There are very few opposing pitchers who can walk into Phoenix Municipal Stadium on a Friday night and stifle ASU baseball's potent lineup.
James Kaprielian is one of them.
In tossing seven scoreless innings, the junior right-hander became the first to shutout the Sun Devils (29-16, 14-8 Pac-12) since TCU's Preston Morrison did so on Feb. 20, and Oregon State’s Andrew Moore on March 13, as UCLA thrashed ASU 9-0 Friday night.
The conference-leading Bruins (35-12, 17-5 Pac-12) pounded out 16 hits and handed sophomore Seth Martinez his first career loss, coming in his 12th start of 2015.
Sophomores Colby Woodmansee and David Greer combined for four of ASU’s six hits.
Woodmansee led off the fourth with a single, but was picked off by Kaprielian, as the Sun Devils squandered a three-hit inning and stranded two runs. ASU coach Tracy Smith said the play was straight up and there was not a hit-and-run sign issued.
“Certain situations, you never get picked off,” Smith said. “One of those is hit-and-run, the other is one is a 3-1 steal sign, you treat it just like a hit-and-run, and if you have a 3-2 steal sign. It’s the fundamental baseball – you never get picked off. … We just took ourselves out of the inning.”
Smith said after the game that first baseman Joey Bielek was suspended for Friday night’s game due to an unspecified team rules violation, forcing his hand to start junior Jordan Aboites at third and shift Greer to first.
Martinez was tagged for six runs – four of them earned – on 10 hits and threw 5.2 innings.
UCLA senior third baseman Chris Keck doubled to left in the second inning, the first of three extra base hits surrendered by Martinez in his outing.
Keck launched a solo home run to right in the fourth to give the Bruins a 3-0 lead.
Eli Lingos came in to pitch the sixth and the freshman left-hander worked to induce fly outs from the first two hitters he faced.
“We would have brought (sophomore right-hander Eder Erives) in that situation, if we had a better matchup,” Smith said. “We weren’t going to burn him, because there’s a lot of baseball left to play this weekend.”
But three errors, including a routine ground ball to right that appeared to confound redshirt senior right fielder Trever Allen resulted in what Smith described as a “Little League home run” off the bat of redshirt junior shortstop Kevin Kramer turned a game that was already out of reach into a blowout in a four-run sixth.
“I’ll live with an error. What I won’t live with is that type of stuff,” Smith said. “I’m not upset about that stuff, as concentration and focus, which is very controllable. When we aren’t concentrating upstairs, we’re a very average baseball club.”
Kaprielian was far from dominant, striking out just three Sun Devil hitters, but it was the lack of execution (1 for 10 with runners on and 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position) that sealed a game that would have ended comfortably in UCLA’s favor even without the aforementioned sixth inning meltdown.
“I have a hard time articulating why we would be flat,” Smith said. “I don’t think he dominated us, but when you have a four-run lead and the opposition is flat and the opposition is out of the game mentally, it’s a pretty easy night.
“We weren’t enthusiastic, and we didn’t execute… not a good combination.”
A pair of left-handers in UCLA senior Grant Watson (7-4, 1.90 ERA) and junior Ryan Kellogg (7-1, 3.76 ERA) will square off in Saturday’s matchup at 6:30 p.m.
Reach the reporter at smodrich@asu.edu or follow @StefanJModrich on Twitter.
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