For the second night in a row Arizona’s starting pitcher was the shining star. On Saturday, it was sophomore righty Smith Bailey. The sophomore threw a career high 15 strikeouts, faced 21 batters while allowing one hit and holding Kansas State scoreless through six inning.
Just like Friday night, the bullpen imploded allowing Kansas State to take the lead.
Saturday, it was a three-run homer to deep left field by Nick English in the top of the seventh and an eight-run eighth that gave Kansas State an 11-1 run-rule win over Arizona in Hi Corbett Field.
Bailey was sitting at 99 pitches at the end of the sixth. With BYU coming in for a Thursday – Saturday series next week giving Bailey less than a week of recovery, the decision was made not to push their Saturday starter and turn the game over to the bullpen. A bullpen that had been throwing and winning close games during the Wildcats’ 3 for 4 road trip against TCU and Arizona State.
“If he’s at 99, we put him back out there, all of a sudden something goes weird”. Arizona coach Chip Hale said, ” He’s at 110 I’ve got to take him out in the middle of an inning and put a reliever in there, that’s tough.” Arizona coach Chip Hale said.
Watching Owen Kramkowski pitch the previous night helped Bailey prepare for Saturday.
“He always does, I chart.” Bailey said, “We have the starting pitcher of the next game chart the game before just to kind of watch. I think I kind of took a lot of stuff from him in front of their guys that I was like ‘that will work for me’ so it helps.”
Bailey also mentioned that the pitchers and pitching staff has gone back to using old school hand signals and that helped with this weekends performance from the starters.
Kansas State’s Lincoln Sheffield threw a complete game and effectively shut down Arizona’s offense. The Wildcats had four hits and struck out 10 times with their only run coming off of a 406-foot solo home run to deep left field from Carson McEntire in the fifth inning.
Arizona (14-24, 5-12 Big 12) will try to stop a Kansas State (25-14, 9-8) sweep in the series finale on Sunday at 12 p.m.
The game will be streamed on ESPN+.
Game Extra:
It was 1986 Night in Hi C on Saturday. The National Championship team was recognized before the start of the game with players, including Arizona head coach Hale, lining up in front of the pitchers mound.
Pitcher Gil Heredia threw out the first pitch to catcher Steve Strong.
Heredia, a Nogales, Arizona native who started his career at Pima Community College before transferring to Arizona, played in the major leagues from 1991-2001. He played five season in the San Francisco Giants minor league system (1987-1991) before moving up to the majors. He also played for the Montreal Expose, Texas Rangers and Oakland Athletics.
Members of the 1986 National Championship team.
Pitcher Gil Heredia with the first pitch to catcher Steve Strong.
Some amazing music being played tonight. Takes me right back to my first two years of college! @AllSportsTucson pic.twitter.com/LGzYxxlExI
— Lori Burkhart (@loriburkhart) April 19, 2026
49 wins. 7 straight postseason comebacks. 1 National Championship
40 years later, we are honored to celebrate the legendary 1986 Arizona Baseball team pic.twitter.com/kCKomsX8jM
— Arizona Baseball (@ArizonaBaseball) April 19, 2026
Recommended for you
