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QuickTake:
The Ducks’ relievers had a weekend to forget at UCLA. Against USC, they showed the bullpen can carry late innings in May.
Mark Wasikowski’s answer came quickly.
After Oregon lost its series finale on May 10 at UCLA, the Ducks baseball coach was asked whether he was concerned about his bullpen.
The crew had just allowed five runs in 3⅓ innings in the 9-6 loss — a performance that came two days after the bullpen allowed five runs in three innings in an 11-1 loss.
“No,” Wasikowski said. “No. UCLA is a really good team.”
He didn’t feel he needed to elaborate further. The Bruins were No. 1 in the nation, and that weekend, his arms just didn’t have it.
Now, as college baseball progresses into the postseason — the Ducks begin the Big Ten Tournament on Friday in Omaha, Nebraska, and will learn their place in the NCAA baseball field of 64 on Monday — a bad stretch from the pen can doom a season.
The opposite is also true.
A week after Wasikowski’s vote of confidence, Oregon’s relievers showed what that can look like.
In Oregon’s 6-5 14-inning series-clinching win over No. 17 USC on Saturday — a five-plus-hour marathon that ended on Burke-Lee Mabeus’ walk-off suicide squeeze — Oregon’s bullpen ended the game with seven scoreless innings of relief.
Devin Bell, Jonah Barkoff and Collin Clarke combined to allow just five hits, walked none, struck out 11 and allowed only two Trojans to reach scoring position.
That crucial shutdown by the bullpen — the win gave Oregon the No. 3 seed in this week’s Big Ten Tournament over the fourth-seeded Trojans — allowed the Ducks’ offense plenty of time to eventually win with small ball.
“All of our guys, I thought it was maybe the best pitching performance I’ve ever seen or been a part of,” Oregon assistant coach Jack Marder said. “Especially coming out of that ’pen, I was just so pumped for them.”
That Marder was the one doing the talking was yet another sign of Wasikowski’s faith. Oregon’s head coach wasn’t there Saturday — he was in West Lafayette, Indiana, celebrating his daughter’s graduation from Purdue. Wasikowski hopped on a plane immediately after Oregon’s 4-3 win over the Trojans on Friday night, while Marder, who played for the Ducks in 2010 and 2011 and joined the staff in 2020, picked up his first win as acting head coach.
“As a dad, I not only want to be there, I have to be there,” Wasikowski said of his daughter Joelle’s graduation from pharmacy school. “That is a family event that needs to occur. I’m thrilled for my daughter, and I love her so much. Being a dad first and a family man first, I think those things are really important.”
It probably wasn’t always an easy route for Joelle, but her dad believed in her. Nor was it always an easy route for Oregon’s bullpen. But for someone like Barkoff, who walked four batters and allowed four runs in his previous 1⅓ innings coming into Saturday, having the confidence of the coaching staff goes a long way as the Ducks move into the part of the season where every inning counts.
“It felt good to come in that spot and compete, man,” the left-hander from Lake Oswego said. “Compete every pitch. Trusting my stuff and believing. Thinking kills confidence. Don’t think, just do.”
What’s next
The Ducks begin the Big Ten Tournament in the quarterfinals on Friday at 7 p.m. Pacific Time in Omaha, against the eventual winner of Michigan/Rutgers and Ohio State/Washington. All games will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network.
