Smaldino’s three homers lift ASU on Mother’s Day to avoid sweep

Before Arizona State even took the field Sunday, junior infielder Dominic Smaldino already had his assignment for the day.

His mom, Shannon, sent a simple Mother’s Day request.

“I would like a HR for Mother’s Day. That’s all.”

Smaldino answered with a short voice message. Minutes later, another text came through.

“Two gifts!! Thank you!” followed by two bomb emojis.

By the end of the afternoon, Smaldino had not only delivered, he had turned Mother’s Day into a career day.

Fresh off a two-homer game Saturday that matched his career high, Smaldino topped it 24 hours later. In the third inning, he crushed a three-run homer that gave ASU the lead for good. Two innings later, he launched a two-run shot that blew the game open.

Then came the exclamation point.

In the eighth inning, Smaldino ripped another two-run homer to left field, his third blast of the afternoon, tying an ASU single-game record and giving his mom far more than the two gifts she asked for.

Mother’s Day had turned into Smaldino’s personal fireworks show.

Behind Smaldino’s three-homer performance and a steady outing from senior right-hander Kole Klecker, ASU salvaged the final game of its series against Oklahoma State with a 9-3 win Sunday afternoon, avoiding a sweep. Klecker delivered five innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts to give ASU the stability it needed after a rough first two games of the series. The Sun Devils totaled 11 hits, played from in front most of the afternoon and never allowed Oklahoma State to build momentum. But the day ultimately belonged to Smaldino, whose Mother’s Day gifts came wrapped in baseballs flying over the fence.

It had been a miserable weekend for ASU.

First came Friday’s ninth-inning collapse, when a 6-3 lead vanished two outs away from victory. Saturday brought a different kind of frustration, as ASU went 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position and watched another opportunity disappear.

Still, after Saturday’s loss, head coach Willie Bloomquist made the message clear. From this point forward, the Sun Devils would have to play “playoff baseball,” with no room left for sloppy mistakes or missed chances.

Sunday looked like a team finally taking that message to heart.

“Resilient win by our guys after a tough couple days and a hot Oklahoma State team that’s been playing really well,” Bloomquist said. “They came in and played us tough. But on the flip side, we were that close from taking a series again against one of the hotter teams in the country…We keep saying if there’s things we can clean up a little bit, I like our chances against anybody we play.”

ASU responded with its most complete performances of the weekend, powered by a nuclear weekend from Smaldino, who reached a point where almost nothing that touched his bat stayed in the ballpark.

The signs were there all weekend. Friday featured two Oklahoma State errors on routine pop flies hit by Smaldino, along with a three-hit, two-RBI day. Saturday brought his first career multi-homer game as he tried to keep ASU afloat in another loss.

Then Sunday turned into something unforgettable.

With ASU leading just 2-1 in the third inning after a first-inning sacrifice fly from graduate outfielder Dean Toigo, Smaldino stepped to the plate with two runners in scoring position and a chance to finally deliver the timely hit ASU lacked all Saturday.

He demolished a 2-1 pitch into the left-field bullpen for a three-run homer, instantly flipping the game and giving ASU a 5-1 lead. One batter later, sophomore outfielder Ky McGary launched his first career home run as the Sun Devils suddenly stormed ahead 6-1.

Oklahoma State kept pitching to Smaldino anyway.

In the fifth inning, with junior infielder Nu’u Contrades aboard after one of his four trips on base, Smaldino got a 3-2 breaking ball over the plate and crushed it 432 feet to right-center field for another two-run homer and an 8-1 ASU lead.

“I think there’s a lot of things he can continue to improve upon, which is scary because his potential’s through the roof,” Bloomquist said. “The biggest thing today, or this last weekend, that I saw was he was not chasing below the zone a lot, which got it up in his wheelhouse where he was looking. It’s amazing, you do damage when you get those pitches up in the zone. So I was really happy that he had the weekend he did.”

Even after Oklahoma State chipped away with two runs in the sixth, Smaldino slammed the door shut again in the eighth. With Contrades on first once more, Smaldino jumped on the first pitch he saw and lined his third homer of the afternoon into the right-field bullpen, stretching the lead back to 11-3 and giving him eight RBIs on the day.

The three-homer performance tied an ASU single-game record and made Smaldino the first Sun Devil since Joey DiMichele in 2011 against Stanford to hit three home runs in a game.

“I don’t really think too much about that stuff,” Smaldino said. “Sure, it’s cool, but what made my day was the win. So ending the weekend on a good note at home, on Mother’s Day, it couldn’t have ended better.”

While Smaldino powered the offense, Klecker gave ASU exactly what it needed on the mound after Oklahoma State launched seven home runs Saturday.

Klecker, who threw just two innings against UCF last weekend because of shoulder soreness, settled in after a stressful first inning that included an error and a single before sophomore infielder Beckett Zavorek helped turn a momentum-killing double play.

From there, Klecker dominated.

The right-hander struck out the side twice, carving through the Cowboys lineup with fastballs at the top of the zone and sharp curveballs underneath. His only mistake came on a solo homer by junior outfielder Alex Conover in the third inning, but Klecker answered with another strikeout-the-side frame in the fourth.

In the fifth, on his 93rd pitch, Klecker stranded two runners with a pop up to finish five innings of one-run baseball with seven strikeouts. Over his last three outings, he has allowed just three earned runs across 13 innings.

ASU avoided any late drama from there. Senior left-hander Sean Fitzpatrick stranded two runners in the seventh, highlighted by a leaping catch at the wall from sophomore outfielder Landon Hairston, while sophomore right-hander Finn Edwards worked out of a two-on jam in the eighth with a strikeout and inning-ending double play.

Now, ASU turns its attention to Houston for the final conference series of the regular season, a stretch Bloomquist is already framing as more “playoff baseball.”

“You go out and play one at a time and put all your energy and effort into that one particular game that day. And again, it’s playoff baseball starting today,” Bloomquist said. “We understand the situation we’re in and we want to continue playing playoff baseball now before we get there. If we do get there, it’s not going to be any different. We just have to continue to play the way we’re capable of playing.”