Sunday starter Jake Michalak struggled with command, gave up 4 runs on three hits in his two innings against Arizona State. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
They came home from a disappointing three-game opening set in the desert with an all-too-obvious conclusion…that for three games in three days this team didn’t pitch very well. They have four days to reset before facing better competition in Jacksonville.
It’s not something you try to write in the turbulence of 35,000 feet…the flight home Sunday night from Phoenix, where the Ohio State Buckeyes suffered their own turbulence on opening weekend of the 2025 baseball schedule by dropping the series finale with Arizona State Sunday, 17-10.
The good news is…they scored 10 runs in the finale while pounding out 12 hits. Better, they came back from a 10-2 deficit after five innings to pull within 3 runs, 13-10, by the top of the seventh.
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The bad news is…they gave up 17, including 7 over the final two innings, along with 33 runs total in going 0-3 against an ASU team that the locals in Tempe call “average” in 2025.
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And just ahead…a three-game series with North Carolina State, Coastal Carolina, and Alabama this coming weekend, who collectively went 9-0 over the same weekend, and scored 112 points – not runs – in doing it. When you beat teams 19-3, like Alabama did Bradley University on Saturday, you tend to think of it in football terms, not baseball.
The Buckeyes’ Sunday hopes rested on sophomore starter Jake Michalak, who’s not only one of the most physically gifted arms on the pitching staff, but is seeking to prove in 2025 that his 95-97 mph velocity, matched with command of the strike zone, can be a breakout leader in the weekend rotation. That amounted to all of two innings on Sunday as he gave up 4 runs on 3 hits and 3 walks over two innings, including a couple of home runs that negated another impressive Buckeyes two-run, first-inning start.
Sophomore transfer Sahil Patel, another hopeful, came on in the third, pitched cleanly for three outs, then ran into to the something better than ‘average’ Sun Devil batting order in the fourth, giving up three runs on a hit, while walking two in 1.2 innings of work.
And from there…a veritable parade of auditioners out of the Buckeye bullpen – Zev Salsberg, Drew Erdmann, Douglas Bauer, Simon Barga, Hayden Blosser, Zak Sigman, Charlie Giese, Tanis Lange, and Gavin Kuzniewski, 11 pitchers in all, who ended up walking 14, striking out 4, and giving up a total of 10 hits.
Mind-blowing? How about head-spinning?
And the reality of what pitching coach Tyler Robinson promised in a column published here earlier in the month when he said, paraphrasing…that we have a lot of arms that we have to see.
Tyler Pettorini hit .545 for opening weekend – 6 hits in 11 at bats with a home run and drove in three.
“It’s important that we get to know their strengths, and for them to have supreme confidence in those strengths,” said Robinson. “The trial and error phase of learning a new grip or new pitch [in the fall] is over. Now you have to do what you can do well enough to get hitters out in the spring, and have confidence in doing it.”
That confidence must have been reeling at 35,000 feet on their own flight home.
For the weekend the first edition of a starting rotation, Blaine Wynk, Chase Herrell, and Michalak, was something less than what they had hoped. Wynk struggled through three innings, giving up six runs on four hits and a pair of homers…Michalak gave up 4 runs on three hits with a pair of homers…and only Herrell pitched beyond five innings, giving up 4 runs on 6 hits in a six-inning no decision start on Saturday.
Yes, it’s early, and first-year coach Justin Haire smiled as he professed that he believes that some of the issues are fixable. “I have a lot of faith,” he said following Friday night’s 9-8 loss.
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And for the fact of their having scored 24 runs over three games you can have a lot of faith that this team is going to be in a lot of games. They pounded out 31 hits over those three games, including an eye-popping 6 for 11 and a home run by Tyler Pettorini, and they hit .304 as a team in 102 total at bats.
As predicted…yes…this team is going to score a lot of runs.
But, as a staff they walked 19 batters in a total of 24.2 innings worked, struck out 14, and surrendered 33 runs, walks being the age-old nemesis in the game of baseball. A lot of those free bases come back to haunt, and they were the difference in the back-to-back one-run losses on Friday and Saturday.
You shake it off, and of course three games do not a season make. But 33 runs, 28 hits, and 24 walks do make you sit up and take notice and reset for this coming weekend when they meet North Carolina State (3-0), Coastal Carolina (3-0), and Alabama 3-0. All three are predicted to be better than Arizona State – better than ‘average’. And offensively, those three teams scored a total of 112 runs in sweeping teams like Fordham, Kansas State, Washington, and Bradley.
The best way to meet baseball turbulence? Throw strikes, play sound defense, and rest on the confidence of an offense that’s going to score their own share of runs.
And that the best is just ahead.
It has to be.
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