Seven different arms took the mound for the Cougs, giving up five runs, nine hits and walking seven different batters in a 5-3 loss to the Portland Pilots Tuesday.
WSU baseball (20-27, 8-16 Pac-12) continues to lose games on the regular season, while Portland (28-17, 13-5 WCC) beats the Cougs on their home turf in the final non-conference contest on the schedule.
Despite the loss, Giordano Mezzomo made his debut with WSU after missing last season with an injury, Griffin Myers secured his first collegiate hit in the third inning, Brandham Ponce got a pinch-hit opportunity and hit his first WSU home run and 15 different Cougs tallied at least one plate appearance.
Spencer Jones made the start for the Cougs. Walking two and giving up one run, his night finished after the first inning.
Carson Judd got a bulk of the innings, finishing with 3.0 innings and keeping the Pilots of the board. Going into the top of the fifth tied 1-1, Mezzomo entered the game for his debut.
Mezzomo quickly retired the first two batters he faced, getting two outs on six pitches. He threw 15 more pitches but failed to get out of the inning after walking two batters and giving up an RBI double to Riley McCarthy.
Between two WSU pitchers, Portland scored four runs and those runs proved enough to take home their 27th victory of the 2024 season.
Wazzu got one run back in the bottom of the fifth and scored one more on a Joey Kramer single in the bottom of the eighth inning, but a Will Cresswell single in the bottom of the ninth failed to get a rally going.
Offensively, the Cougs tallied six hits, with each hit coming from a different bat.
Since their March 22–24 series sweep of Arizona State, the Cougs are just 5-19 and their overall record has gone from an impressive 15-8 to the depths of the Pac-12 at 20-27.
WSU has a three-game set against USC, starting 6 p.m. Friday and going through Sunday. The Trojans rank fifth in the Conference with a record of 12-11, with the Cougs ranking 10th and on the outside looking in of the tournament at 8-16 and one game back of UW.
