days, and occasional 3B Mason Guerra is on the bench working through a very rough patch with the bat.
The Wildcats have an offense that is almost perfectly league average for the Pac-12. SS Mason White paces the offense with a .309/.402/.618 slash line. He leads the team with 17 home runs and 31 walks. He is vulnerable to the strikeout, going down 31% of the time and is second in the country with 75 strikeouts. CF Brendan Summerhill (.327/.403/.569, 7 HR, 7 SB) and RF Emilio Corona (.267/.329/.456 6 HR, 14 SB) are two others to keep an eye on in the Arizona lineup.
Advantage: Oregon State
Starting Pitching
This weekend will bring the best trio of starting pitching matchups the Pac-12 has seen this year. All six starting pitchers are among the top 11 starting pitchers in the conference in average game score and top 12 in ERA among pitchers with 10 or more starts. The Wildcats’ starting pitching has an ERA of 3.72, good for 8th best in the country and comfortably best in the Pac-12.
Friday’s matchup has all the drama you can ask for. Aiden May will be facing his former team, with Coach Hale indicating that May was already mentally on the way out during the season last year. Part of May’s reason for transferring was to leave behind the hitter friendly environment of Arizona, so proving that the 3.56 reduction in his ERA from last year to this one transfers to the desert is something that will help the Beavs in the short term and May’s draft stock along the way. May’s former teammate Jackson Kent has had a breakout season in the Wildcat rotation. The sophomore lefty has only allowed 3 home runs the entire season, and even more remarkably none at home. He is not a particularly ground-ball oriented pitcher, but if he can keep the Beavs in the yard the Wildcats chances surge.
Jacob Kmatz will need a bounce back performance from last week after he was victimized by bad defense and compounded those issues with the long ball. Kmatz was fantastic in his last outing against a quality team, striking out 10 Ducks as part of the series clinching Saturday victory. Clark Candiotti is on his 5th school in as many years, but the 6-4 righthander has thrived in returning to his home state of Arizona. Candiotti has gone at least 7 innings in each of his last 2 starts, including a complete game shutout of Stanford two weeks ago. He is not as routinely prolific with strikeouts as others, but has shown he can rack them up, particularly with a 12-strikeout performance against UCLA.
Sunday will be a matchup between freshman and senior. Eric Segura has been a pleasant surprise for the Beavers this year, even more so considering Jaren Hunter’s occasional struggles in mid-week starts and when filling in for May during his injury. Segura’s outings have been on the shorter end these last few weeks, he has not gotten an out in the 6th inning or later since April 21st against Cal, but he keeps the Beavs in the game and that's what counts. Cam Walty has cut his ERA in half between last year’s swing role and 2024. He made two starts against Oregon State last year, one a 7-run shutout performance at Goss, the second a barrage of 8 hits and 6 runs in 1 inning of work in the Pac-12 tournament.
Advantage: Arizona
Bullpen
The Beavers are going to need Bridger Holmes to make a run over the next few weeks, and the right hander is going to need to find some control. He has had control issues the whole season but has been so prolific with strikeouts he was able to work around them in the early part of the year. That has not been the case over the last few weeks, particularly his last two appearances in which he has hit 4 batters across 2.1 innings.
Tony Pluta (25.1 IP, 3.55 ERA, 3.20 FIP) leads the Wildcats in appearances. Arizona only has 7 saves as a team this season, with Casey Hintz (25.2 IP, 3.51 ERA, 5.09 FIP) and Anthony Susac (25 IP, 6.48 ERA, 5.15 FIP) each sharing the team lead at 2 along with Pluta. Dawson Netz is another arm to keep an eye on. The senior has 23 strikeouts in 18 IP and has walked only 3.
Advantage: Push
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