Oregon baseball, while full of talent, has not been without its struggles.
While the pitching has left teams bewildered all year and the Ducks’ defense ranked first in the nation for the majority of the season, often times they still struggled from the plate — especially at home in the pitcher-friendly PK Park. Ryon Healy, who leads the club in nearly every batting statistic, has made all the difference for Oregon, often doing the bulk of the offensive work on his own. However, he may have found relief from some of the scoring burden in an unlikely source: freshman Mitchell Tolman.
Tolman, a back-up third baseman, rode the bench for most of the season and didn’t get a shot until Ryan Hambright went down with an injury.
“It’s frustrating sitting on the bench when all of your friends are playing,” Tolman said.
When he finally did get out on the field, the result left something to be desired. He struggled in a series against UCLA, collecting four errors in two games — with UCLA scoring the game-winning run on his miscue.
“I was really frustrated with myself,” he said. “I felt I had let our team down.”
With help from Oregon head coach George Horton, he didn’t dwell on the errors. Horton told Tolman to remember that all mistakes of the day are forgotten when your head hits the pillow.
“I went home that Saturday night,” Tolman said. “I sat in my room and thought about (the error) and visualized it. I moved on after that.”
Moved on is an understatement.
Just over a week later, he did what the Ducks have struggled to do all year: He drove in runners in scoring position. And he made it look easy.
In six days, he had 14 RBI and hit .474. The Ducks won four of the five games during that span with him getting on base and collecting an RBI in each game. He had 12 RBI on the year before the week had started and is now tied for third most on the team.
The impressive play earned him not just a Pac-12 Player of the Week award, but he was also named the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Hitter of the Week.
“It’s a great honor,” he said. “It’s awesome knowing I’m the Pac-12 Player of the Week; but it’s a new week, and it’s time to do it again.”
His offensive explosion couldn’t have come at a better time. Oregon is entering their toughest and most important stretch of the season — the importance of which cannot be understated — with a road series against an unfamiliar Ohio State team, two games against Gonzaga and a series against Oregon State.
“Like I tell my players,” Horton said, “the pretenders disappear in May, and the contenders appear in May.”
He couldn’t be happier with Tolman coming alive late in the season, and not just for the team’s success but also for the success of Tolman, calling it “an amazing feat for a freshman athlete.”
“He’s a great story,” Horton said. “The maturity and what he’s been able to accomplish is beyond a freshman.”