Arizona baseball crushed by Oregon State, falls out of 1st place in Pac-12

The Wildcats were blown out 16-1 on Friday night at Hi Corbett Field, relinquishing first place to the Beavers who now lead by a half-game. The winner of Saturday's regular season finale will take the crown and earn the No. 1 seed in next week's Pac-12 Tournament in Scottsdale.

"We're just playing tired," UA coach Chip Hale said. "I'm disappointed, I'm not surprised. These are young kids. Maybe we're pressing, maybe we're tired, maybe we're beat up. But that's a good team across the way, they're smelling blood. We just try to put it behind us and hopefully come out and play better baseball."

Arizona (32-20, 19-10) was without right fielder Emilio Corona, who took a pitch to his right hand in Thursday's 9-2 loss. He's the third outfielder to get injured for the Wildcats in the past three weeks, and in his absence pitcher Casey Hintz was in center.

Yet it was the Wildcats' infield defense that looked depleted. The UA was charged with four errors, two in the first inning, and had numerous other bobbles, miscues or mental mistakes that led to Oregon State (41-12, 19-9) scoring five unearned runs.

"That's just not good baseball at any level," Hale said. "We'll try some different things to prepare ourselves tomorrow, that was just completely unacceptable on defense. You can't put your pitcher behind the 8-ball like that. He gets you ground balls and we're not making any plays."

Clark Candiotti allowed a season-high six runs (four earned) on eight hits with a walk and six strikeouts over five innings. He threw 104 pitches before making way for five relievers, including first baseman Tommy Splaine, who got the final out—a strikeout of Pac-12 RBI leader Gavin Turley—in his second career appearance. That was after both Trevor Long and Eric Orloff pitched for the second game in a row, something no UA pitcher had done since late March.

"You don't want to use your main bullpen guys," Hale said, referring to right-handers Dawson Netz, Tony Pluta and Anthony 'Tonko' Susac, all of whom will be fresh for Saturday.

Down 2-0 before getting to the plate, Arizona's first three batters all struck out against OSU righty Jacob Kmatz, who would strike out eight over six while allowing a run on four hits. The Wildcats didn't get their first runner in scoring position until two outs in the third, their only run coming on an RBI groundout by Garen Caulfield in the sixth that scored Richie Morales, who had two of their six hits.

If there's a saving grace for the UA it's that, on paper, the pitching matchup for the finale is in its favor. Senior righty Cam Walty (8-1, 2.83) leads the Pac-12 in victories, with Arizona has winning nine of his 11 starts, and last season he threw seven shutout innings at OSU.

"We feel very confident in him," Hale said. "We know he'll give us a shot, but we have to make the plays behind him. We can't continue to not make plays. If we make the plays that are presented to us, not the impossible plays, but just routine plays with him pitching we should be in good shape."