Pac-10 Baseball: No. 9 Beavers Win Series Finale with Washington, 8-2

Chris Hopkins, Drew George and Joey Wong were all 2-for-4 for the Beavers.

OSU pitcher Jorge Reyes Photo: OSU Athletics

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State pitcher Jorge Reyes allowed one earned run in seven-plus innings as the ninth-ranked Beavers beat Washington 8-2 in Pac-10 baseball Sunday afternoon at Husky Ballpark.

Jason Ogata was 3-for-5 with four runs batted in, and his three-run double keyed a six-run fourth inning for OSU (35-11 overall, 7-8 Pac-10).

On Sunday, the Beavers needed a win to avoid being swept by Washington (23-21, 8-7) and Reyes helped them get it.

The freshman righthander had career highs for innings and strikeouts (seven) as he won his third straight start to improve his record to 4-0.

“You can do a lot of things when your starting pitcher puts zeroes on the board,” OSU head coach Pat Casey said. “For a freshman to come out here and give us a quality Pac-10 start, that’s where it all happens. I thought we swung the bats well, but it all starts on the mound.”

Reyes allowed just five hits and retired nine of the first 10 Huskies to come to the plate, giving up just a groundball single up the middle to Bradley Boyer with two out in the second innings.

After Washington got its pair of runs in the sixth, Reyes sent down six of the last seven hitters he faced.

“Mitch (Canham, OSU catcher) calms me down a lot, he tells me it’s just me and him,” Reyes said. “There wasn’t very much to get rattled about today. I caught a couple bad breaks but we came through when we had to, so I felt good.”

Darwin Barney was 3-for-5 with a pair of doubles for OSU.

Chris Hopkins, Drew George and Joey Wong were all 2-for-4 for the Beavers, who outhit the Huskies 15-6.

Oregon State took a 6-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning on seven hits.

Canham began the inning by legging out a double to left-centerfield off UW starter Jorden Merry, and that was the first of five straight OSU hits to start the inning.

Jordan Lennerton, Mike Lissman and Hopkins had run-scoring singles to get the Beavers on the board, then Ogata came up with two out and the bases loaded.

On a one-ball, two-strike count, he laced a pitch from reliever Geoff Nichols into the gap in right-center to drive in three runs and make it 6-0.

“We had been struggling in getting the clutch hit,” Ogata said. “With two strikes on me, I wanted to put a good swing on it and I was thinking about taking it the other way. He left it a little bit up and I was able to drive it.”

Washington threatened in the bottom of the fourth, loading the bases with one out for Bradley Boyer.

He grounded to Beaver third baseman George, who charged the ball and started an inning-ending double play that kept the OSU lead at six runs.

Oregon State turned another double play in the bottom of the eighth after Michael Burgher led off the inning with a single against Reyes.

Reliever Blake Keitzman got pinch-hitter Trevor Petersen to ground ball into the hole; OSU shortstop Barney made an acrobatic backhand stop-and-throw move to get the ball to second baseman Wong, and he executed the quick turn to complete the double play.

Those are the sort of plays that have helped the Beavers win games this spring, and it had been largely missing in the first two games in Seattle.

“We weren’t doing the things that had been winning games for us,” Casey said. “They don’t show up in the scorebook, but (in Saturday’s loss) we don’t catch a ball in the outfield that I think we should get to, we don’t cover first base and it starts a big inning for them ...”

Of the Beavers’ 15 hits, four drove in runs with two outs after Oregon State had left 26 runners on base in the first two games of the series. Six OSU hits on Sunday came with two strikes.

“We needed that boost, but it all started with Jorge giving us a quality start,” said Ogata, whose four RBIs were his OSU career high. “As hitters, we really competed well today with two strikes and being a tough out. That’s what the coaches were talking about and we got the job done today.”

OSU went in front 7-0 on Ogata’s two-out, two-strike single through the right side that drove in Wong in the top of the sixth inning.

After the Huskies cut the gap to 7-2 in the bottom of the sixth, Barney led off the top of the seventh with a double and scored on George’s two-out single to right to make it 8-2.

OSU returns home next weekend for a Pac-10 series against Washington State with games Friday at 5:00 PM, Saturday at 1:00 PM and Sunday at 1:00 PM at Goss Stadium at Coleman Field.

All three games can be heard on KEJO-AM (1240) in the Corvallis area, KUIK-AM (1360) in the Portland area, KKNX-AM (840) in the Eugene area and KICE-AM (940) in the Bend area.

The games can also be heard in Spanish on the LaX network.

Live audio and video is available via subscription on the internet through Beaver Nation Online at www.osubeavers.com.

General admission tickets for the games are available; more information can be found at www.osubeavers.com.

Adding comments to these stories has been disabled. View the current sports stories Salem-News Sports