Box Score
Brian Barden's grand slam
in the bottom of the seventh inning lifted Oregon
State to a 6-3 win over Arizona in Pacific-10
baseball Friday afternoon at Goss Stadium at
Coleman Field. Thad Johnson pitched a
seven-hitter and didn't allow an earned run as OSU
(19-17 overall, 2-5 Pacific-10) picked up its 19th
win of the season, already matching its total for all
of 1999 (19-35).
The Beavers and Wildcats (20-22, 5-8) continue
their series Saturday at 1 p.m. and conclude it
Sunday at 1 p.m. Both games can be heard on
KLOO-AM (1340).
OSU's Joe Gerber set a school record for total
bases in a career when his a first-inning single to
center gave him 304, that broke the record of 303
set by Ken Bowen from 1984-87. The biggest hit
of the day, though, came later.
Barden's towering drive to left-centerfield
highlighted a five-run seventh inning against Arizona
ace Ben Diggins, a third team preseason All-America pick,
that gave Oregon
State a 6-3 lead. The Beavers had guarded a 1-0 lead from the
first inning
until the top of the sixth, when they gave up three unearned
runs to trail 3-1.
"Thad kept us in the game," OSU head coach Pat Casey said of
the junior
righthander, who has not given up an earned run in his last
15 innings of
work. "He threw well inning after inning and didn't let what
we were doing
on offense distract him. Fortunately, our guys stuck with it,
pushed and
pushed, and finally something good happened."
With one out in the seventh, the Beavers loaded the bases on
a single by
Drew Hedges, a walk to Bryan Ingram and a single by Gerber.
That brought
up freshman third baseman Barden, who had struck out his last
time up.
"The at-bat before, I'd missed two curveballs and taken a bad
swing at a
fastball," Barden said. "The next at-bat, I was thinking I'd
get his best stuff,
which was his fastball."
With a one-ball, two-strike count, Barden fouled off a pair
of Diggins'
fastballs.
"Then he threw a curve," Barden said. "That was the pitch I
was looking for,
and he came with it."
After Barden's grand slam put OSU up 5-3, the Beavers added
another run
as Andy Jarvis walked and eventually scored on a two-out
single by Will
Hudson. That was the most support OSU had given Johnson in a
while, last
week, he had pitched a three-hitter at fourth-ranked Arizona
State only to
lose 1-0.
"After that (grand slam), Thad seemed to go after batters and
be more
aggressive," Barden said of Johnson, who didn't walk a hitter
and struck out
six. "He's real low key, though, so it's hard to tell. But
after that, everybody
was more into the game."
The Beavers had appeared to be letting another of Johnson's
strong outings
go for naught before the grand slam. OSU wound up leaving 10
men on
base and had two runners thrown out on the basepaths to kill
what could
have been a big inning in the bottom of the fifth.
Friday, though, OSU overcame both those missed opportunities
and the two
errors that helped Arizona to three runs and the lead just a
half-inning later.
"Outside of one inning, we really played good defense," Casey
said.
"Nothing is truer in baseball than the saying that if you can
pitch and play
defense, you can win games. With Thad throwing well and us
playing
defense, it kept us around ... I thought that it was good for
us, when things
weren't going our way, to stay confident in what we were
doing and it paid
off."
After Arizona got its three runs in the top of the sixth,
Johnson retired 10 of
the last 11 batters he faced.
"Thad is pitching with confidence," Casey said. "He's not
getting distracted
by what we're not doing on offense or defensively at times.
He's just focusing
on one hitter at a time."
Gerber finished the day 3-for-4, while Hedges was 2-for-4
with a double.
For Arizona, Keoni DeRenne was 2-for-3 and Ernie Durazo was
2-for-4
with a triple.
OREGON STATE 6, ARIZONA 3
Arizona 000 003 000 - 3 7 1
Oregon State 100 000 50x - 6 10 2
