ASU baseball dropped the rubber game of the three-game series versus USC 8-4 Sunday as the Sun Devils continue their struggles.
Arizona State dropped the third game of the series 8-4 against USC, the Devils’ third straight Pac-12 series loss.
It took a while for the ASU bats to wake up as five of Arizona State’s nine hits came in the final two innings. ASU started 0-for-9 with runners on and never had more than one hit in an inning until the eighth where the Sun Devils tacked on three hits and scored two runs.
However, that inning came to an abrupt close after a base-running error from Hunter Bishop erased an opportunity for Gage Workman, who had already hit a home run, to have an at-bat with two runners on.
Unforced mistakes have plagued the Devils in recent games. Not only did the base running blunder in the eighth potentially cost them a run, but Gage Canning and Carter Aldrete ran into each other in the outfield in the fifth inning, costing ASU another run.
Head coach Tracy Smith said, “Those things are controllable. A big part of the game is mentally being in the game. That’s tough to swallow for sure.”
On Saturday, the Devils made three errors as well as dropping multiple pop ups in foul territory that didn’t show up as errors but gave USC extra at bats.
USC was brilliant with runners on. They managed to score eight runs without a single home run. The Trojans racked up 14 hits in the ballgame, most of which took place with runners on base.
The Trojans were 8-19 when runners were on base and 6-for-14 when they were in scoring position.
Sam Romero got the start for ASU. His command was a bit off and got into many long at-bats throwing 73 pitches through just 4.1 innings of work. He also walked two and gave up five hits. However, he did make big pitches when needed and only gave up two earned runs.
Arizona State is 3-9 over their last 12 games and will take on UNLV for the second time on Tuesday. UNLV won the first contest between these two 10-3.
Next: ASU Baseball: Deeper bullpen needed in order to get back to postseason
Starting on Friday, ASU will be in California for a three-game set against Stanford with the Cardinal currently sitting in first place in the Pac-12.
All quotes in this article were obtained firsthand by Devils in Detail unless otherwise noted.