College baseball notes: Washington State hopes hot bats will turn season around
PULLMAN – The Washington State baseball team gave up 12 runs in one inning, lost a Pac-12 series at home and lost its sixth game in seven tries last weekend.
Still, skipper Marty Lees considered the 1-2 series loss to No. 8 Arizona a turning point.
The Cougars bounced back from Friday’s 19-5 pasting by the Wildcats to win 9-3 on Saturday and nearly sent the highly ranked foes home with another loss on Sunday, falling 6-5.
“I felt like we played 23 innings of good baseball where our pitching, our defense and our offense came together,” Lees said. “I thought our kids did a really good job bouncing back the second day. It takes a tremendous amount of mental ability after losing the way we did, by the number of runs we did.”
Lees is hoping the Cougars can find their stride and hit their season around thanks to a buoyant offense. The Cougars are tied for second in the Pac-12 in on-base percentage (.402) and are second in the league with 64 doubles. The Cougars have stolen 24 bases, but while Lees’ MO last year was manufacturing runs, they are no longer playing small ball.
WSU has already matched last year’s home run total (16) and ranks fourth in the Pac-12 in slugging percentage (.402).
The Cougars are doing it with underclassmen. Sophomore third baseman Shane Matheny is tied for third in the conference with 12 doubles. Fellow second-year player Justin Harrer is right behind with 11.
Freshman Dillon Plew is third in the conference in on-base percentage (.461), and freshman Donny Sinatro was recently moved into center field where he made a spectacular catch against the wall last weekend.
“Danny’s come a long ways,” Lees said. “He came here as an infielder. He’s the type of kid who really doesn’t care where he plays and that’s refreshing. He’s very intense, he works very hard and to insert him into our lineup in center field, we’ve got one of the better athletes in the league going into our future.”
WSU (15-14, 2-7 Pac-12) has a chance to pad its conference record on the road this week against last-place Arizona State (12-18, 2-10).
“I’m very confident we can play three competitive games in a row,” Lees said. “We’re ready to do that.”
Bulldogs rained out again
For the second time this season, the Gonzaga Bulldogs geared up to play the country’s best baseball team but never got a chance to dirty their cleats. Tuesday’s nonconference game at No. 1 Oregon State was rained out, the second time GU and the Beavers have had to cancel a game because of rain this season.
No makeup date has been announced.
GU (17-14, 8-4 WCC) would have entered the game against OSU (28-1, 12-0 Pac-12) with some momentum, having just won a big West Coast Conference series against No. 19 San Diego, the first series win against a ranked opponent for the Zags in two years.
GU is 4-4 against ranked opponents this season, and all four losses have come in one-run games. The second win against San Diego was the 400th of coach Mark Machtolf’s career.