Wildcats are manufacturing their own drama
Chip Hale walked over to the postgame media scrum, a smile on his face paired with a slight shaking of his head after Arizona pulled off another walkoff win, the sixth in the last 10 games at Hi Corbett Field. But it was also the fifth time during what’s now 10 consecutive Pac-12 victories that the Wildcats won after blowing a late lead, including twice in the weekend sweep of Washington State.
“Just another day at the office,” Hale said.
Mason White’s single up the middle with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th gave the UA a 7-6 victory. It was his second walkoff hit during the recent run, homering off UCLA in extra innings on March 30 to complete a sweep-off of the Bruins.
That game, like this one, saw the Wildcats (24-14, 13-5 Pac-12) blow a lead in the late innings.
“You’ve got to win games, so if it’s that way, so be it,” said White, who was 2 for 5 with two RBI to give him 49 for the season. “Just knowing there’s a chance, it’s probably going to go our way.”
Like with Friday’s 8-7 win over WSU, Arizona’s bullpen squandered another strong starting performance. Cameron Walty allowed three runs (on a 3-run home run in the third) over six innings with six strikeouts and his third straight walk-free outing.
Walty left with a 6-3 lead, which was 6-5 after the Cougars (18-20, 7-14) scored twice in the 7th. Eric Orloff hit two batters and allowed a single, leaving the game after inducing a sacrifice fly, with the second run coming in on a single against Bradon Zastrow. Zastrow was clean in the 8th, leaving the 9th to Kyler Heyne.
Heyne, who allowed his first homer on Friday night, gave up a pair of singles up the middle including one with two outs to score the tying run.
“It’s hard to say it’s an off night for me when you give up a run, because it’s college baseball,” Hale said. “Especially when you get to the third hour of a game here and it’s 90-something, 80-something degrees. (The infield is) hard, you can bounce balls through the infield. Not everybody can strike everybody out. That’s the thing about college baseball, you’ve got to be able to score runs.”
Arizona’s defense kept WSU from ever taking the lead, as the infield turned three double plays over the final four innings and played errorless defense for the weekend after committing nine errors in a 5-game span.
“I thought the double plays were huge,” Hale said. “The pitchers getting them was fantastic. Those same ground balls could easily bound through on this infield.”
As for Arizona’s hitting, it scored six runs on seven hits through the first four innings, but after an RBI single by Brendan Summerhill in the 4th the Wildcats managed only three hits with two walks over the the next six innings.
“Stuff just doesn’t go our way sometimes, but the plan doesn’t change,” White said. “You never stop, never get out of your routine.”
The tide turned in the 11th when Tommy Splaine took a pitch in the back to lead off and moved to second on a sac bunt by Blake McDonald. Summerhill was intentionally walked. Garen Caulfield was then grazed by an inside pitch to load the bases for White, who sent a 3-1 pitch up the middle to score Splaine.
“We had the right guy at the right time hitting,” Hale said. “That was the attitude of all those guys, and that’s kind of been the attitude when we’ve be down in the ninth or in extra innings. Guys want to be the guy, so that’s a really important thing to have on our team. Our bats all day were not up to par with what we’ve been doing, but we found a way to win. We’d rather win it in nine, of course.”
Arizona pulled off its fourth consecutive weekend series sweep, something it hadn’t done since 1998. It also extended its lead in the Pac-12 to two games over Oregon, which lost two of three at Stanford, while Oregon State was swept at Cal to fall 2.5 games back.
The Wildcats play the next four on the road, visiting New Mexico State—whom they lost to 12-9 at home on March 26—on Wednesday and then playing three at Washington.