Very little has gone right for Arizona this season, but at least it ended the home slate on a high note.
A solo home run by catcher Joe Forbes gave the Wildcats a 6-5 win over Houston on Sunday afternoon at Hi Corbett in the home finale. The victory snapped a 7-game conference skid for the Wildcats (18-32, 8-19 Big 12) and capped their home record at 12-17.
Since moving to Hi Corbett Field in 2012, Arizona had only finished with a losing record once and won more than two-thirds of those home games
nine times. Last year the UA went 24-6 on its home field en route to the College World Series.
“It’s been rough on the record, but I still think the guys are playing hard,” UA coach Chip Hale said. “They’re caring about each other. To see Joe Forbes do what he did with with minimal at bats this year, and grind that at bat, that’s a good sign going forward.”
Forbes, a true freshman and the younger brother of redshirt freshman Jackson Forbes, clubbed his first career homer on the ninth pitch of an at-bat in the bottom of the 8th inning to break the tie. He had been 0 for 3 before that with two pop outs and a strikeout.
“I kind of had a rough day before that, so I kind of went into that at-bat with a new approach, trying to change things up a little bit,” Forbes said. “He was fastball/slider to me only, and every kind of slider he threw was either yanked or in the dirt. So after fouling off about five or six it was like, kind of just sit on fastball and be on time.”
Arizona tied it in the 7th on an RBI double by Maddox Mihalakis, who also had two hits including a game-tying triple in the 12th inning of Saturday’s 13-inning loss. The senior is hitting .211 after batting .279 the year before when he started 60 games on the CWS team.
“It’s obviously frustrating,” Mihalakis said of the season. “I mean, you you can’t put it any other way. That’s just how it’s been, but also that’s sometimes how it goes with the game. Personally, just for me, the only thing I’ve been doing is just continuously putting my best foot forward, keeping still working, working as hard as I can, and being out here and trying to do better every day, that’s about it.”
Patrick Morris got the win, throwing four innings of relief a night after he faced five batters and didn’t retire any. This time he came on for Matthew Martinez, who also failed to retire any of the five Cougars he faced in what ended up being a 5-run 6th to go up 5-4.
The UA scored twice in the 2nd and twice in the 3rd with only one run scoring on a hit, and that was paired with right-hander Evan Brandt throwing five scoreless innings in his first start. Brandt was pressed into action when scheduled starter Collin McKinney threw the final three innings on Saturday night.
Brandt, who allowed three hits with a walk and two strikeouts, came into the game with an 11.12 ERA over 11.1 relief innings.
“The first couple of weeks he was pretty dang good,” Hale said of Brandt. “And then he got a couple bad outings, and we didn’t use him as much, but that’s what he did in junior college. He was a good starter, sinker baller, and he did exactly that today. Will we start him this next week, we’ll see, we’ll see what we look like health wise. But it might be something for next year, maybe he really vies for a starting turn.”
Arizona has three games left in the regular season, at surging Oklahoma State, and it would have to win at least two (and have Texas Tech get swept at Cincinnati) to make the Big 12 Tournament.
“We just have to play our best,” Hale said. “I mean, who knows what’s gonna happen? We’ve put ourselves in a pretty bad spot. But hey, we just got to try to win on Thursday. That’s the next game.”
