What a difference a week makes.
After Baylor’s baseball team opened up the season on the business end of a broom against Maryland, the Bears felt much better about themselves following their second weekend series against No. 23 Duke. Baylor split a doubleheader with the Blue Devils on Sunday at Baylor Ballpark, taking the series, 2-1.
In Sunday’s first game, Baylor transfer Jake Jackson recorded his first win as a Bear and the bats busted loose for a 12-3 romp. Then in the nightcap, Duke’s pitchers kept the Bears from getting the timely hit they needed as the Blue Devils staved off the sweep with a 4-2 win.
It wasn’t a sweep (the good kind), but Baylor (3-4) still walked away with a fair amount of confidence after a series victory over a ranked team.
“I think it’s big. Anytime you can get a win it’s huge, obviously. But that’s a really good ball club over there,” Jackson said. “They’re going to play in the postseason. So whenever we can go toe to toe with a postseason team early in the season, it shows us where we’re at and shows us what we’re capable of going into the rest of the year.”
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A rainy Saturday forced the reshaping of the series to close with a Sunday doubleheader. Fortunately, clear, sunny skies greeted the teams for the finale.
In the opener, the Bears popped the seal on a blowout win with a seven-run outburst in the sixth inning. But all of those aggressive at-bats by BU shouldn’t diminish the pitching performance of starter Jackson. The senior transfer from Nevada notched his first win with seven sturdy innings, yielding only an unearned run.
Despite Duke putting a runner on base each time, Jackson (1-1) opened with four shutout frames. The right-hander worked quickly and spotted his pitches effectively. For his seven-inning stint he allowed only four hits while striking out four and walking three.
“It felt really good. The guys gave me a ton of run support, so hat’s off to them,” Jackson said. “They supported me, so I’m going to give it all I’ve got and support them. (Pitching coach Jon) Strauss asked me if I wanted to go out for the seventh and I told him, I want to shut this team down and send a message to them that I’m going to put it away.”
BU third baseman Esteban Cardoza-Oquendo endured another erratic day in the field, unleashing a pair of throwing errors that led to Duke runs. But Este, as he’s known to his teammates, turned in an esteemed effort to redeem himself in the batter’s box.
His bloop two-out single to right in the fourth gave Baylor a 2-0 lead, and then he delivered again in the sixth with a two-run knock that ignited the Bears’ bust-it-loose inning. With the bases loaded, Cardoza-Oquendo dumped reliever Ryan Higgins’ offering into shallow left for a two-run single. When Este reached first base, he turned and demonstratively gestured to the BU dugout in jubilation.
Baylor tacked on five more runs in the inning, as the Blue Devil hurlers struggled to throw strikes. The Bears scored on a two-run Jack Pineda single down the left-field line, a Duke error, a smoked single to right from Jared McKenzie, and a bases-loaded walk by Nolan Rodriguez.
“The biggest thing was the quality at-bats,” said Baylor coach Steve Rodriguez, Nolan’s father. “They were going to give us a walk or a hit-by-pitch and then we come up with a big hit. That was huge. When Esteban Cardoza got the single and we were able to score some runs, being able to execute some things like that was really big. You start to build a little bit of confidence when that starts to happen.”
The Bears blew it open even bigger with a three-run seventh, highlighted by Pineda’s RBI triple into the left-field corner (a popular landing spot on the day for the left-handed-hitting shortstop) and McKenzie’s RBI single.
Pineda went 2-for-6 with three RBIs at the top of the order, while Cardoza-Oquendo was 3-for-4 with three RBIs and McKenzie added a 2-for-5, two-RBI performance. Pineda also ended the game with a splendid diving play deep in the hole at shortstop, then rose up to gun the runner at first.
In the second game, Duke’s pitchers handcuffed Baylor much of the day in the hits ledger. The Blue Devils were the textbook definition of “effectively wild,” as they hit four BU batters, issued six walks and uncorked four wild pitches. But just when needed it, they’d paint a fastball on the corner for strike three, and limited the Bears to just four hits while striking out 12.
Baylor third-year sophomore Will Rigney gave the Bears plenty of hope, as a potential X-factor for the weekend rotation. The Midway product has electric stuff, but has been limited by injuries to this point in his career. But he gave the Bears four strong innings, displaying a humming fastball and a slick slider, to strike out six batters and walk none.
“Man, that was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Rodriguez said, when asked about his starting pitchers. “Jake went out there and did a great job for us, and Will going the innings that he did with a great quality start. It’s great to get him out there, being able to see what he can do and the effectiveness that he has. I was really happy with both of them and how they gave us a chance to win both games.”
Rigney left the game with a 2-1 lead, but Duke rallied to tie it in the fifth. Reliever Brett Garcia yielded a leadoff single to Duke’s Luke Storm, and he eventually came around to score on a wild pitch.
Baylor actually managed to score its first two runs without the benefit of a hit, a rather neat trick indeed. Duke starter Billy Seidl gave up two walks and two hit-by-pitches in the opening inning, including a bases-loaded free pass to Chase Wehsener to plate a run.
In the fourth, Baylor made it 2-1 when Koby Andrade worked a leadoff walk and moved around the bases before scoring on another Duke wild pitch.
After seven innings, the teams were tied at 2 and both were hunting for some late-inning magic. The Blue Devils pulled off an illusion worthy of America’s Got Talent with a two-run eighth, taking the lead for good. Garrett Pauley broke the tie when he launched a solo home run over the wall in right-center off BU reliever Matt Voelker. Duke added one more in the inning when Jake Topolski worked a bases-loaded walk off BU’s second pitcher of the inning, Hambleton Oliver.
Duke reliever Jimmy Loper neutralized any thought of a BU comeback with three scoreless innings, tallying the win to move to 1-0 on the season. In the eighth, Baylor put two runners on base thanks to a single and hit-by-pitch, but Loper managed to dot the edges of the strike zone to put down three batters looking.
Baylor’s seven-game homestand to open the season is in the books. The Bears will venture to Houston this week, taking on Rice on Wednesday before facing three ranked opponents in UCLA, Tennessee and LSU at the Shriners College Classic at Minute Maid Park next weekend.
“The energy is going to be up,” Jackson said. “We’re going to be ready for Rice and then going into the Shriners this weekend, so we have a test again next weekend and it’s never going to stop. We’ve got to keep our foot on the gas and get ready to go.”