Beavers buck the college trend

By Dwight Jaynes

The Portland Tribune, Jun 13, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

CORVALLIS Ñ The thing you need to keep in mind about Oregon State’s baseball team, as it heads toward its second straight berth in the College World Series, is that it’s different.

Very different.

The Beavers will meet up with seven other teams this weekend in Omaha, Neb., chasing the Division I championship. It’s a good bet OSU won’t look much like those other teams.

Major-college baseball at the elite level is usually a little like slow-pitch softball Ñ gather together some of the biggest, strongest players you can find, hand them those supercharged, high-tech metal bats and watch them play Home Run Derby. Oregon State probably would love to play that way, but it just hasn’t worked out. In 58 games, the Beavers have hit just 32 long balls. For perspective, here are three other CWS teams: Georgia Tech 88, Clemson 79 and North Carolina 77.

“We expected to hit more home runs than we did,” OSU coach Pat Casey says. “But at a certain point, we realized we were going to have to make some adjustments. We started runners more often, played more hit-and-run, bunted more Ñ we had to do some other things. To our kids’ credit, they did a great job of that.”

The Beavers get more hard-hit, ground-ball singles than any team you’ve ever seen. They are aggressive at the plate and on the bases, but they just don’t hammer long ones very often.

Fact is, at any level you can talk all you want about little ball, long ball, Moneyball or whatever ball Ñ the key is always pitching. And the Beavers have plenty of that.

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