Arizona baseball notebook: Wildcats get over hump with win, offensive adjustments needed

EUGENE, Ore.—With four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, Chip Hale has accomplished something now Arizona coach had since Frank Sancet. Doing it in his first four years as a head coach made the feat even more impressive.

But going into Friday’s opener against Cal Poly the Wildcats had lost five consecutive NCAA tourney games, matching the longest postseason skid since dropping five in a row from 1993-2003 but under three different coaches.

Hale sported a 2-6 NCAA record before the UA beat Cal Poly 3-2, moving on in the winner’s bracket side of the Eugene Regional. The last time Arizona had won its first regional game was 2021, when it swept through one at home en route to the College World Series.

“There was some anxiety to that,” Hale admitted after the win. “I think everybody made such a big deal about us not winning a game in our home region last year, and in Arkansas. We didn’t win the first one in Miami, but we played pretty well after that. So I think it loosened them up.”

Arizona will play either regional host Oregon or Utah Valley at 6 p.m. PT Saturday. Win that game and it’s in Sunday night’s regional final, while a loss would mean playing earlier Sunday for a spot in the final.

Prior to Friday, the only players on the UA roster who had won an NCAA tourney game were first baseman Tommy Splaine, second baseman Garen Caulfield and reliever Eric Orloff, who were part of the 2022 squad. The junior class, which makes up a large chunk of the main rotation and includes several players likely to get drafted in July, had yet to experience a postseason win.

“Every game it feels like I’m playing another game to play more time with these guys,” said Owen Kramkowski, a sophomore. “Like, let’s win for each other. That’s how it feels like we’re playing right now. We’re playing so good because we’re not playing for ourselves, we’re gonna play for each other.”

Adjustments needed at the plate

Arizona managed to beat Cal Poly despite recording two hits, Splaine’s RBI triple and Easton Breyfogle’s 2-run home run in back-to-back at-bats. It’s the fewest hits the UA has had in a win since at least 2011.

And it’s becoming a bit of a trend, at least the low-scoring part. The Wildcats won the Big 12 Tournament title with a 2-1 victory in 10 innings, getting just six hits, while the conference tourney opener against BYU was a 4-1 win (with a 12-run, 17-hit outburst against West Virginia in between).

For the season Arizona is averaging 6.44 runs per game, which ranks in the 170s nationally.

“We’re going to have to make adjustments,” Hale said. “We’re already talking about some things we’re going to have to do. And I trust in these hitters, and I think they’ll loosen up a bit tomorrow.”

Cal Poly right-hander Griffin Naess kept Arizona off balance with his change-up and other off-speed stuff, an issue for the Wildcats often this season. If Oregon is the opponent it’s likely to start senior lefty Grayson Grinsell, who has a 2.62 ERA with 99 strikeouts in 92.2 innings.

“We’ll get a game plan for the pitcher tomorrow, whoever it is, and we’ll do the best we can,” Hale said. “I trust these guys. Their swings are good. It’s not mechanical. Tomorrow we’ll run them back out there and go out again.”

Pluta power

Kramkowski allowed a run over seven frames, extending the run of great starts from Arizona pitchers who have a combined 1.03 ERA over their last 35 innings. But Kramkowski also gave up eight hits and readily dealt with traffic before working his way out of it.

Garrett Hicks gave up a solo homer in the 8^th, only the 34^th allowed by Arizona this season which is the fewest of any power conference team, but otherwise was solid. Then came the most underrated reliever in college baseball, Tony Pluta.

The 5-foot-9 junior righty gave up a single on the first pitch he threw in the 9^th but then got a strikeout and induced a 5-4-3 double play to earn his 13^th save of the season. That ties Jason Stoffel for the single-season school record set in 2008.

“You hear his walkout song, everyone gets going,” Kramkowski said. “It feels like the game is over at that point.”

Pluta has a 1.39 ERA in 26 appearances over 32.1 innings, allowing runs in only two outings. The last was on April 1, and since then he’s thrown 16.1 consecutive scoreless.

He’s a big reason Arizona is 11-1 in 1-run games this season and is 34-0 when leading after eight innings.

Defense (helps) win championships

Arizona played its fourth straight errorless game, the longest streak of the season. Not surprisingly, the Wildcats have only allowed five runs in that span.

Hale had said after the Big 12 Tournament that it was the best defensive weekend of the year and that so far has carried over to Eugene. The UA ended the game on a 5-4-3 double play started by Maddox Mihalakis, who earlier in the game made a barehanded catch while Hale was doing a TV interview.

Mihalakis has made several big defensive plays at third in recent weeks, including a couple diving plays at Houston in the game that started the current win streak. He’s committed only three errors this season, the last coming on May 16.

“He’s been a key to us,” Hale said. “We went round and around with third base this year, kind of a revolving door, and he sort of took it over. Part of it his left-handed bat, the other part was he just started making all the plays. And if you go back to even the Houston series, when we had to turn this thing around, he had an unbelievable game.”

Breyfogle made a leaping catch at the wall in left in the 7^th and Aaron Walton nearly caught a bloop to short center earlier in the game. The Wildcats also aligned themselves as such in the infield that Cal Poly, which had 44 sacrifice bunts and plenty others for hits, never attempted one despite having 11 baserunners.

“Our other assistant coaches do a lot of work on positioning players,” Hale said. “I look a lot at their style of play, a lot of bunting, so we were playing pretty shallow. And I just thought, again, we made the plays and we had to make. That’s one thing that’s really continued to get better with our team.”

Other notes

• Pluta’s save not only tied the single-season school record but matched the team season record of 18 set by the 2016 squad, which ended up playing 73 games in reaching the College World Series championship series. Pluta’s 15 career saves are third for 3rd in school history.
• Walton has been hit by 22 pitches in 2025, second-most in school history. Colt Sedbrook was beaned 26 times in 2006.
• Arizona has reached 40 wins for the 23^rd time in school history and first since 2021.