Three parting thoughts from 16-seed Oregon's Eugene Regional victory

EUGENE, Ore. — Sunday night at Jane Sanders Stadium was special. When Dezianna Patmon's seventh-inning, three-run, walk-off moonshot lifted her Ducks to next weekend's Super Regionals, the crowd of just over 2,400 turned to absolute pandemonium. Patmon's teammates rushed to home, mobbing the hero of the evening as she touched the plate. Even a group of football players led by star defensive end Matayo Uiagalelei rushed the field, running and leaping with the excitement of a celebration that seemed like it might never end.

Oregon is now through to the super regionals for the second time under head coach Melyssa Lombardi. The 16th-seeded Ducks were slotted as the final hosting team of the regionals, but thanks to Liberty's upset of No. 1 Texas A&M, they will get to host once again. While the Flames shouldn't be overlooked, it gives the Ducks an easier path than to their first Women's College World Series appearance since 2018.

The Ducks will host Liberty for a best-of-three set at The Jane, with the first pitch of Game 1 set for 7 PM on Friday. As we take a look ahead to what next weekend will bring for Oregon, here are my three biggest takeaways from a wild Eugene Regional.

1. The bottom of the lineup is just as important as the top

Although this was clearly evident when Patmon walked the game off from the seven-spot in Oregon's lineup on Sunday night, the bottom of the Duck lineup provided massive contributions throughout the entire weekend. In all five games of the regional, Lombardi hit Patmon seventh, freshman second baseman Kaylynn Jones eighth, and sophomore third baseman Katie Flannery ninth. Over the weekend, they slashed .372/.413/.721 while scoring nine times and driving home 12 runs. Compare that to the .390/.519/.732 line that Kai Luschar, Paige Sinicki, Rylee McCoy, and Kedre Luschar posted from the top of the the lineup, and it's not that far off. 

Perhaps most importantly, Patmon, Jones, and Flannery were able to consistently turn the lineup over, setting the table for the Ducks' major run-producers to drive them home. To lead off the top of the second in the first game against Stanford on Sunday, Flannery walked before Kedre Luschar's double would bring her home two batters later to give the Ducks a lead they wouldn't look back from. And in the final game against Stanford, Patmon led off the bottom of the sixth with a triple off the wall in the right-field corner before scoring the tying run when Kai Luschar beat out an infield single as the lineup flipped back over to the top.

"Anytime our bottom half can flip the lineup over, it's huge," Lombardi said on Saturday.

Patmon has split most of her time between the six and seven holes, and has consistently been one of the most underrated pieces of Oregon's offense. Her 1.063 on-base plus slugging (OPS) trails only Kedre Luschar, McCoy, and Sinicki, and thanks to strong power and on-base skills, she ranks third in isolated slugging with a team-leading 19 percent walk rate. Meanwhile, Jones has been the epitome of a secondary leadoff hitter this year (think Michael Harris II batting ninth for the Braves to set the table for Ronald Acuña Jr. in the leadoff spot), walking over 12 percent of the time to post a .403 on-base percentage. With Kai Luschar set to graduate this year, Jones could find herself filling her hole at the top of the lineup as a sophomore next season.

The biggest thing to come out of the weekend at the bottom of the lineup, though, may be a return to form for Flannery. She has been excellent at third base all season, leading the Ducks with over 11 defensive runs saved (DRS) per Synergy, ranking just outside the top 20 at her position nationally. And while her 11 home runs are third on the team, she's been hot and cold all year. Through her first thirty games of the season, she posted a 1.225 OPS with more walks (12) than strikeouts (11). But over her last 24 games leading up to this past weekend, she homered just one time with a .362 OPS as her walk-to-strikeout ratio fell below one. Over the weekend, she slashed .333/.429/.833, hitting her first homer in over a month against Weber State before launching a second to spark Oregon's clinching win over Stanford. If she can find her stroke at the plate again, it could help take the Ducks' offense to another level.

2. Staci Chambers is the key to getting the pitching back on track

After battling with injuries for much of her redshirt senior season, the transfer from Cal State Fullerton delivered her signature performance as a Duck on Sunday night. With Oregon trailing 7-3 after Stanford first baseman Joie Economides took starter Lyndsey Grein deep for the second time in as many plate appearances, Chambers entered the game, absolutely shutting down the Cardinal offense to keep her team in it long enough for Patmon's walk-off to win things. She held Stanford scoreless across 4 ⅓ innings of relief, allowing just two hits and one walk in her longest outing since the opening weekend of the season.

