Written by: Ben Schoenfield
On Tuesday the Oregon Ducks baseball team took on the Portland Pilots at PK Park. The Ducks were coming off of a 4-1 road trip to Arizona, where they went 2-0 versus Grand Canyon and 2-1 against Arizona State.
The Portland Pilots are coming back to Oregon from a 2-2 road trip to Nebraska where they went 1-2 against Creighton and won their one game against Omaha.
On the first pitch of the game Brady Bean homered to deep left off of a pitch from Turner Spoljaric. Spoljaric would give up one more hit in the inning but got out the inning on 12 pitches, with the home run being the only run.
In the bottom half of the inning Justin Cassella had his second lead-off home run of the past week. He hit it just over the center field wall to tie up the game. Anson Aroz would hit a double and advanced to third on a fielding error, followed by a sacrifice fly by Jeffrey Heard that scored Aroz. The Portland Pilots pitcher Morgan Codron would get the next to batters out to end the first.
In the top of the second the Pilots would tack on four more runs from three singles, a double, and a walk. The Pilots now led 5-2 heading to the bottom of the second.
Oregon would respond to the four-run half inning by the Pilots with a home run from Ryan Cooney. But they would leave two stranded and go back to defense two down.
Ryan Featherston would come in for Turner Spoljaric to start the third inning. In this inning only one run was notched, coming from a home run off of he bat of Zach Toglia. The Ducks would then get out of a bases loaded jam to not let any more runs in. In the bottom of the inning the Pilots got the Ducks to go three up three down.
The Oregon Ducks would get their first scoreless defensive inning in the fourth and added two runs of their own, with a moon shot from Jacob Walsh to right field and a Justin Cassella RBI single. The end of the inning would end with the score of 6-5 in favor of the Pilots.
Portland would have their highest scoring inning in the top of the fifth. They would score one run off of an RBI double, followed by a 2 RBI single. After the single the Ducks would take out Featherston and bring in Ian Umlandt. Umlandt would give up a two-run home run to Jake Holcroft. The first three Ducks pitchers would allow a home run in each of their first batter faced.
Tanner Douglas would come in to pitch for Morgan Codron. In his first half inning he would get Oregon to fly out twice and ground out once.
The sixth inning was the first overall scoreless inning with the Ducks getting a walk and a single, but left both of those runners on base.
The Pilots would load the bases in the top of the seventh with only one out. Where Toglia knocked a double to right-center field which scored two, followed by a fly out that scored the last run of the inning. The Pilots after this inning would have a 14-5 lead.
In the top of the eighth inning the Pilots would get the final run of the game from an RBI single to make the score 15-5. The ducks would not get a single base runner for the fourth time of the game.
The ninth inning would come and go without a single run and only one hit. The Ducks went scoreless after the fourth inning. One bright spot for this Oregon team today was pitcher Matthew Grabmann, who pitched for the first time this season and recorded a one-two-three inning with two strikeouts to keep the Pilots scoreless in the top of the ninth.
The Ducks would turn to 11-5 on the season and the Pilots would turn to 9-5. Oregon will play their next game on Friday with a series against the Cal Golden Bears here in Eugene. The Portland Pilots will host a series against the Maryland Terrapins up in Portland starting on Friday as well. The Ducks and Pilots will face off again on April 2nd up in Portland.
The Ducks are at PK Park for the rest of the month, not leaving until their game against the Pilots.