The No. 2 ASU baseball team didn’t exactly have to charter a team plane for this road trip.
For the eighth straight season, the Sun Devils will kick off play in the Coca-Cola Classic at Surprise Stadium, a 45-minute drive from the familiar confines of their home ballpark in Tempe.
ASU is 13-9 all-time in the event and went 3-2 last season.
After rolling through Northern Illinois and Towson on its way to a 7-0 record, ASU will face much stiffer competition during the four-game Classic.
First-year head coach Tim Esmay said he is looking forward to seeing his team tested in a Major League stadium — the spring training home of the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals.
“You look at who we’re facing and we’ve got Cal Poly, [UC] Riverside, Florida International and [No. 10] Oregon State, so it doesn’t get much easier,” Esmay said of the progression of the schedule in Surprise. “It will be a good weekend and a good challenge. It’s a good ballpark, and it’s a different ballpark for us that isn’t Packard, so we’re going to have to adapt to that.”
The Sun Devils will also have to continue to adapt to life without preseason All-American pitcher Josh Spence. The senior southpaw will miss his third straight weekend to open the season after missing time in the spring with arm soreness.
“Spence is on the road [to recovery],” Esmay said. “He’s behind because he hasn’t thrown. He’s still in that progression mode … It’s not anything other than he was a few weeks behind being ready to go.”
While the Sun Devils are waiting for their team captain to return to the mound, they may have found a candidate to be part of what will likely be a three-man rotation when Pac-10 season kicks off on March 26.
Sophomore Jake Borup, a 22-year-old who signed with ASU four years ago, redshirted, served a two-year Mormon mission and threw just eight innings in his first action last year, has been the most consistent starter for the Sun Devils in the early going.
In two starts, Borup (2-0) has thrown 11 innings, giving up just one run on five hits — good enough for a 0.82 ERA.
Borup will pitch on Friday or Saturday, against either OSU or UC Riverside, with junior Seth Blair (2-0) slated to get the ball for Thursday’s game against Cal Poly.
Juniors Jimmy Patterson (0-0) and Merrill Kelly (2-0) will start the other two games for the Sun Devils.
Riccio rolling
While sophomore second baseman Zack MacPhee’s early-season offensive onslaught has made headlines to begin the 2010 campaign, the emergence of sophomore Riccio Torrez has been an intriguing storyline as well.
While his home run and five RBIs from Tuesday night’s exhibition against a team from Japan don’t count toward his numbers, the younger brother of senior captain Raoul Torrez has filled the stat sheets in other contests, too.
Batting .458, Riccio Torrez has knocked in nine runs, including a four-RBI performance in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader against Towson.
After hitting .280 with six home runs and 37 RBI as a freshman, Torrez could become a viable option for the middle of the order going forward. His ability to play at both corners of the infield also makes him a valuable commodity.
“It’s just the maturity of the player,” Esmay said of Torrez. “One thing about Riccio is, the kid never takes a day off. He’s one of our hardest practice players and he takes everything serious, and it’s playing out for him right now.”
The Torrez brothers combined to hit 13-for-27 (.481) against Towson last weekend with 13 RBI and 11 runs scored.
Extra bases
FIU coach Turtle Thomas, whose Panthers ASU will face on Sunday, was an assistant at ASU in 2007.
Though ASU’s game Friday is against Pac-10 foe OSU, the game will not count toward the conference standings.
Reach the reporter at nkosmide@asu.edu
