Oregon baseball manager George Horton knows winning. He has coached more than 1,000 division I college baseball games and won two-thirds of them.
After arguing a controversial called third strike on Scott Heineman’s check swing last Sunday, Horton was suspended and absent in the dugout during the Ducks’ 10-4 loss to Washington on Friday.
“Having won national championships, you always a want a guy like that in the dugout leading the charge,” assistant coach Mark Wasikowski, who filled in for Horton, said. “When George Horton isn’t in a dugout, that isn’t a great thing.”
The Ducks committed three errors and walked five Huskies, who scored in five of the nine innings. Starting pitcher Cole Irvin lasted five innings and allowed four earned runs in his fourth loss of the year.
“Not clean baseball,” Wasikowski said. “When your Friday night starter doesn’t have fastball command it makes it difficult. Cole did not have fastball command, and things got loose as we all saw.”
Oregon knocked in the second inning with an Phil Craig-St. Louis RBI-single to score Brandon Cuddy, who doubled. Washington answered with a pair of runs in the third and two more in the fifth, when the leadoff man scored from first on an errant pickoff attempt which resulted in two errors.
The Ducks mounted their comeback effort in the sixth, when Mitchell Tolman pounded a double to score Daniel Patzlaff and Nick Catalano. Matt Eureste, who rode the bench for the first time all season against USC, knocked Tolman in on a single from the designated slot to close the deficit to 5-4.
The Trojans, however, put the kibosh on the Ducks’ rally. They posted two runs off each of three Ducks relievers and cruised to victory, an uncharacteristically poor showing by the Oregon bullpen.
“It’s a frustrating night,” Tolman said. “We came out and scored first, which was definitely big for us. But as it’s been all year, it’s too many defensive mistakes, we couldn’t throw strikes, and they took advantage of it.”
Although Heineman will return, Horton’s automatic two-game suspension will bar him from Saturday night’s game, as well. Prior to Oregon, Horton spent 17 years coaching Cal State Fullerton, where he won the 2004 national championship and his win percentage never sunk below .600. Oregon baseball is on pace to win its fewest games since 2009, when the program was reinstated after a 28-year hiatus.
The team struggled in its first season under Horton’s management, finishing 13-40 and winning just four conference games. One year was all Horton needed to whisper the Ducks back into coherence. Oregon averaged more than 42 wins per season in Horton’s following five years, but sits at 23-19 with 18 games to play in the 2015 season.
Freshman starting pitcher David Peterson is day-to-day with a nagging injury, and Wasikowski did not state whether he would see the mound today. The assistant coach did, however, indicate that junior catcher/pitcher Josh Graham would likely make his first start in a Ducks uniform at some point this weekend.