Bieber delivers gem on the mound in loss
If ever two pitchers deserved to win a game it was Saturday afternoon. Oklahoma State sophomore Thomas Hatch and UC Santa Barbara junior Shane Bieber both pitched complete games and allowed six base runners in the opening game of the 2016 College World Series. The difference was three of those hits came in consecutive at-bats in the fourth inning against Bieber and made the difference in a 1-0 game won by Hatch and the Cowboys as they advanced to the winner’s bracket.
“I think this game should be going on right now,” Bieber said after delivering eight innings of one-run baseball in UC Santa Barbara’s College World Series debut. “It should be 0-0. My counterpart and I were throwing the ball pretty well, and it was unfortunately that fourth inning where I made all those mistakes in a row and got punished for it that ended up deciding the game.”
Bieber’s troubles were limited to that fourth inning as only allowed three base runners over the other seven innings.
“The big thing was leaving my pitches up, off-speed especially,” Bieber said of the three hits he surrendered to start the bottom of the fourth inning. “I was falling behind with my fastball and when I tried to mix up my pitches with the off-speed behind in the count I was leaving them up and they saw them pretty well.
“They just got flatter when they were up. I recognized it right away, but I couldn’t fix it enough and they punished me for it. I think I just made it a point coming out the next inning to fix that right away.”
The outing against Oklahoma State was Bieber’s fifth complete game of the season. Despite suffering just his fourth loss of 2016 he lowered his earned run average from 2.84 to 2.75.
Holliday’s trust in middle of the order makes the difference
After his team’s 1-0 win over UC Santa Barbara, Oklahoma State head coach Josh Holliday spoke about one run feeling more valuable than normal with two dominant pitchers on the mound.
“You have to have the pulse of how the game is moving, how the park feels like it’s playing on that particular day, and the back and forth, and the flow of how the game feels,” Holliday said. “It felt like one run today was worth maybe three, just because it didn’t seem like things were coming easy for either offense. You would probably play for a run any chance you could as that game progressed, but they’re hard to score on.”
He admitted he wasn’t afraid to manufacture some situations and play for one run at a time, but when he was given a chance to move runners into scoring position he opted to let his hitter swing away instead.
The result: an RBI single up the middle by sophomore third baseman Garrett Benge that produced the only run of the game and lifted the Cowboys into the winner’s bracket.
“Just the way certain guys had seen pitches off of [Shane Bieber], I felt like our lefties were maybe seeing the ball okay at that point in the game,” Holliday said of his decision not to sacrifice bunt in that situation. “I liked [Benge] in the four-hole there to try to get a good swing off, and I felt like that was the right time to swing the bat. You have to trust your gut sometimes. You don’t want to give a great pitcher an out sometimes if you are putting some pressure on him, because great pitchers, when you give them some momentum back they know how to essentially navigate out of it. We just wanted to try to capitalize three times with the swing. We had the middle of the order up to do it, and those kids have swung the bat really well as of late, so it was just kind of an in-the-moment gut feeling.”
Oklahoma State ace, pitching coach share a piece of CWS history
Thomas Hatch’s complete game shutout of the Gauchos on Saturday was the first time the Cowboys have blanked an opponent at the College World Series since 1986. The starting pitcher in that game — Hatch’s pitching coach Rob Walton. In a 4-0 win over Indiana State, Walton blanked the Sycamores over seven and 2/3 innings, striking out three hitters in the first elimination game of the 1986 series.
Hatch went the distance for the shutout on Saturday, but shared the credit when asked about it after the game.
“He’s calling the pitches,” the Okie State ace said of his coach. “It’s half, half me. A lot of it is [catcher Collin Theroux] and my defense. There’s too many halves there, but there is a lot that goes into it. It’s crazy. Coming into the game I was just trying to go deep in the game to give my team a chance. Their pitching was incredible, too — high execution level. It was really fun. Pitching a 1-0 shutout, it’s tough.”
Big hits allude Hurricanes in loss
Despite the brilliance on the mound from Arizona starter Nathan Bannister, Miami had more than a fair share of opportunities to put some runs on the board. The Hurricanes out-hit Arizona, 9-7, and ended up with 12 base runners on the night, but ended up with only one run to show for it.
“It’s tough,” Miami head coach Jim Morris said. “They’re good and their catcher is outstanding — he’s hard to run on. We got some guys on, got a couple of infield hits, one of them on a bunt, but we didn’t get that big hit.
“It was frustrating when you leave guys on. We took three called third strikes, or three big third strikes in key situations. They were good pitches; they make good pitches, but we have to get our hacks in in that situation.”
The Hurricanes finished the game 2-for-12 with runners on base, and 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position. Their only hits were a bunt single down the third base line, and a base hit into right field by first baseman Christopher Barr that scored their only run of the game.
Not only did Bannister look in control on the mound, but his defense behind did as well. The Wildcats played every Miami hitter a different way, some to pull, some to go up the middle, and some straight up. They got burned early in the game on of those shifts, but at the point in the game when the needed an out in the worst way, their defensive positioning paid off. With a runner in scoring position for the Hurricanes with only one out in the bottom of the fifth inning, Arizona second baseman Cody Ramer shaded over to almost behind the second base bag against Miami’s top hitter in Brandon Lopez. Ramer barely had to move on contact as Lopez’s line drive that might have gone for an RBI and cut Arizona’s lead to 5-2 instead went right into Ramer’s glove. The second baseman than lightly jogged to the base to easily double off Hurricanes catcher Zack Collins.
“We do try to prepare well,” Arizona head coach Jay Johnson said. “I thought [assistant coach Sergio Brown] in the infield, and [volunteer assistant coach Marc Wanaka] in the outfield did a nice job of placing them. It starts with your pitcher being able to execute pitches, and Nathan did that.
“It was a good team effort. I thought one of the key plays of the game was the line drive double play, because it was 5-1 and we had all the momentum, then you get two outs with one pitch. That allowed [Bannister] to essentially extend two more innings and change the game. That was a big deal.”
Johnson not taking trip to Omaha for granted
Last season, Arizona head coach Jay Johnson brought a surging Nevada team to Omaha for a three-game series against Creighton in early May. The Wolfpack took the first two games of the series against the Bluejays by scores of 5-4 and 4-0 before Sunday’s series finale was rained out.
It appeared then that Johnson and his Nevada were darkhorse contenders for one of the eight coveted spots in the College World Series that year, but it wasn’t meant to be. Despite finishing with a 41-15 record, they were left out of the NCAA Tournament. Johnson then moved on to Arizona where he found his way back to TD Ameritrade Park Omaha, and he’s not taking this return trip lightly.
“That was a big deal for me personally,” Johnson said of the Creighton-Nevada weekend series in Omaha last May. “When you talk about setting goals and whatnot, I thought I couldn’t want to be in the College World Series worse than I did prior to that trip, and then you walk into this stadium, and it was actually cool — Creighton had a military day or something like that and there were 10,000 people in the stands. It had a College World Series-type feel to it.
“We won the two games we played here, and I walked back into the stadium and said, ‘somehow, some way, we’re going to get here.’ Somebody thought we shouldn’t be in the NCAA Tournament last year, and I think they were out of their mind, but that’s a story for another day — I’m still not over that.
“To get back here, and with this group, I’m very proud of them and the experience we’ve had. We played a great non-conference schedule working through the Pac-12, and being on the road the last five weeks essentially. We were prepared to play tonight, and like I said, we had a good road map for what we needed to do, and the players stuck with it really well.”