Oregon to open Pac-12 tournament play against Cal
Oregon baseball will officially begin its postseason journey this week.
After a sluggish end to the regular season, the Ducks will look to find their footing when they travel to Scottsdale, Ariz., for the second inaugural Pac-12 tournament.
Oregon (33-20, 16-14 Pac-12) wrapped up regular season play with back-to-back wins over the last-place Utah Utes in Salt Lake City over the weekend. After dropping the series opener on Thursday, the Ducks notched a 9-1 win on Friday and 15-3 on Saturday.
“It was probably our best team game of the year,” Oregon coach Mark Wasikowski said following Saturday’s win. “The last two days, we’ve probably played two of our best games of the year, which is great. Our backs were against the wall and we got tremendous pitching; credit to (pitching coach Jake Angier) for pulling together a lot of young guys out there.”
However, they went just 3-7 throughout the month of May and tumbled down the Pac-12 standings after sitting near the top of the conference in late April.
As a result, Oregon will enter the Pac-12 tournament as the No. 6 seed and open pool play against No. 9-seeded Cal Tuesday at 7 p.m. PT. Then, they will face No. 1 Stanford at 7 p.m. Thursday.
In its lone series against the Golden Bears this season, the Ducks went 2-1 in Berkeley. They also notched two wins over Stanford when the two teams met in Eugene in April.
Last season, the Ducks dropped their Pac-12 tournament opener to Arizona and then lost to Arizona State the next day, ending their tournament run.
Prior to the star of the Utah series this week, both D1Baseball and Baseball America had projected the Ducks as a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. Both publications predicted that Oregon would head to Gainsville for the Florida regional.
Oregon will hope for healthy returns from two of its top pitchers: Jace Stoffal and Isaac Ayon.
Stoffal, the Ducks’ Friday night starter, has missed the past three series due to an undisclosed injury that is unrelated to his pitching arm.
Ayon, who was projected to be a weekend starter before the season began, has yet to pitch an inning this season due to injury. For the past several weeks, Wasikowski has expressed optimism that Aypn will pitch at some point this year.
During the Utah series, Logan Mercado, Turner Spoljaric, and Matthew Grabmann were the Ducks’ three starting pitchers.
