Bullpen falters as Oregon baseball drops two to last-place Ohio State

Even at the college level baseball is a long season with built-in variance. In Columbus Saturday the Ducks dropped two to last-place Ohio State, dropping their season record to 20-10, 8-4 in the Big Ten.

Oregon fell 11-10 in the opener and 8-6 in the second game, getting off to a bad start on the hill, shelled in the bullpen with the bats going strangely silent in the late innings.

Starting pitchers struggled for command in the surprise doubleheader. Originally scheduled for Sunday, the second game was moved to a Saturday twin bill due to an unfavorable weather forecast. At least the team gets to leave the scene of the crime a day early.

By its nature baseball is a game of streaks and slumps, and as Crash Davis said in "Bull Durham" you've got to respect the integrity of the streak. Prior to the Buckeye debacle Oregon had won every series in Big Ten play; they opened with a series sweep of USC in Los Angeles. Before a loss to Grand Canyon (Grand Canyon!) on March 11 they'd won 11 games in a row.

Jim Bouton once said, "A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." Saturday, the Ducks were reminded again how the game grips you and lets go of you, and sometimes drops you altogether.

Oregon returns to play a single game against the University of Portland at Joe Etzel Stadium in River City on Wednesday before hosting Michigan in a three-game conference set that begins Friday April 4 with the reliable Grayson Grinsell (4-1, 3.46 ERA) taking his turn on the bump.

The Ducks will likely fall out of the national top ten, but they're still a factor in the conference race at 8-4. They're two games back of first-place Iowa at 10-2, a game and a half behind second-place UCLA, 9-2. Washington and Northwestern share fourth at 5-3.

Conference champions get an automatic bid into the NCAA baseball tournament of 64 teams. Eight teams make the College World Series in Omaha. The Ducks are still in the running for every bit of that, but they have to regroup after a shaky weekend.

Saturday they did get some strong performances. In the first game shortstop Maddox Malony homered twice. Jacob Walsh belted a two-run homer and scored three times. Walsh, the Ducks' first baseman, is hitting .339 on the year with 24 RBIs. Anson Arroz clouted a three-run homer in the third.

On the mound, lefthander Ian Umlandt settled things down for the Ducks after a shaky start with three solid innings, allowing just one unearned run and scattering five hits.

The second game was an 8-6 squeaker decided by a disastrous four-run eighth for the Buckeyes. in the first, the Ducks jumped out to a 4-0 lead when Arroz lifted a sacrifice fly for one run followed by another homer by Malony, this one a three-run shot and his 11th of the season.

After tOSU tied it 4-4 in the second Webfoot leftfielder Arroz crushed a three-run homer in the third to lead 7-4. He leads the team this season with 29 RBI, batting .281 as the Ducks' starting leftfielder and No. 6 hitter.

In the second game Ryan Featherston provided the solid middle inning relief effort, four inninings of shutout baseball with two strikeouts.

Malony feasted on Buckeye pitching. For the series he batted 7-for-13 with five circuit clouts and 10 RBIs. Those are Barry Bonds numbers. It's a game of streaks and slumps.

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