Strong pitching propels USC baseball to series win over Utah

On April 9, 2022, the USC baseball team dropped a game to Oregon State at Dedeaux Field, losing 3-2. It was the team’s 11th Pac-12 game of the season, and the loss had the Trojans sitting at a 4-7 conference record. They would go 4-15 the rest of the way to finish 8-22 in conference play and end up dead-last in the Pac-12 standings.

Fast forward to this past weekend, and the Trojans already surpassed that eight win mark, taking two of three games against Utah on the road to bring their conference record to 9-3, with 18 Pac-12 games left on the schedule for Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz’s first season at the helm.

“I am certainly proud of them, we all are. Staff has put in a lot of good work in the fall. They’ve been coachable and they’re working hard so lots to be proud of,” Stankiewicz said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “But at the same time, we’ve got a long way to go and so we just have to stay the course.”

Junior pitcher Tyler Stromsborg was the starting pitcher in that April 9 game against Oregon State, getting credited for the loss. But it was Stromsborg who got the Trojans their eighth Pac-12 win of the season Friday night, pitching a five-hit shutout to lead the Trojans to a 4-0 win and earning Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week in the process. 

“The guys did a great job behind me. I think I just did a good job throwing strikes and trusting the defense,” said Stromsborg in an interview with USC Athletics.

Stromsborg’s complete-game shutout was USC’s first since 2019, when the Trojans beat Washington State 4-0. 

But the strong pitching from the Trojans did not stop there. USC put together a complete performance Saturday night, winning 10-0. Sophomore pitcher Caden Aoki took the mound in the second game of the series, pitching five innings and only giving up four hits before handing it off to a trio of bullpen pitchers to finish off the game.

“Stromsborg and Aoki did a nice job of commanding their fastball, number one. Then both throwing the slider and the breaking ball or a changeup for strikes,” Stankiewicz said. “And so anytime you got three pitches that you can work effectively, it’s going to keep the hitters off balance.”

USC’s bats also came to play in the second tilt of the series, getting six runs in the 4th inning and adding four runs in the final frame to get to a double-digit run total.

The Trojans have won many of their games this season with a strong offense, scoring 7.52 runs per game so far. But the defense and pitching have not always been there, allowing 4.93 runs per game. The back-to-back shutouts of the Utes showed that USC could win on the backs of both a potent offense and solid pitching. 

“You gotta be balanced and that’s part of our goal list to be as balanced of a ballclub as we can be,” Stankiewicz said. “That’s part of what we’ve been trying to train our guys to understand: We don’t want to be a ballclub that has to rely heavily on offense. We don’t want to be a ballclub that has to rely on pitching only.” 

Friday’s game was only the second time USC has won this season when scoring four runs or less. The Trojans are now 2-6 on the season when they score less than five runs.

Despite winning the first two games of the series, the Trojans could not secure their second consecutive Pac-12 series sweep.

USC jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning off of back-to-back doubles from senior outfielders Adrian Colon-Rosado and Cole Gabrielson. The Trojans tacked on another run in the 4th inning, but then the bats went cold as USC only mustered two more hits for the rest of the game. The Utes scored the last eight runs of the game to avoid the three-game sweep, and won 8-3.

“It’s hard in any weekend to sweep. It’s Pac-12, man, it’s good teams,” Stankiewicz said. “I thought we missed out on a possible, nice opportunity tonight to get a sweep, but [at the] same time, anytime you go on a weekend, three-game series, you want to win the series. And so we did that and we would have loved to have gotten a win tonight, but to their credit they beat us tonight.”

The Trojans have now won four straight three-game series, all coming against Pac-12 teams. This is the first time the team has won four straight conference series since 2001. All season, USC has played much better in conference play, having a 9-3 Pac-12 record versus a 7-7-1 non-conference record.

“There’s a little bit of extra drive for these guys. You know, we came in last place in the Pac-12 last year. That’s not USC, man, that’s not what USC is supposed to do,” Stankiewicz said. “So I think there’s a little bit of a chip on our shoulder when we get to Pac-12 play.”

USC shifts away from conference play as they take on LMU Tuesday, followed by a Thursday to Saturday series against San Diego State University, all at home. The Trojans will resume Pac-12 play when they travel up to Corvallis to take on the Oregon State Beavers the following weekend.