While the trip to Houston last weekend was a success, with two wins over ranked teams including the No. 1 squad in the country, those contests also pointed out some notable things for Arizona to work on. The Wildcats struck out too much and mistakes on the mound and in the field usually came back to bite them.
The first chance to see if corrective measures put in place were effective came Thursday night, and so far so good.
Arizona beat Pepperdine 7-2 at Hi Corbett Field in the opener of a 4-game series, improving to 5-0 at home. It did so by striking out just three times, tied for the fewest this season, while six pitchers combined to hold the Waves to six hits while inducing 15 ground ball outs.
The Wildcats (8-4) struck out 43 times in three games at the Astros Foundation College Classic, many of those by the top of the order. On Thursday the 1-4 hitters went a combined 7 of 16 with six RBI and no Ks.
“Sometimes you just need to make guys more aware of it and just kind of make them realize that we could see that there’s too much going on with two strikes,” UA coach Chip Hale said. “I thought we had a lot of good, well-hit balls that were outs.”
Adonys Guzman, Brendan Summerhill and Aaron Walton had three hits each for Arizona, which had 12 overall. Summerhill homered in the 7th and was a double shy of the cycle, driving in three, while Guzman had his first 3-hit game of the season that included an infield single.
“There’s not a lot of hits for me there,” Guzman said. “That’s part of the reason why I wanted to get the ball off the ground coming into this year just because, like last year I’d have a lot of those and get thrown out. It’s great to have success right now, and feels great at the plate.”
With four games in as many days, Arizona treated the opener as a bullpen game. Michael Hilker Jr. made his first start, going the first three and allowing one hit, then Carson Johnson needed 14 pitches to get through two perfect frames to pick up the win. Eric Orloff had a scoreless 6th, Mason Russell had a 1-2-3 7th and Garrett Hicks closed it out. The only blemishes came in the 8th against Bryce McKnight, who was making his season debut and allowed two runs on three hits.
Hicks was the only pitcher who had made more than two appearances in the first 11 games.
“It was nice to get them out there,” Hale said. “It was great to see Mason get out there.”
Russell was the top-rated member of Arizona’s 2024 signing class but had struggled in his first two outings. He allowed five runs in one-third of an inning against Louisville at the Shriners Children’s College Showdown in Arlington, Texas and two runs in an inning against San Diego the following weekend.
“It was a great experience pitching in Arlington, and just to be there even, whether I did good or bad,” Russell said. “It feels good to be out here and be able to execute my pitches.”
Arizona will return to its normal weekend rotation for the rest of the series, sending out righty Collin McKinney (0-1, 0.79) making his fourth start Friday at 6 p.m. MT.