Following Oregon baseball’s 15-9 loss to Texas A&M and subsequent elimination from the 2024 NCAA Baseball tournament, Mark Wasikowski took to the podium for his postgame press conference.
Beside him were all seven of the program’s seniors: RJ Gordon, Logan Mercado, Kevin Seitter, Bradley Mullan, Bryce Boettcher, Justin Cassella and Brock Moore. The table, set up to hold perhaps half as many people as Oregon brought, was littered in name cards as chairs were pushed together and hanging over the ends. All still in uniform, all with defeated looks on their faces.
But none looked more defeated than Moore.
Moore, the Menlo College transfer who celebrated his 24th birthday just three weeks earlier, had spent his final year of eligibility as one of the top arms in the bullpen for the Ducks. His fastball topped out at 101 mph early in the season and had added secondaries in a slider and changeup that developed as the season drew longer. The success culminated in the final outing of his collegiate career being the worst and undoubtedly leaving a sour taste in his mouth as he sat up on the podium, flanked by his teammates, looking like he was holding back tears.
Moore entered the game in the fifth inning after Gordon, who made the start, let up a single to start the frame. No problem for Moore, as he induced a pair of ground balls for outs including a 6-4-3 double play to get out of the inning clean. The sixth inning followed suit. Moore allowed a hit but had he assistance of his defense — this time a 5-4-3 — to get the first two outs and a popup to Mason Neville in right field ended the inning.
With Oregon holding onto a comfortable 8-4 lead thanks to early home runs by Chase Meggers, Drew Smith and Anson Aroz and creative base running by Mason Neville and Bryce Boettcher to sneak a run home, there was no reason to remove Moore from the game. He took back over in the seventh, which would be the final inning of his collegiate career.
He would allow another hit, walk five total batters and hit a sixth as Texas A&M tied the game. Ball after ball, walk after walk, and yet there was no action in the Oregon bullpen. Moore was left to drown under the microscope of a nationally televised game and the ruthlessly iconic ‘Ball’ chant of the nearly 8,000 Aggie fans in attendance.
After A&M left fielder Caden Sorrell walked to bring in the tying run, Moore was finally relieved by a hastily warmed up Jaxon Jordan. Jordan wouldn’t fare much better, either, issuing another walk to bring in the go-ahead run and giving up a grand slam to second baseman Kaeden Kent. Two of Kent’s RBIs would be charged to Moore for his sixth and seventh earned run of the frame allowed and he’d ultimately take the loss.
Sitting in the press conference, all Moore could do was apologize repeatedly.
“I couldn’t slow myself down, and (was) just leaving balls away,” Moore told reporters about what went wrong. “I wish I could go back and change it but what happened, happened. I apologize to my teammates, I gave it everything I had. Wish I could go back and change that front side because I lost it. I knew what was going on, I just couldn’t find myself to figure it out. But, I did everything I could to get through that inning.”
Wasikowski was asked about the decision to leave Moore in despite the struggle and made it clear with his answer that he would’ve done it again.
“(Moore) and the guys that pitched and pitched in the majority of the innings this weekend, we wouldn’t be here without those guys,” Wasikowski told reporters following the game. “And those were our go-to guys and we stuck with our go to guys because they earned the trust from our coaching staff. And sometimes it doesn’t work out. And tonight was one of those cases.
“... Unfortunately, where it worked out so many times in the past it didn’t work out for us tonight (but) I don’t back down from those decisions whatsoever. We were disappointed in the results obviously but at the same point in time, (I’m) very proud of the men that went out there and competed with everything they had.”
The fact of the matter was that Oregon was simply out of arms to throw in the circumstance. The Ducks took the brunt of their injuries this season in the bullpen. Players like Isaac Ayon were lost for the season while uncertain, but potentially injury related reasons prevented others like Toby Twist, Michael Freund and Bradley Mullan from making appearances. Proven arms like Ryan Featherston and Logan Mercado had already been asked to pitch the day earlier, with the former being touched up by the A&M lineup and the latter throwing 3.2 innings.
What was left in the bullpen were unproven freshmen who lacked experience or arms who hadn’t performed over the course of the season. Turning the game over to one of them could have stopped the bleeding, but more likely than not would have resulted in the outcome that Moore found himself in, as evidenced by Jordan’s brief stint. Wasikowski felt more comfortable leaving the ball in the hand of the oldest and provenly effective arm to try and find a way out of the jam.
Unfortunately for the Oregon squad, Moore wouldn’t, and the offense could only come up with one of the seven runs needed to put them back in the driver’s seat. The Ducks’ hopes of making a grand return to the College World Series for the first time since 1954 — and tenure as a Pac-12 baseball team — were put to rest in College Station as the Aggies earned their eighth ever trip to Omaha.
Wasikowski and his staff, along with the returning bunch will reset their sights on the 2025 season as well as their transition to the Big 10.
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