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With the Oregon State baseball team (16-3) upping their win streak to 10 games with a 7-3 win over Rutgers on Tuesday, BeaversEdge senior writer Ryan Harlan gives three takeaways from the Beavers' recent stretch of games...

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The Oregon State pitching staff has been an unsung hero in the early stages of the 2025 baseball season.

I know that sounds farfetched to hear, given where it looked in games against Auburn and Minnesota, where pitching seemed to be the weakness as to where those games were decided.

However, when looking at their play at Goss Stadium over this nine-game homestand, the staff seemed to have turned those performances around.

As a collective effort, Kellan Oakes, Laif Palmer, and James DeCremer combined for a collective no-hitter through eight innings of work against Rutgers before that was broken up in a Beaver 7-3 win over Rutgers.

Oakes, Palmer, and DeCremer just kept filling up the zone and made it difficult for Rutgers to adjust through most of the game combining for five strikeouts.

While it’s easy to sing the praises of the trio from tonight’s win, they’re not the only ones making opposing batters' lives more challenging at the plate.

Sunday’s starter, Ethan Klienschmit, had himself an outing against Grand Canyon in a 3-1 victory, where he tossed a season high nine strikeouts and only gave up a walk along with two hits on the afternoon.

Kleinschmit was the surprise of the weekend rotation for the Beavers coming into this season, as he wasn’t someone I pegged for a starting role. Now, that’s more of I expected Eric Segura to have a significant role in the weekend rotation to build off what he did last season as a freshman, but Kleinschmit has carved out a prominent role as the Sunday guy.

The eye test backs it up, and the statistics show it, too. Over his last two appearances, he has gathered 15 strikeouts and held opposing batters to a .136 batting average.

While Kleinschmit deserves praise for his outing against Grand Canyon, fellow weekend starters Dax Whitney and Nelson Keljo have also been dominant in the early goings of the season.

Keljo has been holding batters to a .156 batting average while Whitney has held batters to a .188 average. All three in the weekend rotation together have combined for a 1.10 ERA so far in March and have the fourth-best ERA in the country right now, headed into this weekend’s road trip against Cal Poly.

One of the things that we heard before this season was that the depth and talent of this pitching staff were vastly improved from the 2024 season. While Kmatz, May, and Segura were solid respectively in their own rights throughout games, they also faltered in key games in stretches throughout the season.

However, based on early impressions so far of the pitching staff, given the fact that they’re going to keep improving throughout the season. I think this year’s staff right now is vastly improved compared to the 2024 season, at least at this point in the season.

I think the thing I want to see going forward from this staff is who will be the pitcher to step into the closing role or at least be the guy in key critical situations late in the season.

Matthew Morrell has been solid coming out of the bullpen, being a guy to close out games on the mound, notably on Friday nights. However, Tanner Douglas and Joey Mundt are also quality arms out of the bullpen who could step into that role as the season progresses.

I really like Douglas, especially in that role after his performance against Grand Canyon with five strikeouts to close out the afternoon. While I’ve sung the praises of the pitching staff, there are still things to improve, like limiting the amount of late-game runs they’ve let up, especially in a game like tonight, where you nearly no-hit Rutgers.