Baseball Team Has Wild Weekend

Photo Attribution: Aero Nerd

By: Anthony Slater

When you bring in Alabama A&M for three games in early March, a sweep is expected. Late in conference play it’s erased from your memory, but not your win column. Pad the record, boost the resume. Just ask Travis Ford if that’s important.

So, OSU taking three gimme games over a garbage SWAC team shouldn’t spawn a mass movement to Occupy Omaha from the Cowboy faithful. But, it also doesn’t mean we should discount what happened at Allie P. Reynolds this weekend. Because the Pokes put on a show. Here are some of the highlights:

Robbie Rea

Check out this day at the plate: 5-5, 3 HRs, 2 doubles, 9 RBIs. No, that’s not a juiced-up Mark McGwire drilling 550-foot bombs in the 1998 pennant race. That’s OSU’s 6-foot 196-pound second baseman, who hits seventh, using the new-era dead bats that have killed offensive production in college baseball. In other words, WHHHHHHAAAAA????? That’s about as impossible as it gets. And you know what makes it crazier? Both of his doubles were nearly home runs, with one hitting halfway up the wall.

OSU pitching staff

Before the Robbie Rea explosion, OSU’s offense had been sputtering. But, throughout the early season, the pitching staff has been great. Led by hard-throwing ace Andrew Heaney, who leads the nation with 44 strikeouts, the starters were brilliant this weekend. Friday, Heaney started it off with a complete game shutout, fueled by 13 strikeouts. Kyle Ottoson and Randy McCurry finished off the brilliance on Saturday. For the weekend, here was the OSU pitching line: 27 innings, 2 runs, 11 hits and 32 strikeouts.

Triple play

It was all kinds of weird in Allie P. this weekend. In the fourth inning of the series finale, with two on and nobody out, Alabama A&M shortstop Julio Nunez lined out to OSU first baseman Wes Jones, who proceeded to tag first and toss it to second. Triple play. It was the first triple play for the Cowboys since 2000 against Iowa State (h/t Wade McWhorther). Normally, that would be considered the rarest of plays. On this weekend, it was more of a footnote.

Home heroes

I really do understand the advantages of playing at home rather than the road, but, for the OSU athletic department, this is getting ridiculous. With this weekend’s sweep, the Pokes are 7-1 in Stillwater and 1-6 everywhere else. Combine that with the road-allergic basketball team and OSU is a combined 18-5 in GIA/AllieP and 3-14 away from those friendly confines. Both impressive and terrible.