Bailey's relief, Diaz's homer rally GCU past ASU

Tuesday, April 22

Phoenix, Ariz.

7 p.m.

Grand Canyon

24-16

Arizona State

25-16

Arizona State

Grand Canyon

Photo by: Chris Baumgardner

4/22/2025 10:46:00 PM | Baseball, Paul Coro

Box Score

Lopes defeat Sun Devils on Brazell Field for 2nd consecutive season

By: Paul Coro

After a recent stretch in which Grand Canyon baseball was flickering and flaming out, the Lopes talked recently about finding the spark to catch fire again.

With two outs recorded in two appearances that were two months apart this season, junior left-hander Gray Bailey illuminated GCU Ballpark and the Lopes shined Tuesday night to rally from a 6-3 deficit and beat Arizona State 7-6.

The Lopes (24-16) defeated the Sun Devils (25-16) at home for the second consecutive season, using Bailey's four innings of one-hit relief and senior left fielder Michael Diaz's go-ahead, seventh-inning home run to prevail in front of 1,932 fans.

"We know we've got a great team, and we haven't been playing that well the last two weekends, so we were looking for something to spark us and we got a lot of sparks tonight," GCU head coach Gregg Wallis said. "The pitching performances were outstanding against a really good hitting team. Obviously, Gray Bailey provided a huge lift."

Bailey, one of six GCU players who graduated from Mountain Ridge High School in nearby Glendale, had two relief outings this season until Tuesday with a two-month layoff between them because of an arm injury. In last week's loss at Arizona, Bailey's 12-pitch outing included 10 strikes to provide optimism that the 6-foot-1 senior southpaw could return to the long relief role that Wallis and pitching coach Nathan Bannister planned for Bailey before his injury.t

Using a three-pitch mix effectively, Bailey surrendered a single blemish – a solo shot that was Josiah Cromwick's 11th home run of the season – that put ASU ahead 6-3 in the sixth inning. Bailey needed just 42 pitches to cover four innings and set up a comeback.

"Good things happen when you're in the zone and just around the zone too," Bailey said. "I felt like I executed the plan perfectly tonight, and it just felt good to be out there and good for the team as well.

"Everything was tunneling off one another. That's just my goal to mix speeds and get weak contact."

Just as the top of the order jolted GCU to double its hit total in the fifth and produce a run, those batters did it again in the sixth to tighten ASU's lead to 6-5.

Lopes sophomore second baseman Troy Sanders flipped the order back to the top by doubling, and junior right fielder Josh Wakefield brought him home with a first-pitch RBI single.

GCU junior shortstop Emilio Barreras, who has reached base in eight consecutive games since returning from an oblique injury, pulled an off-speed pitch into the right-field corner to score Wakefield. Barreras, who was 2 for 3 with two walks, has reached base 17 times in eight games and is hitting .400 on the season.

"Just very quality at bats," Wallis said. "Wake and Emilio, at the top, they give great at bats. They get on base a ton, and Eddie's been driving in runs at a really high clip. Those guys just were locked in."

After Bailey's perfect seventh in the top half, GCU took its turn against hard-throwing ASU reliever Will Koger for the bottom half.

Lopes senior third baseman Eli Paton was hit by a pitch before Diaz measured a 96 mph fastball with a foul ball straight back into the net. Koger then switched to a slider, which he left high for Diaz to crush over the right-field wall for a 7-6 lead that held up as the final.

Michael Diaz

"I just gave myself a lot of confidence before the at bat," said Diaz, a Phoenix Brophy Prep graduate who has five of his team-high nine home runs in April. "I just knew he was throwing hard, so I knew if I got a good swing off on something and caught it out front, good things were going to happen."

Bailey retired 11 of 13 ASU batters on Diaz's hopping catch at the left-field wall to open the eighth inning before his first walk. That prompted GCU to turn to junior closer Walter Quinn, who induced an inning-ending double play in the eighth and closed out the ninth for his eighth save. The Lopes moved this season's GCU Ballpark record to 14-5, its best home mark since going 15-5 in 2014.

ASU, a top-25 hitting team and top-10 doubles team nationally, went 2 for 18 over the final six innings Tuesday and had one double in the game.

"We challenged the strike zone," Wallis said. "We kept them off balance. It was a really good night pitching for us. Even the one big inning they had, we made some defensive miscues, so Chance Key kind of got unlucky, but he executed the game plan really, really well. He's been working on some things with Coach Bannister, and I thought that showed tonight. This was his best outing, despite what the line score says."

Six players in GCU's starting lineup and the winning pitcher were Arizonans beating the Valley's other Division I program. It held extra significance for sophomore designated hitter Cannon Peery, who went 2 for 4 with a double and three RBIs.

Peery's father, Noah, pitched for ASU and won 1994 Pac-10 Co-Pitcher of the year. His brother, Brock, pitched for the Sun Devils from 2021 to 2023. He said the family is "full GCU" now. And the Lopes looked more like the loaded Lopes for a weekend home series against UT Arlington.

"We stayed positive," Peery said. "We've been down before, kind of lately, but it kind of felt different tonight. We kept grinding out at bats, inning by inning. We had runners on, and it just felt like it was a matter of time before someone came through, and Michael had a huge swing for us."