Cougar Corner | WSU Travels to Corvallis to Face Oregon State

The Washington State (26-21, 14-7) Cougar baseball season is winding down. With just seven games left on the regular season schedule, a weekend series starting this evening with Pac-10 powerhouse Oregon State (30-14, 12-9) is crucial to the Cougs hope for an invitation to the NCAA regionals.

This Cougar team wants to go where no other WSU baseball team has gone in two decades. They have their sights set on winning their way to Omaha and the College World Series.

First things first.

OK, calling OSU a powerhouse in the conference this season is a stretch. Might even accuse this writer of applying the wrong adjective.

The Beavers have been winning this season without the benefit of the long ball. No, this year the Beavs are just pummeling opponents with more hits than an Ali vs. Frazier fight.

Coach Donnie Marbut has seen his players mature over the course of this season as they have earned a lock on second place in the Pac-10.

Cougar offense has been led all year by senior catcher Greg Lagreid. The young man from Edmonds has made remarkable improvement as a hitter since his freshman season. Always rock solid behind the plate, Lagreid hit about a buck-eighty his first year in Pullman. 

Lagreid has been nominated and is a semi-finalist for the prestigious Johnny Bench Award. Praised by Coach Marbut for his ability to call a great game for the Cougar pitching staff, he's leading the team in just about every offensive category. Lagreid brings a .381 batting average with him to Corvallis this weekend. That's second best in the Pac-10.

Surprisingly, another outstanding catcher leads the Oregon State offense. Junior Ryan Ortiz is batting a lofty .367 on the season and has a team-leading 17 doubles. Ortiz has been on fire at the plate since Pac-10 play began, currently hitting a blistering .405 in conference games. Behind the plate, the young man has only made one error the entire season. That's one steady player.

As a team, the Beavers are hitting .277. They have produced 303 runs on 408 hits. Now that's some efficient, effective, timely hitting. In other words, they're good.

The starting pitching for Washington State is set up nicely for Coach Marbut. 

Tonight's 5pm start will pit Cougar southpaw ace Matt Way (7-4, 2.16 ERA) against the Beavs Tanner Robles (1-1, 3.42 ERA). Robles is a lefty like his counterpart and makes his seventh start of the season. Way, a senior from Sitka, AK,  has been dominating in his last two starts and should get the series off to a strong start for WSU.

Here's the scheduled starting pitching for the other two games:

Saturday 2pm

RH-Chad Arnold (6-2, 4.82 ERA)-WSU
RH-Greg Peavey (3-3, 5.30 ERA)-OSU

Sunday 1pm

LH-David Stilley (3-1, 3.09 ERA)-WSU
RH-Jorge Reyes (5-2, 3.80 ERA)-OSU

As always, you can follow Cougar baseball on the radio. Tune in to station 104.3 FM KHTR, for the Friday and Sunday games. To catch the Saturday afternoon game, switch over to 1150 AM, KQQQ. 

If you're a stat freak (...and who isn't?), live updates will be posted on the WSU official website www.wsucougars.com

There's going to be baseball weather this weekend in Corvallis with the temperature sneaking up into the mid-80's.

Can hardly wait for the plate umpire to bellow out, "Play ball!" 

Originally published on Examiner.com

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