Beavers hope to win Super Regional ‘the non-easy way’

Florida State pitcher Jamie Arnold, projected to be a top-five pick in next month’s MLB draft, kept Oregon State bats in check for 6 2/3 innings

CORVALLIS — The way things have gone with Oregon State baseball this season, it figured to come down to this.

“You know how we like to do it,” OSU coach Mitch Canham said after the Beavers lost to Florida State 3-1 Saturday night in the second game of the best-of-three Corvallis Super Regional at Goss Stadium. “The fun way. The non-easy way.”

Canham, his coaching staff and his players would have preferred to wrap up the Super Regional and be on their way to the College World Series. But Omaha will have to wait one more day — or maybe it won’t happen at all.

Sunday’s 6 p.m. Game 3 will determine which of the schools moves on to college baseball’s pinnacle and which one calls it a season.

For No. 8 national seed Oregon State (46-13-1), it will be another elimination game after the Beavers fought off four of them to claim the Corvallis Regional a week ago.

“We are not phased,” said senior catcher Wilson Weber, who will play his final game at Goss on Sunday. “We are excited to play one more home game. That’s the way I see it. Our backs are against the wall, just like they were in the Regional.

“It is two good teams playing against each other. Really good baseball. We will be ready to play.”

After losing the opener 5-4 in excruciatingly painful fashion — taking a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning and falling in the 10th — No. 9 seed Florida State (41-15) now has the momentum going into Sunday’s rubber match.

“I love our chances,” said right-fielder Gage Harrelson, whose seventh-inning single broke a 1-1 and knocked in the winning run. “We are playing good ball. Oregon State is a really good, competitive team. (The Beavers) have shown they can be there. We have shown we can be there, too. (On Sunday) you are really going to see some sparks fly for both teams. It should be a great last game.”

Saturday’s game was a classic pitcher’s duel of a pair of southpaws, Oregon State sophomore Ethan Kleinschmit locking horns with Florida State junior Jamie Arnold, the latter expected to go in the top five in the MLB draft next month.

“Both of them threw fantastic, attacking the hitters non-stop,” Canham said.

The Beavers got to Arnold for a run in the top of the first when Weber singled home Aiva Arquette, who had hit a one-out single and stole second base. That was it in the scoring column for the local nine. The Beavers got four hits off Arnold in the first two innings and managed only two more safeties the rest of the game.

Arnold threw 29 pitches in the first inning and 113 total through his 6 2/3 innings, allowing six hits with one walk and nine strikeouts.

“At the beginning of the game my slider was a little shorter than it normally is,” he said. “I was a little tired to start. I had some caffeine between innings and started to feel better. I found my slot and started to pound the zone.”

Kleinschmit, meanwhile, was more than Arnold’s match. Over his six innings, he yielded just two hits with three walks and 11 strikeouts on 110 pitches.

“I wanted to go out there and give my boys a shot to win,” said the 6-3, 200-pound native of Mt. Angel, who pitched last season at Linn-Benton CC.

“The fastball felt good. Slider felt good. Changeup felt pretty good, too. Everything felt pretty good.”

Kleinschmit even reached 95 mph on the radar gun.

“That is tops for me, but I don’t really care, honestly,” he said. “I just wanted to go out there and win.”

Kleinschmit (8-4) took the loss despite being on the mound for no earned runs. Florida State’s first run was unearned. The winning run came after Kleinschmit had walked the first Seminole batter in the seventh and was removed for reliever Laif Palmer.

Harrelson was asked if Kleinschmit had surprised the Seminoles with his velocity.

“We had a good idea of what his latest outings were,” Harrelson said. “We try not to be surprised. We expected the best from a great team like Oregon State.”

“It was a well-pitched game on both sides,” Florida State coach Link Jarrett said. “Jamie got better as the game went along. (The Beavers) were on it the first inning, but he was able to navigate and get better through the outing. I can’t say enough about what Jamie did.”

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“He had a good game, for sure,” said Weber, who had two of Oregon State’s six hits. “It is a little bit different how he throws it. He throws it from weird angles, with a weird look. We had some good at-bats. We just didn’t score enough runs.”

Florida State scored in the third after Jaxson West got on base via a fielding error by OSU third baseman Trent Caraway to open the inning. After a two-out walk to Alex Lodise, Max Williams singled to left field to score West with an unearned run to tie the game at 1-1. It stayed that way until Harrelson’s run-scoring single in the seventh off Palmer.

“To win these type of games, you have to have timely hits, and Gage had a big one,” Jarrett said. “There hasn’t been a lot of offense (in the series). If you don’t get the clutch hits in this setting with these type of athletes, you are going to have a hard time scoring.”

Florida State coach Link Jarrett said he was proud of the toughness his players showed in responding to a 5-4 loss in the opener with a 3-1 win in Saturday’s second game of the Corvallis Super Regional

The Seminoles picked up an insurance run in the eighth on a bases-loaded walk by Wyatt Queen, who came on after Palmer. The Beavers got nothing going the last two innings against Florida State reliever Payton Prescott, whose fastball was in the high 90s and touched 100 mph on one pitch.

“That is the first time we have seen that number flash on the board,” Jarrett said.

The home crowd — attendance was 4,408, a Goss Stadium record — did what it could to spur on the Beavers, as it has done through the postseason.

Offensive coordinator Ryan Gunderson (left) and head coach Trent Bray participate in an “O! S! U!” chant during Saturday’s Corvallis Super Regional contest

“The fans were into every pitch, as they should have been,” Jarrett said.

“They were great, like they have been these past two weeks,” Weber said. “Seems to be a lot more electric than in past years.”

Jarrett said he was proud of the way his players responded to Friday’s setback.

“It is hard to explain the feeling of walking out of here … how difficult it was to endure the last 10 or 15 minutes of that game,” said the third-year FSU coach, who was National Coach of the Year in 2021 and ‘22 at Notre Dame. “The toughness these guys showed to come back into this place, to take ownership of the moment … they showed their toughness today.”

Jarrett said using experiences during a season are what get teams in the right direction.

“Gut-wrenching loss; really good win,” he said. “You have to be able to stack executed games and performances and pitches and plays and at-bats.”

Canham didn’t give his players a pep talk after Saturday’s defeat.

“We didn’t have to say anything after the game,” he said. “The guys want to get out there and play again right now.

“We have prepared and played every game the same way all season. Every game is the most important game of the season. How we go into battle doesn’t magically change. We saw how the guys responded to adversity last week in a win-or-go-home moment. We didn’t need to sit around and meet after this one. We know what we need to do. Rest up. Clear our heads. Let’s get ready for (Sunday).”

Florida State will start another left-hander, sophomore Wes Mendes (7-2, 4.66). Oregon State is expected to counter with sophomore right-hander James DeCremer (3-0, 4.72), whose second start of the season was an outstanding two-hit five-inning stint in OSU’s 9-0 win over Southern Cal in the Regional final last Monday. Eric Segura (8-2, 4.47) should be ready to go in relief.

Will the Beavers benefit from their experience in elimination games at the Regional in Sunday’s finale?

“For sure,” Weber said. “We are confident. We feel good. We are excited after what we experienced last week. We get to do it again (on Sunday).”

Now it comes down to one game, for all the marbles.

“It is about winning the war,” Canham said. “We may have lost the battle today, but we got them the first (game). It all comes down to (Sunday).”

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