Baseball brings the brooms against SDSU

USC baseball kept the good times rolling this weekend, sweeping San Diego State in impressive fashion, outscoring the Aztecs 26-4 across three games.

Even though Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz talked about how hard it was to sweep teams after the Utah series last week, the Trojans were able to run the table against SDSU.

“Good teams win, great teams sweep,” said senior catcher Connor Clift. “Winning two out of three is good, but this is also USC and you’re supposed to sweep. It’s what’s expected, it’s what we’ve been training for.”

Pitchers junior Tyler Stromsborg and sophomore Caden Aoki have become a formidable 1-2 punch and further showed that this weekend, taking the mound in the first two games. Stromsborg pitched seven innings Thursday, only allowing two earned runs, while Aoki threw for six frames and didn’t give up a single earned run Friday night. 

Both pitchers have shown consistency across their last few starts, with Stromsborg having four straight quality starts and Aoki not giving up any earned runs across his last five appearances.

“They make it easy,” Clift said. “It’s the ability for them to just focus on a single pitch and then execute it and not think about whether it’s 2-0 and trying to climb back, get 2-2, but the ability for them to just focus pitch-by-pitch and just execute on it.”

Redshirt freshman pitcher Eric Hammond got the start Saturday, pitching five innings of 2-hit ball en route to shutting out the Aztecs.

“The guy who starts and gets the ball in his hand, [out of] anyone has got to be the tone setter,” Stankiewicz said. “We got three really good starts on the weekend, Tyler, Aoki and Eric today, so we got those [wins] because of those guys.”

Those three pitchers have been the starters in the past three series, and Stankiewicz added it would be the same moving forward since they have “established themselves” as the best three starting options for the Trojans.

All three starting pitchers were also aided by the Trojan defense on the weekend, particularly in Friday night’s 7-2 win. In the second inning of that game, junior infielder Ryan Jackson made a diving stop to his right, got up to his feet and one-hopped it to 1st base for the out. Just one inning later, senior infielder Johnny Olmstead charged in on a softly hit grounder down the 3rd base line, bare-handed the ball and got it over to 1st base for the out.

Throughout the game, Clift seemed to have his eyes everywhere on the field as he threw out three different runners.

“The first one was on a pitch out. So we got, I don’t wanna say lucky, but had a good call by [assistant coach] Seth [Etherton] or Coach [Stankiewicz] or whoever gave it to us,” Clift said. “The other one was a back-pick which was weird. He shuffled off way too far so when I picked my eyes up, I looked up and he was even past the cut, so that was a gimme. And then the third one was just a clean exchange, a good transfer.”

This was particularly impressive from Clift given SDSU has stolen 45 bases this season, which is top in the Mountain West Conference. 

“We knew they liked to run, so we had to slide-step, look quicker to home plate, we would call pitch-outs here and there,” Stankiewicz said. “So that’s part of what we’re learning as well too. Our pitching staff’s understanding, ‘I’ve got to give our catcher a shot’ … I thought our staff did a good job of slowing them down a little bit.”

Even though USC’s pitching and defense have found consistency as of late, the Trojan offense has been consistent all year, scoring at least five runs in 13 of their last 16 games. That consistency continued this weekend, scoring 12, seven and seven runs in the three games.

“A big part of it is putting the ball in play, and I surely want to be a team that can compete with two strikes and when we’re early in the count, getting our pitch and getting a good swing off,” Stankiewicz said. “The guys are starting to understand that type of mentality.”

That offensive consistency is still there, even when the Trojans are behind. USC has an 11-3 record this season when opponents score first. In the first two games of this series, it was the Aztecs who struck first, but the Trojans still won both of those games.

This was the last three-game set against a non-conference opponent, and now the Trojans get into the thick of their Pac-12 schedule. USC will travel up to Corvallis this upcoming weekend to take on the Oregon State Beavers.