For the second straight night, the No. 22 ASU baseball team made its game versus No. 11 Oregon interesting, but held on to win 14-9 for its second win Saturday in as many days against the top team in the Pac-12 standings.
Leading 10-4 heading to the eighth, freshman starter Ryan Kellogg and senior reliever Alex Blackford combined to allow five runs in a third of an inning.
The Ducks (22-8, 8-3 Pac-12) had the tying run on second with only one out, but ASU senior Matt Dunbar shut the door, inducing a strikeout and pop out to end the inning.
“We needed to win today,” Dunbar said. “We’ve played well for two days, and coming in and getting those two outs were very huge.”
The Sun Devils (19-8-1, 6-5 Pac-12) started where they left off the night before, jumping out to a quick 2-0 lead in the first from junior third baseman Michael Benjamin's triple and a groundout from junior second baseman James McDonald.
The Ducks grabbed a run back in the second, but the Sun Devils pushed the lead to 4-1 in the third with another pair of back-to-back RBIs from Benjamin and McDonald.
Freshman designated hitter R.J. Ybarra, the hero of last night’s game, extended the Sun Devil lead to 7-1 with a two-RBI double, part of a three-run fifth.
The Sun Devils recorded nine extra base hits on the evening, which ASU coach Tim Esmay said was due to an increasing confidence in his hitters.
“It’s just about our guys maturing a little bit in their at-bats and not throwing away at-bats and getting ahead and they did that tonight,” Esmay said.
The Ducks kept clawing off Kellogg (7-0), though, who allowed a season-high seven runs (six earned) in 7.1 innings.
Kellogg allowed two in the sixth and another in the seventh. Esmay sent him back out there in the eighth — a decision he doesn’t regret.
“I never have any regrets,” Esmay said. “We can never look back.”
The Sun Devils responded with their own rally in the bottom of the eighth, scoring four capped off by freshman first baseman Dalton DiNatale’s two RBI double.
“It was awesome,” DiNatale said. “I tried to see the ball as well as I could and not try and do too much, and I was able to get the job done.”
Dunbar finished off the Ducks in the ninth to earn his first save of the season and move the Sun Devils over the .500 mark in Pac-12 play for the first time all season.
“It’s a grind. It’s not easy,” Esmay said. “We are doing some things really well right now, and we have to make sure we maintain that.”
Reach the reporter at dsshapi1@asu.edu
