BATON ROUGE– The Sun Devil Baseball team shook off a rough loss Friday and a tenuous start on Saturday afternoon to rally for a 13-5 victory over Stony Brook in the first elimination game of the Baton Rouge Regional of the 2019 NCAA Baseball Tournament.
The Sun Devils kept their postseason run alive with the victory, advancing to a second elimination game tomorrow afternoon against the loser of tonight's matchup between host LSU and Southern Miss. The game will get underway at 12 p.m. Arizona and will be broadcast in some medium by ESPN.
Arizona State's bats came to life on Saturday afternoon, scoring runs in six of the final seven innings of the game and multiple runs in five of those. Trevor Hauver was 3-for-5 with two RBIs, joining Gage Workman (3-for-5) and Sam Ferri (3-for-4) with a trio of hits on the day. Spencer Torkelson had a pair of RBI doubles and Carter Aldrete brought two runs across with two hits as well.
The Devils got exactly what they needed out of RJ Dabovich on the mound as the sophomore made his first start since April 7 and responded with 6.2 quality innings of work that didn't truly match his final stat line of five runs allowed with six strikeouts and scattering six hits. Two runs scored on a ball that easily good have been ruled an error in the first but was ruled to have taken a bad hop. Two more scored after Dabovich had left the game and were surrendered by the ASU bullpen but credited to the right-hander.
The Seawolves plated three in the first three innings before Dabovich found his groove, buckling down for 4.0 consecutive scoreless innings while his offense backed him up in the top halves of the innings. Dabovich's ability to go deep into the game saved the bullpen for a pivotal elimination game tomorrow.
The Sun Devil offense picked Dabovich up on the other end of the ball, and did so without relying on the long ball or even necessarily extra base hits. ASU had 16 hits on the day and 12 of those were singles, adding three doubles and a triple.
Trailing 2-0, ASU evened the game in the top of the third behind a pair of those extra base hits as Hauver tripled ahead of a Torkelson RBI double. Hunter Bishop drew one of his four walks on the day and that brought Alika Williams to the plate, who responded with an RBI single to make it 2-2.
Stony Brook rallied in the bottom half of the frame, taking advantage of a two-out walk and bringing it home a couple batters later to retake the lead.
The ASU bats ensured that would be the end of that, also taking advantage of free bases in the fourth with Ferri and Hauver reaching on a walk and a hit-by-pitch. Hauver notched his first RBI single of the day and Swift came home on a wild pitch to give ASU its first lead of the game at 4-3.
A scoreless fourth from Dabovich was all the window that ASU needed to blow the game open. ASU dropped a three-spot behind RBI singles from Aldrete, Swift and Hauver to extend the lead to 7-3 and never looked back.
Stony Brook attempted one last rally, scoring two in the seventh to get back within three runs. But the Sun Devils slammed the door on any homes, plating five runs over the eighth and ninth for ASU's 19thgame this season reaching double digits. With the win, ASU also moved to 38 victories on the season - its most since the 2011 campaign.
ASU was 10-for-21 (.476) with runners in scoring position and did not squander golden opportunites, bringing a runner home from third with less than two outs six times on seven chances.
The Sun Devils kept their postseason run alive with the victory, advancing to a second elimination game tomorrow afternoon against the loser of tonight's matchup between host LSU and Southern Miss. The game will get underway at 12 p.m. Arizona and will be broadcast in some medium by ESPN.
Arizona State's bats came to life on Saturday afternoon, scoring runs in six of the final seven innings of the game and multiple runs in five of those. Trevor Hauver was 3-for-5 with two RBIs, joining Gage Workman (3-for-5) and Sam Ferri (3-for-4) with a trio of hits on the day. Spencer Torkelson had a pair of RBI doubles and Carter Aldrete brought two runs across with two hits as well.
The Devils got exactly what they needed out of RJ Dabovich on the mound as the sophomore made his first start since April 7 and responded with 6.2 quality innings of work that didn't truly match his final stat line of five runs allowed with six strikeouts and scattering six hits. Two runs scored on a ball that easily good have been ruled an error in the first but was ruled to have taken a bad hop. Two more scored after Dabovich had left the game and were surrendered by the ASU bullpen but credited to the right-hander.
The Seawolves plated three in the first three innings before Dabovich found his groove, buckling down for 4.0 consecutive scoreless innings while his offense backed him up in the top halves of the innings. Dabovich's ability to go deep into the game saved the bullpen for a pivotal elimination game tomorrow.
The Sun Devil offense picked Dabovich up on the other end of the ball, and did so without relying on the long ball or even necessarily extra base hits. ASU had 16 hits on the day and 12 of those were singles, adding three doubles and a triple.
Trailing 2-0, ASU evened the game in the top of the third behind a pair of those extra base hits as Hauver tripled ahead of a Torkelson RBI double. Hunter Bishop drew one of his four walks on the day and that brought Alika Williams to the plate, who responded with an RBI single to make it 2-2.
Stony Brook rallied in the bottom half of the frame, taking advantage of a two-out walk and bringing it home a couple batters later to retake the lead.
The ASU bats ensured that would be the end of that, also taking advantage of free bases in the fourth with Ferri and Hauver reaching on a walk and a hit-by-pitch. Hauver notched his first RBI single of the day and Swift came home on a wild pitch to give ASU its first lead of the game at 4-3.
A scoreless fourth from Dabovich was all the window that ASU needed to blow the game open. ASU dropped a three-spot behind RBI singles from Aldrete, Swift and Hauver to extend the lead to 7-3 and never looked back.
Stony Brook attempted one last rally, scoring two in the seventh to get back within three runs. But the Sun Devils slammed the door on any homes, plating five runs over the eighth and ninth for ASU's 19thgame this season reaching double digits. With the win, ASU also moved to 38 victories on the season - its most since the 2011 campaign.
ASU was 10-for-21 (.476) with runners in scoring position and did not squander golden opportunites, bringing a runner home from third with less than two outs six times on seven chances.