ASU Baseball: Lin leads Devils to lopsided 13-3 victory

The ASU baseball offense came alive during the second leg of Saturday’s doubleheader with Lyle Lin’s six RBIs helping ASU beat UC Davis 13-3.

Hip-hop group Whodini once said that it was the freaks who came out at night, but on Saturday, it was the Sun Devil bats that came out and beat the UC Davis Aggies 13-3 during the second game of a doubleheader.

After driving in the winning run during the first game of the double header, Lyle Lin did the most damage, driving in a blistering six RBIs on three hits, including a fifth inning grand slam that blew the game wide open.

It was the first Sun Devil grand slam since 2014. The junior came just a triple shy of the cycle on a career night at the plate.

“He did what he needed to do. The thing about Lyle is he worked really hard on getting the ball in the air,” head coach Tracy Smith said. “He got in a hitter’s count with runners on base then delivered the big one that really spread it open for us.”

Sophomore Boyd Vander Kooi bounced back after giving up six runs in 3.2 innings in his last start against Notre Dame. The righty threw five solid innings, giving up two runs on five hits, striking out eight and walking four, but the switch didn’t really flip until the fifth inning according to Smith.

“We saw a much different Boyd Vander Kooi in the fifth inning. He did well and it was improved from last week, but through four innings it was still like ‘Ok, come on man,’” Smith said. “He had his highest velocity and his sharpest breaking stuff in the fifth inning, so we’ll get that figured out.”

“We were going to send him back out if we didn’t stretch it out in the bottom of the fifth based on the fact that he finally had the aggressive inning we know he’s capable of having,” Smith added.

The Sun Devil bullpen worked four innings of one run ball, allowing two hits and striking out five in the process.

Junior Myles Denson drove in three runs for the Devils in a 3-for-5 performance while sophomore Gage Workman had himself a night as well, going a perfect 3-for-3 with two walks, two runs scored and an RBI.

Junior Hunter Bishop added a home run as well, his second of the season.

In the first game of the doubleheader, Alec Marsh twirled another gem, going eight innings, giving up just one earned run. The Devils took that game 3-2 behind big eighth inning RBIs from Spencer Torkelson and Lin.

The Sun Devils will go for their second straight series sweep on Sunday, as RJ Dabovich will make his second start of the season. UC Davis will send lefty Chris Brown to toe the rubber for the Aggies.

All quotes in this article were obtained firsthand by Devils in Detail unless otherwise noted.