ASU Baseball: Baez homers twice, Sun Devils put up 19 runs in dominant win over Utah

Could a streaky Sun Devil team stay in the top-eight and make a Pac-12 tourney run?

ASU Baseball (21-25, 10-12 Pac-12) finished last week’s series against UCLA with a -30 run differential on the weekend. Two of those games would have ended early on the softball diamond.

Willie Bloomquist’s team looks to have, at least temporarily, put that season-stifling series loss behind them with a monumental 19-7 win over Utah (25-18-1, 10-12).

When the Sun Devil bats are warmed up, they put up runs by the dozen, and the long ball plays a huge role.

Jacob Tobias (2-for-5, HR, 5 RBI) started things off with a two-run shot to go up 2-0. As soon as Utah knotted the score at 2-2, Nate “Ducks on the Pond” Baez (4-for-5, five RBI, three runs) launched a three-run homer to put ASU up by three.

In addition to Tobias, fellow freshmen phenoms Cam Magee and Ryan Campos added RBI with a pair of doubles, and Sean McLain drove in a sac-fly RBI to go up 9-2. Utah responded with a four-spot of its own, but after that, the Sun Devils were in the driver’s seat.

ASU put up seven unanswered runs, including another long ball from Baez. They scored four runs in each of the fourth and sixth innings, and scored in seven of eight hittable frames.

Tyler Meyer (3-0) earned the win, allowing one run in just under three innings. Adam Tulloch, the starter, allowed six in 4.1 innings of work.

The Sun Devils had lost five in a row, and six-of-eight dating back to their sweep of USC, but the Utah victory sets them up nicely for a potential second series-win of the month. Game two is Saturday at 6:00 p.m. AZ/MST.