Sooners baseball melts down, drops Bedlam series

STILLWATER — Sooners baseball dropped the Bedlam series on Sunday with a 9-5 loss at O’Brate Stadium against Oklahoma State. 

Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda. Instead? Losing two of three.

The Sooners led 5-3 heading into the bottom of the seventh before a meltdown that’ll be talked about in these parts for a long time. Six walks. A questionable Skip Johnson decision. And a Donovan LaSalle big fly later, and Oklahoma stared down a four run deficit. 

What happened? How did they get there? 

“Just staying in the process of executing pitches. I thought we played really good for the first six innings of the game. We pitched out of important jams. They took their walks, and we didn’t take our walks at times and that’s part of the game,” Johnson said. 

Prior to the seventh inning meltdown, Oklahoma centerfielder Jason Walk blasted the Sooners 12th home run of the weekend, seemingly shifting the momentum of the game into Oklahoma’s dugout. The Sooners led 4-2 following a three-run fifth. 

Nolan Schubart delivered an RBI single in the fifth, but it was the Oklahoma bullpen that got them out of the jam. Brendan Girton threw 3.2 innings in relief of starter Grant Stevens, scattering three hits and allowing a run. 

Michael Snyder delivered with a two-out RBI double in the 7th. Yet another two-out hit that produced a run. Oklahoma scored three runs with two outs Sunday. 

Then came the miscues out of the bullpen, and perhaps more importantly, the decision making that led to the meltdown. 

Brendan Girton walked Carson Benge to start the seventh. Aidan Meola singled. With two on and one out, Johnson decided to bring in struggling left-hander Jamie Hitt, who proceeded to walk Schubart to load the bases. 

“Yeah, the match-up tells you to. The OPS, the batting average against all of that tells you to bring him in there,” said Johnson. “There’s no doubt about that. You gotta do that and try to shorten the game with (Brendan) Girton, (Jamie) Hitt and (Ryan) Lambert and Malachi (Witherspoon)”. 

Avery Ortiz came through with an RBI single to rightfield cut into the deficit. But a Bryce Madron throw to home plate cut down the would-be tying run. All of the sudden there were two outs in the inning and perhaps Oklahoma was going to escape. 

Not so fast. 

One pitch later, Donovan LaSalle rocketed his first-career home run over the batter’s eye in centerfield and Oklahoma State led 7-5. Gut punch. 

But it only got worse as Ryan Lambert walked three consecutive batters. Carson Atwood walked the first batter he faced to force in a run. At the end of it? Oklahoma State had plated six runs in the frame with the last three runs coming in via the free pass.

A tough pill to swallow in a game and series that was there for the taking. An even tougher pill to swallow is the decision to bring Hitt into the game. 

“When you give free bases, that’s what happens. You can’t give free bases to good teams,” Johnson said. “When you give free bases away, you’re going to get beat.

“Matching lefty-lefty there. When we walked the guy there, it created a little bit of chaos. Then they get the broken bat single and that’s part of the game. If we hadn’t walked the guy, there it might’ve been a different scenario.” 

After all, a much too familiar occurrence on the back end of games. Oklahoma walked 11 batters on Sunday. 

Oklahoma falls to 17-14 overall, 8-4 in the Big 12, losing its third consecutive series and second consecutive conference series.