ASU leans on pitching to secure series over Baylor

It always comes back to the arms.

The past few weeks have tested Arizona State. Three midweek losses. Slow starts in conference series. A stretch that fell short of expectations for a club built to return to the NCAA tournament and push toward Omaha.

The culprit has been familiar. Under head coach Willie Bloomquist, the lineup has rarely been in doubt. The question has been on the mound. Last season offered progress under pitching coach Jeremy Accardo, with a staff ERA of 5.38, the best of the Bloomquist era. Still, recent results reopened the concern. A 19-run mercy rule loss to BYU. A midweek collapse that saw 10 runs cross. For all the firepower at the plate, could this staff hold up against the nation’s best?

This weekend against Baylor has started to answer that.

After holding Baylor to four hits in an 11-2 win Friday, ASU followed with another sharp performance on the mound. Sophomore right-hander Taylor Penn set the tone with three innings of one-run ball and five strikeouts. Junior right-hander Colin Linder took over and matched it, spinning four innings of one-run ball with five more punchouts. That was all the offense needed. Junior infielder Nu’u Contrades delivered an RBI double and added a solo home run, giving ASU (30-14, 13-7 Big 12) just enough to secure a 4-2 win over Baylor (22-20, 9-11 Big 12) to take the series.

Questions have hovered over this rotation since opening weekend, and even on April 25th, Bloomquist is still searching for the right mix. Junior left-hander Cole Carlon and senior right-hander Kole Klecker have been constants, but Saturday, and at times Thursday, has remained unsettled.

Five different pitchers have taken weekend starts outside that duo, and the results have swung wildly. Last Thursday, sophomore left-hander Easton Barrett got the start in a 19-run loss to BYU. The week prior, ASU gave up 13 to Utah on Saturday and still escaped with a win behind Penn.

This Saturday, Bloomquist went back to Penn, who has bounced between starter and reliever. He looked far more settled this time, working three innings and allowing one run on a solo homer while walking just one and striking out five to steady the tone early.

“If you don’t have pitching, you ain’t gonna win,” Bloomquist said. “I don’t care how good your offense is—your pitching, you’re only going to go as far as they’re going to take you… And tonight, our pitching picked up our offense. We didn’t swing the bats overly well tonight, I don’t think, and our pitching staff picked us up tonight.”

From there, ASU turned to its original Saturday arm. Linder opened the year as the planned weekend starter but was eventually moved to the bullpen after early-season struggles. The demotion never broke him. Instead, he has quietly rebuilt himself into a weapon out of relief, still touching 96 mph.

After allowing a solo homer to the first batter he faced in the fourth, Linder locked in. He went four innings, giving up just one hit and one earned run while striking out five. The rhythm was unmistakable, fast pace, sharp sliders, and fastballs that carried him through the middle innings and shut down Baylor’s offense.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster for me,” Linder said. “Obviously, not getting to the start I wanted at the beginning of the year is tough… I think it’s kind of motivated me a lot more. Probably got a little complacent at the beginning, and it’s given me motivation to just push through and find who I was before and really improve on everything.”

That stability gave ASU’s bats just enough runway. Four runs rarely feels like much, but on a cool Phoenix night it was more than enough.

Earlier in the week, Bloomquist said after an “embarrassing” loss to New Mexico State that ASU needed more protection around sophomore outfielder Landon Hairston, who was walked four times, three intentionally, as opponents refused to let him beat them.

Since Friday’s lineup adjustment, ASU has found the answer in the same place it has all year: Contrades. After Hairston led off with a single, Contrades ripped a 1-2 pitch into the left-center gap for an RBI double that sent Hairston all the way home. He kept rolling in the third, launching a first-pitch fastball to right field for a solo homer, his second straight game with a long ball and his 10th straight with an extra-base hit.

“I think it forces them to not pitch around Harry so much,” Bloomquist said. “When you have that big offensive threat and power threat right behind Landon, it makes you think twice if you’re just going to pitch to him with Nu’u behind him, that’s been swinging the bat really well all year and has some thump in his bat to where he can put a crooked number on the board with one swing.”

ASU carried that edge into the late innings, but things briefly tightened in the eighth. After Linder exited, junior right-hander Alex Overbay entered and immediately ran into trouble, issuing a leadoff walk and then botching a tailor-made double play ball. He settled with two strikeouts but walked another to load the bases, forcing Bloomquist to turn to closer junior right-handed pitcher Derek Schaefer.

Schaefer has been dominant of late, entering on a six-inning scoreless streak with nine strikeouts, even after a rough outing against Utah earlier in the month. He stepped into a high-leverage spot with the tying run on second.

The threat came from junior catcher JJ Kennett, already with a home run on the night and another earlier in the series. He nearly flipped the game on a 1-0 slider, sending it to deep center, but it died at the warning track and was hauled in to end the rally.

Schaefer finished it off in the ninth with two more strikeouts, earning his seventh save of the season, the most by an ASU pitcher since 2022, and sealing a 4-2 win.

After the win, Bloomquist was firm about finishing the job for what could be ASU’s first sweep of the year, while acknowledging that won’t come easy against a quality opponent.

“Baylor is a very well-coached team,” Bloomquist said. “They’ve had four or five losses in a row, I think, and they aren’t settled with that. That’s not going to go over very well over there. If I know Mitch, those guys are going to be ready to play tomorrow. So our guys have got to come and not be satisfied with getting the first two. They all count. They all matter. So we’ve got to come ready to play again tomorrow and come with our best bullets.”