Things started off bad for the Arizona baseball team. Then they got worse. And, yes, they got even worse.
After No. 14 ASU opened the game with eight straight hits, chased starter Paul Bargas after just two-thirds of an inning and scored 18 runs by the time the fourth inning was done, Arizona rounded out a dismal performance by hitting into a triple play in the bottom of the fourth inning en route to a 22-8 loss to the Sun Devils last night at Sancet Stadium.
“”It was a bad evening of baseball for Arizona,”” said UA head coach Andy Lopez. “”Nothing went well.””
Bargas (1-1) gave up eight runs on seven hits and a walk. He threw 35 pitches.
The freshman entered the game with a team-best 0.84 ERA and hadn’t allowed a walk in three appearances. After the outing, his ERA ballooned to 7.15.
“”I was making pitches, and they were just hitting them,”” Bargas said. “”I didn’t feel like – they were good hitters, I’m not going to take that away from them – but I was hitting my spots, and they were finding holes.””
Added Lopez: “”(Bargas) looked pretty good up until today. Life moves on for him. He’ll have to get better, that’s for sure.””
Lefty Mike Colla did little to quell the bleeding, giving up a towering shot to left field off the bat of Sun Devil catcher Kiel Roling to open the second inning, then a two-run shot from third baseman Matt Hall later in the inning that put ASU ahead 11-0.
The Sun Devils kept pouring it on in the third, when Brett Wallace took a Colla pitch deep over the left-center-field wall for a two-run bomb of his own and a 13-0 lead.
Colla gave up five earned runs in 2 1/3 innings, striking out two against four walks.
“”Today, we pitched horribly, obviously, at the beginning of the game and put ourselves in a bad situation,”” Lopez said. “”Thank God it’s just one game.””
Arizona pitchers walked a season-high 12 batters.
“”When you walk 12 guys, you deserve to get beat,”” Lopez said. “”That’s ridiculous.””
Things wouldn’t get much better in the fourth, when freshman Brett Lorin walked four of the first five batters he faced to score Hall and leave the bases loaded. The next batter, Roling, hit a two-run single and right fielder Ike Davis followed that with a run-scoring double to right to extend the lead to 17-1.
Designated hitter Petey Paramore’s groundout scored Roling a batter later.
In the bottom of the inning, with runners standing on first and second, right fielder Jon Gaston hit a soft liner to ASU second baseman Eric Sogard, who fired to first baseman Brett Wallace for the second out. Wallace then threw to shortstop Andrew Romine to complete the triple play.
“”I was like, ‘This is a unique night tonight,'”” Lopez said of his thoughts after triple play. “”It was pretty much par for the course for the evening.””
ASU starter Joey Parigi (2-1) scattered four hits over five innings, giving up a lone run. He walked two and struck out one.
Down 22-2 in the bottom of the ninth, Arizona got back-to-back homers from C.J. Ziegler and Brad Glenn, then used run-scoring singles from Robert Abel and T.J. Steele to push a total of four runners across.
First baseman Bill Rhinehart’s two-run double to centerfield capped the scoring.
“”We got some runs, but not when we needed to,”” Lopez said. “”We just didn’t play well for the first five innings.””
Extra bases
The crowd of 1,422 was the largest of the year, but the majority of the fans had left by the time the fourth inning started. … Wallace had seven RBIs in the game. … Hall finished 3-for-4 with four RBIs and five runs scored.
