The Oregon State baseball team is back in the top 10. Mostly.
The Beavers on Monday inched closer to the top of nearly every major college baseball poll after earning a weekend series victory over the Big Ten-leading Iowa Hawkeyes in Des Moines, Iowa.
Oregon State climbed to No. 7 in the D1Baseball Top 25, No. 9 in the Perfect Game Top 25, No. 10 in the USA Today Coaches Poll and No. 11 in the Baseball America Top 25. The National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Poll will be unveiled Monday afternoon.
It’s an about-face for the Beavers (37-12-1), who had suffered a two-week tumble outside the top 10 in four of the five polls following its roughest stretch of the season.
The Oregonian/OregonLive uses the D1Baseball poll for its rankings.
Oregon State opened last week with a 7-3 victory over the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors on Monday, finishing 3-1 in the four-game series. Then, in its penultimate series of the season, OSU went 2-0-1 against the Hawkeyes, earning a resume-building win against a team in the driver’s seat for the Big Ten Conference championship.
If not for a couple of shaky innings by the bullpen — and a Sunday travel curfew — the Beavers likely would have left Principal Park with a sweep.
They fought off a late Iowa rally to win Friday’s opener, 9-6, then cruised to a 5-1 victory Saturday. In Sunday’s extra-inning finale, OSU led 5-3 in the sixth, 5-4 in the eighth and 6-5 in the 10th, but couldn’t maintain the edge. By the end of the 10th — after Jaixen Frost tied the game 6-6 with a home run to left field — play was called so the Beavers had enough time to catch their team flight back to Oregon.
Even so, it was a successful weekend, featuring explosive offensive performances by senior catcher Wilson Weber and a return-to-form outing by freshman right-hander Dax Whitney.
Weber was a force against the Hawkeyes, going 6 for 14 with two homers, eight RBIs, three runs scored and a walk. He went 4 for 5 with a home run and four RBIs in the opener, then belted a grand slam in the finale.
He also had a front row seat to an electric “piggyback” pitching performance by Whitney and Nelson Keljo on Saturday. Whitney (4-3) equaled his career-high in strikeouts (11) and allowed just one run on three hits over six impressive innings, earning his first win since March 29.
The 6-foot-5 freshman gave way to Keljo at the start of the seventh and the junior left-hander was just as dominant, tossing three shutout innings. Keljo surrendered a pair of singles and recorded five strikeouts, earning his first save of the season.
The talented tandem helped the Beavers win for the fifth time in six games, carrying the team a few steps past their lowest point of the season — a four-game sweep against the rival Oregon Ducks at the end of the April.
And now, with just four home games left in the regular season, the Beavers have momentum and a solid case to earn a top eight national seed. They are 5-1 in May and 17-5 over the last 22 games, which has boosted their RPI to No. 6.
Oregon State hosts a midweek matchup against the Portland Pilots on Tuesday night, then welcomes the Long Beach State Dirtbags to Goss Stadium for the final weekend series of the season.
— Joe Freeman | jfreeman@oregonian.com | 503-294-5183 | @BlazerFreeman | @freemanjoe.bsky.social | Subscribe to The Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
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