Chambers began the year red-hot, fanning a ridiculous 23 batters across 10 frames during the season's opening weekend, but shortly began to deal with an injury that would hold her out of the Duck rotation until late March. Since returning, she pitched well with a 3.71 ERA while striking out over eight batters per seven innings, but was limited to short relief appearances, averaging less than an inning and a third across nine games in the lead-up to the regional.

She struggled in her first outing against Stanford, but so did the entirety of Oregon's pitching staff as the Cardinal put 14 runs on the board. Her second time out, though, she was completely dominant, and arguably the most important piece to Oregon's win. 

The majority of the Ducks' pitching load has been handled by Grein and Sokolsky this season, with the pair combining for over 82 percent of the team's innings pitched. But recent weeks have seen the two, especially Grein, slow down. Against Weber State this weekend, Grein and Sokolsky combined for 12 innings of one-run ball, but in 13 ⅓ innings against Stanford's ACC offense, saw nine earned runs come across — without accounting for Economides' first-inning grand slam that came after catcher Emma Cox dropped a foul popup that would've gotten the Ducks out of the inning.

Switching up looks in the circle is something that Lombardi has talked about all season with her pitching staff, and something I wrote about in regards to Grein and Sokolsky's season-long excellence last week. Although her sample size is small this year, Chambers' underlying metrics have been incredible, whiffing bats nearly 32 percent of the time to rank 11th in the nation among hurlers with at least 150 pitches, and forcing batters miss in the strike zone just under a quarter of the time, which ties her for eighth. If Chambers — the only lefty in Oregon's rotation — can give the Ducks another look to offer hitters, not only could it give them a legitimate third option to go to, but it would lessen the strain on Grein and Sokolsky and, in turn, improve their performance.

3. Who will fill the hole left by Rylee McCoy?

After tying the single-season program record with the 19th home run of her freshman season in Oregon's mercy-rule win over Stanford in their first game on Friday, McCoy unfortunately ended up on the wrong end of a Taryn Kern line drive that forced her to exit early in the second. After the game, Lombardi said that McCoy was "in a good spot," before she released a statement through the team on Monday saying that she is "hoping to make a quick return to the field as soon as it is safe to do so," and that she is "okay and will be back soon!"

While seeing their teammate fall was certainly an emotional experience for the Ducks, and one that they ultimately rallied behind, her loss — however long it may last — will be felt in the Oregon lineup. Overall, she was the most productive hitter for the Ducks this season, with a 1.337 OPS while still walking more times (18) than she struck out (16). Additionally, she was a crucial part of Oregon's defense at first base, named to the Big Ten's All-Defensive team after recording just one error all season and posting 1.5 DRS according to Synergy. 

Initially, on Sunday, Lombardi decided to go with Remmington Hewitt to replace McCoy at first, who has filled in from time to time across 21 games this season. But Hewitt, a junior with just a .789 OPS across 46 career at-bats, presents nowhere near the threat that McCoy does to a pitching staff. When her spot came back around in the lineup, Lombardi inserted outfielder Ayanna Shaw, who began the season in the starting nine before a hand injury held her to a role strictly pinch running until mid-April. With that, the Ducks shifted their defense about, moving Shaw to right field, Patmon to designated hitter, and Ma'ake to first base.

The move played off perfectly, as with Shaw's excellent athleticism in the outfield, she was able to track down a ball in the right-center gap that would've likely been a leadoff double and a run on a single two batters later in the top of the seventh if Patmon (worth -1.3 DRS this season) had been in right. Ma'ake, meanwhile, hadn't started a game in the field since March 2 and had totaled just two appearances at first, but was perfect on Sunday, something that Lombardi gave her lots of credit for after the game.

"One thing a lot of people don't know about Stef, I mean, Stef has played multiple positions," Lombardi said of Ma'ake on Sunday. "She's a first baseman, she's an outfielder. Stef pitches. So Stef's very athletic, she's worked at first plenty of times, and when we moved her there, it allowed us to move Ayanna into the outfield, which, when you think of Ayanna, what do you think? You think of the big catch she made in right-center."

Although McCoy said that she will return soon, that would likely come initially in a role strictly as a DH without playing the field. If McCoy isn't available at all this weekend, Oregon will likely roll with Shaw in right, Ma'ake at first, and Patmon at DH — though she also made six appearances at first this season. If McCoy can DH, it would slightly complicate things, most likely forcing Shaw's glove back to the bench in order to keep Ma'ake and Patmon's thumping bats in the lineup. With their versatility, though, all three should see playing time this weekend, regardless of McCoy's availability.