Improved pitching still the focus for BYU baseball
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- BYU’s Ashton Johnson throws a pitch against Cal Baptist in a college baseball game at Miller Park on Thursday, March 5, 2026.
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- BYU’s Crew McChensey takes a swing against Cal Baptist in a college baseball game at Miller Park on Thursday, March 5, 2026.
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- BYU’s Garrison Sumner throws a pitch against Cal Baptist in the Cougars’ 2026 home opener at Miller Park in Provo on Thursday, March 5, 2026. BYU’s Bryker Hurdsman (13) runs onto the field before the start of the Cougars’ 2026 home opener against Cal Baptist at Miller Park in Provo on Thursday, March 5, 2026. BYU will play three games against the Lancers with the finale on Saturday afternoon.
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- BYU’s Bryker Hurdsman (13) runs onto the field before the start of the Cougars’ 2026 home opener against Cal Baptist at Miller Park in Provo on Thursday, March 5, 2026. BYU will play three games against the Lancers with the finale on Saturday afternoon.
An annual rite of spring is when the BYU baseball team finally returns to Provo for its first home game.
The Cougars played their first 11 games away from Utah to open the 2026 season and were looking forward to playing for the first time at Miller Park, especially since temperatures had regularly reached the 50s and 60s in February and March.
But sometimes, it feels like Provo hates spring baseball.
Thursday’s home opener was cold, windy and overcast with snow flurries, but neither team seemed to mind the weather in an offensive explosion. Cal Baptist ended up holding on for a 13-11 victory in front of 1,478 brave souls, the two teams combining for 36 hits and eight home runs.
“We’ve got to kind of get firing on all cylinders,” third-year BYU head coach Trent Pratt said. “Sometimes the offense gets going, and the pitching isn’t there, but we feel like it’s really close to breaking out. That’s tough when we get down a lot then come back and try to win games, but to know that they fight, they play till the last out, is good. The question is can we get it all working on the same page together?”
Pratt hired Adrian Dinkel as the new pitching coach after a difficult 2025 where the Cougars were last in the Big 12 in ERA (8.53) and opposing batting average (.324). So far in 2026 — despite giving up 20 hits and four home runs to the Lancers on Thursday — the numbers reflect improvement: An staff ERA of 5.68 and an opposing batting average of .247.
Holding on to that improvement will be a challenge when BYU starts facing Big 12 teams, which begins next week with a three-game series at home against Cincinnati.
“There’s been a lot of good progress,” Pratt said. “Tonight, it’s one of those nights when the wind’s blowing like that and you’re like, man, you never know what’s gonna happen. So the good thing was that guys threw a ton of strikes and we only walked three or four. We’re going to win a lot of ball games by doing that.”
On Thursday, Cougar starter Garrison Sumner got battered around in his five innings of labor, allowing ten hits and eight runs. Cal Baptist’s Bryce McFeely, who terrorized BYU pitching by going 3 for 5 with five RBI and two home runs, went through a 12-pitch at-bat against Sumner with nine foul balls before blasting a deep three-run homer as the Lancers took a 6-0 lead after three innings.
Easton Jones belted the first of his two dingers in the bottom of the fourth to close to 6-1 but the Cougars trailed 8-1 heading into the bottom of the fifth.
BYU sent 12 men to the plate and scored nine runs, including a two-run home run for Jones and a three-run blast from Crew McChesney that traveled 439 feet to right-center, for a 10-8 lead.
Luke Anderson’s RBI single in the sixth pushed the Cougar advantage to 11-8 but the home team couldn’t hold the lead as Cal Baptist, which hit .500 with two strikes and continually found holes in the infield, climbed back in front 13-11 after eight.
In the bottom of the ninth, BYU got the tying run to the plate with two outs and McChesney hit a hard line drive – right at the Lancers third baseman to end the game.
McChesney was 3 for 5 with two runs scored and three RBI with a double and a home run for the Cougars (6-6). Anderson finished 3 for 6 at the plate to go along with Jones’ two home runs. Bryker Hurdsman returned from injury to hit a home run as well.
But it wasn’t offense that cost BYU the game, a common theme since joining the Big 12.
“We’ve got a couple of days to figure that out,” Pratt said. “We’ve got three games to get going. I look at what we did tonight and what they did, and then figure out how we can kind of combat them. They did a really good job with two strikes and two outs and just how can we get off the field a bit quicker?”
BYU and Cal Baptist meet again on Friday and Saturday, and the Cougars finish non-conference play on Tuesday with a home game against Utah Tech.
