On Friday night, the Oregon State baseball team started the three game series off right with a 5-1 victory over the Washington State Cougars in Goss Stadium.

The Beavers opened up the game’s first six innings with senior pitcher Trent Sellers, who did not allow a runner to get a base hit until the fourth inning.

“That’s the best I’ve felt in a while,” said Sellers after his nine-strikeout game.

This set up the fielders to not only focus on the runners if they were on base, but it allowed them to rest after the baseball game started to feel very accelerated because of the 20-second pitch clock rule change inflicted by Major League Baseball.

The fourth inning saw the Cougars finally get on base and then score for the first time. It seemed like the batters for the Cougars had finally zoned in on the pitches being thrown by Sellers.

During the fifth inning, the Cougars’ left fielder Greg Fuchs got to second base after a deep ball to the right-center field on Sellers’ pitch. The next Cougars batter, right fielder Alan Shibley, hit a sacrifice fly ball allowing Fuchs to be in scoring position on third base.

Beavers catcher Tanner Smith called a timeout and brought the infielders in to talk to Sellers. “They could tell I was rushing myself. We huddled up and they just started joking around, making me laugh and it really calmed me down,” Sellers explained. He went on to close out the fifth and sixth innings striking out five more batters.

Oregon State head baseball coach Mitch Canham said, “I had some of the guys saying to me how much fun playing defense was with our pitchers tonight.”

Sellers ended up only walking three batters and had one of the walks due to hitting a player with a pitch, although the fans in Goss Stadium were yelling about the call, believing the batter leaned into being hit.

The Beavers decided to have right-handed senior pitcher Ben Ferrer relieve Sellers after 96 pitches in the game. Ferrer played the next two innings and sophomore Ryan Brown finished the final inning of the game, both not allowing another run to be scored.

The Cougars seemed to be unsure of themselves defensively throughout the game. During the second inning, a wild pitch into the dirt got away from the Washington State catcher, Will Cresswell, and allowed the Beavers’ first baseman Garret Forrester to take off running from third base and score the first run of the game.

Forrester led the Beavers in runs, with two on the night. He technically only had one base hit, but one was taken away because of an error committed by the Cougars. This error allowed the Beavers to score their fifth run in the fifth inning.

Third baseman Mikey Kane contributed to Forrester’s total runs with a beautiful hit down the left-field line driving in two runners during one play.

The Beavers and Cougars now both have 11-2 records and continue the series Saturday afternoon at 1:35 pm.