After a poor 2017 campaign, ASU baseball has seen moderate improvement but they need greatly improved bullpen play to reach the NCAA Tournament.
Despite a plethora of additions to the roster, ASU baseball has failed to to fully recover from their historically poor 2017 campaign.
Although there have been signs of improvement for the Sun Devils with young bats such as Spencer Torkelson, great defense from Drew Swift and solid starting pitching from Eli Lingos and Boyd Vander Kooi, ASU baseball has been unable to get consistent production from its bullpen this season.
After being demoted from the rotation, ASU’s talented left hander Spencer Van Scoyoc has failed to get back on track since his demotion to the bullpen.
The sophomore this season has an earned run average of 7.50 and has walked 15 batters in just nine innings pitched.
Considering that Van Scoyoc posted a respectable 3.86 earned run average in 10 appearances (eight starts), the sophomore lefty has had a bizarrely poor season in 2018 for ASU.
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A second major disappointment out of the pen for the Sun Devils this year has been Connor Higgins who has allowed opponents to hit .317 off of him this season.
The lefty came into the season as ASU’s closer, but has now been demoted from his role as a junior to become more of middle reliever for head coach Tracy Smith’s team.
Considering that the big lefty passed up on the opportunity to go pro last season, it’s safe to say that Higgins may need to at least consider coming back to school for his senior season in order to rebuild his draft stock.
In addition to Van Scoyoc and Higgins, Ryan Hingst has had a rough year out of the bullpen for the Sun Devils in 2018.
The righty on Saturday night against USC allowed another earned run to score in 1.2 innings pitched in relief of Eli Lingos as the senior now has a poor 6.43 earned run average on the season.
With the amount of unknowns and unreliable performers in the bullpen, Smith has had a lot of trouble in finding any reliable arms out of his bullpen this season.
One of those few reliable arms out of the ASU pen has been Chaz Montoya as the lefty this season has a 3.26 earned run average in 15 appearances in relief.
Alongside Montoya, Dellan Raish has been a second reliable arm in relief for the Sun Devils.
Raish this season has struck out 25 batters in 19.2 innings pitched to go along with an earned run average under 3.00.
Raish and Montoya have combined to become ASU’s two most relied upon arms out of the bullpen as the rest of the staff has been either inconsistent or not trusted enough in big time situations by Tracy Smith.
Relievers such as Zane Strand and Jake Godfrey have low earned run averages, but both have appeared in less than eight games this season for ASU.
Next: ASU Baseball: Sun Devil bats go cold in loss to USC
ASU baseball has had a tradition of success with five NCAA National Championships and 22 College World Series appearances, so if the Sun Devils want to get back to that level of play again, then Tracy Smith will need drastically improved play out of his bullpen sooner rather than later.