After a rollercoaster regular season that saw plenty of highs and lows, Oregon baseball will compete as the No. 6 seed in the Pac-12 Baseball Tournament this week.
This is just the second year of the Pac-12 having a baseball tournament, and it comes with a different format than last year. The inaugural tournament had eight teams competing in a double-elimination format, while this year, it’ll be nine teams split into three pools. Four of the nine teams will advance to the Friday semifinals, with the three pool winners joined by a Wild Card from whoever has the next-best tournament record.
Tiebreakers will be given to the higher seed, which makes seeding all the more critical in this tournament. Oregon is in a pool with the No. 1 seed Stanford and the No. 9 seed Cal. Theoretically, all three teams could go 1-1 in their guaranteed two games, in which case Stanford would be considered the winner of the pool.
Oregon’s first opponent will be Cal, with a 7 p.m. start on Tuesday. The Ducks won two out of three against the Golden Bears from April 21-23. Cal only barely made the tournament with an 11-18 conference record, just ahead of 10th-place Washington State’s 10-18.
Oregon heads into this tournament with an uncertain starting pitching rotation. Jace Stoffal, after winning Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week three times in a four-week span, failed to make his last three starts of the season due to a lingering injury in his finger. He traveled with the team over the final two road trips, but still wasn’t back to full health. His ERA was down to 2.83 before his injury, emerging as the ace Oregon desperately needed.
So the Ducks will likely have to operate without him this week. Assuming he doesn’t come back, Logan Mercado will likely get the Tuesday start. Mercado was Oregon’s best non-Stoffal starter this year, but he still struggled down the stretch and finished with an ugly 7.03 ERA. He also got roughed up by Cal for six runs in 3 1/3 innings on April 22, which was the only game Oregon lost in that series.
Mercado provided one of the highlights of the year, following up Stoffal’s complete game shutout against Stanford with a complete game of his own, allowing just one run and striking out seven in a nine-inning performance. Following that masterpiece, he surrendered 27 runs (25 earned) in 21 innings over his final five starts of the season. In 15 appearances (10 starts) on the year, he had a good 9.42 K/9, but an ugly WHIP of 1.78, a BB/9 of 5.9 and a HR/9 of 2.39.
Despite Mercado’s recent struggles, it’s hard to imagine who else Oregon could hand the ball to on Tuesday if Stoffal isn’t healthy. The Ducks went with a patchwork rotation of Mercado, Turner Spoljaric and Matthew Grabmann against Utah last weekend, and to their credit, Spoljaric and Grabmann shined. Spoljaric worked around five walks to throw seven innings of one-run ball, while Grabmann limited the Utes to two runs in six innings. It was the longest outing of the year for each of the Canadian freshmen.
Still, Spoljaric has been hit hard and often in his debut campaign, while Grabmann has struggled with control and hadn’t completed more than four innings in a game until last weekend. With Mercado likely pitching on Tuesday, it’ll be interesting to see which of the Canada natives they turn to against the vaunted Stanford Cardinal on Thursday — which is also set for 7 p.m.
If the Ducks wanted to get creative, they could go with someone like Grabmann against the lesser opponent Cal. Saturday-to-Tuesday might be a quick turnaround for him, so they could also try some sort of opener situation where Grabmann and Spoljaric combine to give Oregon some innings.
The other starting options would be Leo Uelmen and Jackson Pace, but both have struggled mightily, especially of late. It’s hard to imagine the Ducks putting all their faith in either of those freshmen in must-win games.
Another advantage, theoretically, to saving Mercado for Thursday would be that he’d get to face the Cardinal, who he carved up back on April 15. But Stanford still has a powerful offense, and it’s hard to have confidence that Mercado would be able to replicate that kind of performance. Though the Ducks have had their number in head-to-head matchups each of the last two seasons, the Cardinal are the No. 3 ranked team in the country and won the inaugural Pac-12 tournament last year.
In any case, starting pitching is going to be a struggle assuming Stoffal is still out. The best the Ducks can do is hope Mercado reverts to his midseason form, rather than the Mercado they’ve seen over the last month. Oregon will need its lethal offense to show up as well; one of last year’s downfalls was the bats hardly showing up against a below-average Arizona State pitching staff.
The Ducks were the first team to be eliminated in Pac-12 Baseball Tournament history last year. They’ll look to reverse course and right the ship this year, especially with NCAA Tournament implications on the line.