The Oregon baseball team (14-5, 2-1 Pac-12) beat USC (10-8, 1-2) 7-2 Sunday afternoon to win its first Pac-12 series of the season. Starting pitcher Jeff Gold was excellent, throwing 6.2 innings and giving up two earned runs on six hits with no walks and six strikeouts.
Tyler Baumgartner went 2-for-5 with three RBI. Nick Catalano and Mark Karaviotis added a hit, run and RBI apiece, while Aaron Payne went 2-for-5 with two runs. Kyle Garlick went 0-for-4 with a walk, ending his hitting streak at 15 games.
After USC second baseman Dante Flores led off the top of the second with a single, Gold sat down the next 15 USC hitters. He worked efficiently and finished three consecutive innings with single-digit pitch totals.
Gold was pulled with two outs in the seventh after loading the bases with no outs and allowing USC’s first two runs to cross home. Other than the one bad inning, Gold was nearly perfect. Of his 83 total pitches, 65 were thrown for strikes.
“I didn’t walk anybody, so that was cool,” Gold said. “I hate walking people. I mean, we’re pitchers. We’re supposed to execute throwing strikes.”
Gold hasn’t allowed a walk in his last 19.2 innings dating back to his start against Seattle on March 4 when he walked the first batter of the game. For the season, Gold has issued just three free passes in 31.2 innings and owns a strikeout-to-walk ratio of nearly 10-to-1.
“My mentality is probably the best it’s ever been in my whole pitching career,” Gold said.
“I thought he was spot on with his location and the typical four pitch mix,” Oregon coach George Horton said. “Even the inning, they got to him a little bit, he was a little unfortunate. He jammed a couple guys and they got bloop hits and then they did a good job with the bunt base hit and caught us off guard there, but I thought it was a real solid outing by Jeff.”
Gold improved to 5-0 on the season and likely solidified himself as the Sunday starter, a role that’s bounced between several arms already this season.
“He’s creeping into the weekend rotation and passed two tests in a row, and hopefully he’ll be able to continue that excellence through the Pac-12 Sunday starts,” Horton said.
Oregon was carried offensively by a big second inning. Catalano walked and advanced to third on Josh Graham’s single up the middle to put runners on the corners with one out. Karaviotis bunted back to pitcher Kyle Twomey, who threw home trying to get Catalano at the plate. Catalano was safe, upping Oregon’s lead to 2-0.
Austin Grebeck walked two batters later to load the bases with two outs. Baumgartner poked a blooper to shallow left center, which was missed by diving left fielder Bobby Stahel, allowing all three runners to score. Both of Baumgartner’s hits Sunday were softly hit but fell out of reach of USC gloves.
“I guess it was just my day today,” Baumgartner said. “I wasn’t swinging it particularly well but I found a way to get it down.”
After USC got on the board in the seventh, Oregon responded with a mini two-out rally. A.J. Balta drew a walk, stole second and scored on Catalano’s base hit to center.
The Ducks added an insurance run in the eighth on Mitchell Tolman’s RBI single, scoring Payne from second.
The seven runs were, amazingly, the fewest Oregon has scored in a game started by Gold this season. In his five starts, Gold is getting an average of 11 runs of support per game.
“I’m not going to complain about run support ever,” Gold said. “Runs are great, I love runs. So that’s cool.”
Oregon concludes its homestand next weekend by hosting Utah for three games.
USC goes home for one mid-week game against Stony Brook before beginning a three-game road series at Stanford.
Follow Madison Guernsey on Twitter @guernseymd