If the old baseball cliché that hitting is contagious rings true, the ASU baseball time had a bout of the flu on Wednesday night.
The No. 2 Sun Devils completed a two-game sweep of visiting San Francisco, throttling the Dons 21-3. ASU (35-5) racked up 23 hits off seven USF pitchers, with nine different players recording a multi-hit game.
In all, 11 different players crossed the plate.
Sophomore infielder Riccio Torrez led the charge with his second straight four-hit night with three runs driven in.
“Everyone just fed off of base hits,” Torrez said. “You see them and say you’re going to get that next hit and it keeps going around, and before you know it you’ve gone through the lineup.”
The offensive onslaught was highlighted by an eight-run seventh that featured back-to-back home runs by sophomores Zach Wilson and Johnny Ruettiger that each left the yard.
ASU also put up five-spots in the third and the fifth.
“We really did a good job of just playing pitch by pitch, [at-bat] by [at-bat],” ASU coach Tim Esmay. “Hitting is contagious, so when you get one to fall, pretty soon something else falls … we’re starting to get guys who finish of what we start.”
USF struck for its only runs of the game off freshman starter Alex Blackford in the second inning off two doubles, a walk, a balk and an RBI single.
Blackford pitched the first three innings before giving the ball to junior left-hander Josh Moody, who made his first appearance in more than a month.
Moody gave up two hits and no runs in his three innings work, earning the win and praise from his coach.
“I was really excited with Josh Moody,” Esmay said. “That gives us a better opportunity [going forward] not to have to go to [sophomore lefty reliever Mitchell] Lambson so early in certain situations. You can go to Moody now in a relief role or a situational role. … I thought he threw the ball really well.”
Freshman Brady Rodgers, who bruised his pinky finger Sunday attempting to catch a fly ball, threw three perfect innings to close the game.
“It was good to get Brady out there and see that his hand was healthy and there were no lingering effects of the bruised pinky,” Esmay said. “Those guys got their innings in and they should be fresh and ready to go for the weekend.”
But the loudest roar of the night didn’t come from a home run or loud extra-base hit.
Instead, the crowd’s biggest ovation came for sophomore Brandon Magee. The football team’s linebacker stepped in for a pinch-hit appearance in the eighth inning and lined out on a sharp line drive to center field.
Though he didn’t get a hit, Magee was mobbed by teammates as he came back to the dugout, and one fan shouted to USF, “We’ll give you five runs if you let Magee bat again.”
The Sun Devils will hope to transfer the power from a team-game set that saw them tally 38 hits to Los Angeles on Friday for a crucial three-game showdown with UCLA.
Reach the reporter at nkosmide@asu.edu
