Beavers rail on Yale, win over coach

Published 12:00 am Sunday, June 4, 2017

CORVALLIS — I’ve been around the sportswriting business long enough to know when it’s time to say uncle and let somebody else orchestrate my column.

Take it away, John Stuper.

Stuper pitched four years in the major leagues, winning 32 regular-season games. As a 25-year-old rookie in 1982, he pitched a complete game as St. Louis beat Milwaukee 13-1 to square the World Series at 3-3.

So Yale’s veteran head coach was once a damn good pitcher. After Oregon State’s 11-0 dismantling of his Bulldogs Saturday night in the Corvallis Regional at Goss Stadium, it seems Stuper ought to be filling in for Jimmy Kimmel on late-night TV, too.

Stuper handled the postgame press conference like an art form, entertaining reporters with his praise of OSU’s junior left-hander, Luke Heimlich, and the top-seeded Beavers.

“I’m sure this joke has been used before, but I feel like I need a Heimlich maneuver right now,” Stuper said after the Beavers’ prize southpaw stymied Yale on two hits, with one walk and eight strikeouts, over 7 2/3 innings.

“I’ve been (at Yale) for 25 years, and he’s the best pitcher I’ve seen in college baseball,” Stuper said. “He’s going to be a first-round (draft) pick, without question. He’s the kind of kid who can be drafted right now and maybe help a team in the pennant race in the big leagues later on this year. I think he’s that good.”

Oregon State (51-4), the nation’s No. 1 seed, ran its win streak to 18 and won its second straight regional game after beating Holy Cross 8-2 Friday night. Yale, though, isn’t chopped liver.

The Ivy League champions (33-17) came in having won nine in a row. The No. 2 seed Bulldogs started the season 3-9, then went 30-7 over the next 37 games, including a 5-1 upset of No. 2 seed Nebraska on Friday.

But Yale was overmatched from the start against the Beavers, who jumped to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning, thanks in part to Jack Anderson’s first career home run. OSU knocked out 16 hits, including four by left fielder Steven Kwan and three by center fielder Elliott Cary.

Cary made a terrific play on a fly ball near the fence by Yale’s Harrison White to end the fourth inning. Three innings later, Anderson one-upped him with a SportsCenter Top 10-worthy grab against the wall in right, robbing Griffin Day of extra bases.

And then there was Heimlich, who leads the nation with an ERA that has now dipped to 0.76, running his record to 11-1.

“The kid is legitimate,” Stuper said. “His breaking ball is outstanding. He has great composure, great stuff. We got some better swings on him toward the end of the game, but they made a couple of great plays out there in the outfield.”

The Beavers, Stuper said, “are a very good team. They’re not 51-4 by accident. They battle every at-bat. They never give away an at-bat. They make all the (defensive) plays. Sure, their pitchers dominate, but they get rewarded when they throw strikes.”

The Yale coach paused to take a breath of air, then observed: “This isn’t a game as a coach you lose sleep over, to be honest with you.”

Stuper felt something like Pat Casey must have when he took Oregon State into united Pac-12 play in 1999, a year in which the Beavers went 19-35 overall and 7-17 in conference play, getting swept by the likes of Southern Cal, Stanford and Arizona. Casey surely felt like he was taking on Godzilla with his legs tied and one hand behind his back.

Times have changed, though, and now the Beavers are the behemoth. Heimlich, Stuper says, makes the duel even more one-sided.

“When you get down 4-0 and you’re facing that guy, he just doesn’t let you up for air,” Stuper says. “He keeps coming at you.

“I could not have been more impressed with the young man. I could not have been more impressed with Oregon State, just the way (the Beavers) go about business. No BS, no histrionics like we see in the big leagues now. Just play hard, play the right way. And that’s a tribute to Pat.”

Stuper was asked why he thinks Heimlich is ready to make an immediate impact on a major league team.

“He’s playing in a big-time program in front of a lot of people in a great league,” the Yale coach said. “He has four pitches he throws for strikes. He throws with what our pitching coach calls the ‘cool hand’ — he’s left-handed. He looked like he was throwing in the mid-90s tonight.”

I told Stuper scouts had Heimlich’s fastball topping at 94 miles per hour.

“Is that all? Really?” he asked. “Seemed harder to me. He also has a changeup. He can control the running game. He looks like a very good athlete. I watched him on a TV interview and he seems like a great young man, too — humble. That’s something else that will serve him well.”

Stuper paused again.

“I think he has a real good chance to be a top-of-the-rotation guy in the big leagues,” he said. “If he stays healthy, I don’t see anything stopping him from being that, and I’m hard to impress.”

Stuper was working the media room now. Taking the pulse of his audience, he continued.

“You ask me if I’ve seen a better left-hander, yeah, I have — (Clayton) Kershaw, (Steve) Carlton, Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax,” he said, drawing laughs. “Seriously, he’s just outstanding. Look at those numbers — they are like video game numbers, and I can see why. But I’m proud that we got some good swings on him and at least made their outfielders run around a little bit.”

Oregon State could not be better positioned to win the regional and advance to a best-of-three super regional next weekend at Goss. The Beavers, 2-0, will send Drew Rasmussen to the mound Sunday night against the winner of Sunday’s 1 p.m. matchup between Yale and Holy Cross. Whichever team survives will be shy of pitching. Oregon State, meanwhile, has Rasmussen, who threw the program’s only perfect game as a freshman in 2015 and is 3-0 with an 0.51 ERA this season upon his return following Tommy John elbow surgery.

“We’re going to battle like crazy to play these guys again,” Stuper said, “and I know (Heimlich) ain’t pitching.”

Stuper looked around, smiled and added, “Their bullpen is kind of weak. They have guys with ERAs of 1.8 and 2. I don’t know why Pat even allows them on the team.”

The Yale coach wasn’t quite finished. He had a few words to add about the Goss Stadium partisans.

“The fans here are bipolar,” he said. “They just ride you and ride you and ride you and when your (pitcher) comes out, they give him a standing ovation.

“They’re awesome. They make a lot of noise. They support those kids. Those kids love playing together, and they love each other. That’s a pretty impressive team, Oregon State. I want to play them again.”

Yale won five of six meetings with Holy Cross during the regular season. The Bulldogs will get a chance to make it six out of seven on Sunday.

“Hopefully we can win,” Stuper said. “And in this game, anything can happen.”

He was talking, I think, about miracles.

“That’s what we’re looking to do tomorrow,” he said.

I could follow with something like, “The coach must be in some kind of stupor.”

But this column is his show, not mine. So I won’t.

keggers@portlandtribune.com

@kerryeggers