STARKVILLE — Things unraveled quickly for the Mississippi State baseball team in Sunday afternoon’s series finale against Oregon State at Dudy Noble Field.
The Bulldogs fought back to tie the game in the bottom of the sixth after falling behind the Beavers 2-0, and the two teams battled to a 2-2 draw through seven innings.
But with one out in the top of the eighth, Oregon State decided the game had been close for long enough.
The Beavers quickly loaded the bases and scored four runs in the inning, added another score in the ninth and finished off a 7-2 win over the Bulldogs on Sunday to stave off a sweep and hand Mississippi State (5-1) its first loss of the season.
“The first two days I was happy with, and today we got beat,” Mississippi State coach Chris Lemonis said. “Oregon State outplayed us in every phase of the game, and we got beat. Two out of three is good, but when you lose on Sunday, it leaves a little bit of a bad taste in your mouth.”
After the Bulldogs won 7-2 on Friday and 6-4 on Saturday, it was the Beavers’ turn to exact some revenge Sunday.
With the bases loaded in the eighth, Oregon State’s Alex McGarry beat out a softly-hit grounder to shortstop against junior left-handed reliever Jared Shemper to push across the go-ahead run, and the floodgates opened from there.
Ryan Ober followed with a sacrifice fly to the warning track in right field, scoring Richie Mascarenas to add another run to the lead. Then Troy Claunch launched a double off the wall in center to open the game up and give the Beavers a four-run lead. Mascarenas added an RBI single in the top of the ninth to score Kyler McMahan from third and stretch the lead to five.
“They put a lot of good at-bats together,” said Mississippi State second baseman Justin Foscue, who drove in both runs for the Bulldogs. “That’s how you win games.”
Mississippi State couldn’t do the same, going down in order in the eighth and ninth innings. It was an uncharacteristic offensive performance for a Bulldogs team that had yet to score fewer than five runs and that had an answer to every run by Wright State and Oregon State in the season’s first five games.
Even early on Sunday, the Bulldogs looked just as resilient. In the sixth, Foscue hit a towering pop-up between a few fielders in shallow right field close to the foul line, and the ball dropped untouched for a double. Running all the way with two out, right fielder Tanner Allen — starting for the first time since injuring his knee in the Feb. 14 season opener against Wright State — scored from first to tie the game, 2-2. Allen, who said postgame that his knee is at “90 percent,” didn’t feel the pain as he hustled around the bases with his adrenaline pumping.
“I was like, ‘Man, that’s got a chance to get down,’ so I was like, ‘I might as well jump on the horse,'” Allen said. “It got us some momentum. It tied the game. We just didn’t get the hit, man. We just didn’t get the hit to break it open and get the crowd into it.”
The Bulldogs managed just three hits and struck out 10 times against Oregon State pitchers Nathan Burns and Cooper Hjerpe — a performance Allen and his teammates weren’t happy with.
“That’s not who we are: We don’t strike out,” Allen said. “We take that personally because around the country, ‘These guys are hard to strike out.’ Today, it got us beat.”
He and Foscue were the only two Bulldogs to record hits Sunday. To his double, Foscue added a solo home run in the bottom of the fourth, going deep to left center field for Mississippi State’s first run of the game.
Oregon State scored its first run on a wild pitch in the top of the second as Mississippi State sophomore starter Eric Cerantola misfired with the bases loaded and Cole Hamilton scampered home. Cerantola struggled with his control all game, walking five batters in his five innings of work.
The Beavers added another run against the right-hander in the fourth after left fielder Brandon Pimentel overran a ball that fell for a ground-rule double in the corner and Andy Armstrong singled up the middle to put men on the corners. Mascarenas hit into a double play that scored a run and gave Oregon State a 2-0 lead.
But Foscue cut into the deficit with his fourth-inning home run, and the Bulldogs tied the game two innings later against Burns. Hjerpe was stellar in his 3.1 innings of relief, though, finishing the game without allowing a single hit and striking out four batters.
Still, Mississippi State can take solace in its series victory over the 25th-ranked Beavers, who along with the Bulldogs are one of college baseball’s elite programs.
“We won the series,” Foscue said. “That’s obviously our goal every time we go out each weekend. That’s a little bit of a positive going into next week. We’ve just gotta get better tomorrow and play Tuesday and Wednesday, try to get better those days and move on.”
Mississippi State will host Texas Southern (0-9) at 4 p.m. Tuesday at Dudy Noble Field as the Bulldogs look to put Sunday’s loss behind them.
“It’s baseball,” Allen said. “The sun comes up tomorrow, so we’ll be ready for Tuesday.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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