Penn State Baseball Drops Series Finale Against USC 11-6
Penn State baseball (22-12, 10-8 Big Ten) dropped the rubber match of its weekend set against visiting USC (23-12, 11-7 Big Ten), 11-6.
While the Nittany Lions took an early lead in the second inning on some poor command by USC’s pitching, they failed to capitalize further, stranding the bases loaded. Poor defense and opportunistic hitting by USC led them to the series victory over the Nittany Lions.
How It Happened
Junior Logan Olson took the bump for his fifth start of the year and retired the dangerous top of the USC order, 1-2-3 in the first inning.
Ryan Weingartner led off the bottom half of the inning with a hard ground ball that was knocked down by the shortstop for an infield single. A slow ground ball from Paxton Kling got him to second before he swiped third on a failed hit-and-run. A long flyout from Jack Porter ended the first inning scoreless.
Weingartner’s stolen base was his 23rd of the season, which moves him into sixth on the all-time single-season leaderboard for Penn State.
Olson sat down the Trojans 1-2-3 in the second as well, ending the inning with a bang-bang play on a slow chopper to first base.
USC pitcher Jackson Baker lost the strike zone in the bottom half, walking three before being removed with one out. With the bases loaded and USC’s Sax Matson in the game, Cohl Mercado was hit on the forearm to bring in a run.
Weingartner barely missed a grand slam to left field on a long foul ball, but that was the closest Penn State got to putting up a crooked number as both he and Kling struck out on 3-2 to end the inning, Penn State leading 1-0 after two.
Olson’s command unraveled in the third, walking and hitting a batter before allowing an RBI double by Brayden Dowd. A sacrifice fly and a walk chased Olson from the game.
Anthony Steele came on for the Nittany Lions and couldn’t stop the bleeding, giving up an RBI single. Some defensive miscues, a pickoff error, and a pair of outfield bobbles saw the Trojans take a 5-1 lead just one inning after Penn State stranded the bases loaded.
After Penn State went down quietly in the third, USC added another in the fourth on another RBI double by Dowd, making it 6-1. Four of the six runs scored by USC through four innings had been with two outs.
Needing a spark, Penn State got a walk via pitch clock violation and a Nate Voss single to start the bottom of the fourth. A Mercado walk re-loaded the bases for Weingartner, who didn’t pull this one foul. A grand slam to the opposite field pulled the Nittany Lions back to within one, trailing 6-5 after four.
Ben DeMell came on for the fifth, looking for a shutdown inning. However, the USC offense greeted him rudely with a home run, bullet double, and RBI single before a mound visit as the Trojans went up 8-5. Despite a strikeout and a pickoff, back-to-back doubles by the USC offense made it 9-5 in the fifth. More runs could’ve come around to score if not for a beautiful play by Joe Jaconski to end the inning.
Refusing to go away, a double by Porter and an RBI single by Jesse Jaconski got Penn State back to within three, but a Voss double play ended the inning, trailing 9-6.
For the first time since the first inning, no runs were scored in the sixth as Chase Renner stabilized things for the Nittany Lions while USC’s Dylan Osborne worked around a two-out walk.
Renner got in trouble in the seventh, allowing a run on an RBI double, but stranded a runner after back-to-back strikeouts, dialing it up to 96 MPH on the pitch that ended the frame.
After the seventh-inning stretch, Penn State put two on before USC put in one of their better relievers in Brodie Purcell, who made quick work of Jesse Jaconski and Voss to get out of the jam.
A poor defensive game continued in the eighth, with a throwing error by new pitcher Dimond Loosli allowing Richard Tejada to reach before allowing Tejada to score on a pickoff error.
Purcell lost the strike zone with two out in the eighth, walking Kling and Weingartner, but he rallied back to strike out Molinaro to bring the 11-6 game to the ninth.
A bounce-back inning by Loosli got the game to the bottom of the ninth, where USC’s Ethan Hedges closed out the game and the series with a clean inning.
Olson takes the loss, falling to 0-2. Purcell improves to 1-2 with a win.
Takeaways
- Anthony Steele entered play with a 2.14 ERA in 21 innings but hadn’t gotten into a game in eight days and looked rusty in a rare bad outing.
- Weingartner’s stolen base in the first inning was the 89th of the season for Penn State, just two shy of the program record of 91, set in 2000.
- All three errors by the Nittany Lions were on their pitchers. Through the first 33 games, Penn State’s pitchers had only committed three total errors.
- Despite the series loss, Penn State is still seventh in the Big Ten standings.
What’s Next
Penn State baseball is back in action on Tuesday night at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park, facing Delaware on Dollar Dog Night at 5:30 p.m.
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