ASU baseball fell 14-6 to UNLV Tuesday night after the Rebels’ offense exploded for 14 runs and 20 hits off of a struggling Sun Devil pitching staff.
The UNLV bats came out of the gates hot, jumping on ASU starter Brady Corrigan from the get-go. Corrigan faced a total of six hitters and recorded only one out while giving up three hits and two walks.
By the time reliever Fitz Stadler finally finished the first inning, UNLV had already nullified Spencer Torkelson’s lead-off home run and made the score 4-1.
The Rebels did not stop there though, as they went on to put three more runs on the board in the second inning off of Stadler to extend their lead to 7-1.
Things looked bleak early, but the Sun Devil offense did a good job of keeping the team in the game for a little bit.
ASU started clawing their way back in the fourth inning, when Lyle Lin doubled home Gage Workman with one out to make the score 7-2.
This lead would be cut even further in the fifth when Gage Canning hit a three-run home run, his fifth of the season, to bring the ASU deficit to just two.
Things spiraled out of control quickly for the Sun Devils after this, though.
UNLV went nuclear with the bats in the bottom of the seventh putting up six runs and eight hits off of relievers Connor Higgins and Colby Davis to extend their lead to 14-5, eliminating any hopes ASU had of continuing the comeback they had mounted in the middle innings.
The Sun Devils used a total of eight pitchers in Tuesday’s contest with none of them lasting longer than two innings.
This marked a continuation of the struggles for ASU’s pitching staff as of late, as they have surrendered 32 runs over their last three games.
With Tuesday’s loss, the Sun Devils have now dropped three in a row and five of their last six to bring their overall record to 14-19.
Next: ASU Baseball: Struggles continue as Devils drop series to USC
Things don’t get any easier, either, as ASU’s next series will be against No. 2 Stanford in Palo Alto. The first game of this series will be on Friday with the first pitch scheduled for 6:05 p.m. PT.