When Oregon State baseball coach Mitch Canham strolled into his Corvallis home late Sunday night after a long day of travel from Des Moines, Iowa, he tiptoed into his bedroom to find an immovable obstacle in the way of some restful sleep.
His daughter, Mya, was sprawled out on his side of the bed.
"I didn't want to wake her up," Canham said, "so I hit the couch."
Wait ... the couch?
"If I sleep in the guest room," Canham said, "the kids don't know I'm home. But if I sleep on the couch, they'll find me in the morning and wake me up. So I'll get to see them."
It should be the last time this month Canham will have to crash on his couch.
After a rigorous, road-heavy late-season schedule that saw the Beavers play 18 of 21 games away from Goss Stadium, they are back in Corvallis for the foreseeable future.
Oregon State (38-12-1) will host the Long Beach State Dirtbags this week in its final series of the regular season, and then the Beavers almost surely will host a four-team regional at the end of May, when the NCAA baseball tournament opens across the country.
As for the super regionals, well, that remains to be seen (see below).
Here's a primer for this week's series, which opens Thursday at 5:35 p.m. at Goss Stadium:
(Weekly trivia: The Beavers and Dirtbags are meeting for the 17th time and first since April 16, 2022. The Beavers won that game 14-3 in Corvallis. Can you name the winning pitcher?)
Oregon State had a resume-building week, clinching a pair of clutch series victories at hostile venues. The Beavers opened the week by defeating the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors 7-3, taking three of four games in Honolulu. They followed that up with a pair of wins and a tie against the Big Ten-leading Iowa Hawkeyes at Principal Park in Des Moines. OSU rode a Wilson Weber home run and go-ahead eighth-inning single to win the opener 9-6, then used dominant pitching performances from Dax Whitney and Nelson Keljo to earn a 5-1 victory in Game 2. The finale ended in a 6-6 tie after 10 innings because of an Oregon State travel curfew.
The 3-0-1 record spurred a rise in the national rankings for the Beavers, who climbed inside the top 10 in four of the five major college baseball polls. They surged to No. 7 in the D1Baseball Top 25, which The Oregonian/OregonLive uses for its rankings.
It's been a rough season for Long Beach State under first-year coach TJ Bruce, but the Dirtbags head to Corvallis on a relative hot streak, having won six of their last seven games.
In a topsy-turvy season that has seen Long Beach State lose seven weekend series, there has been one constant: Kellan Montgomery.
The junior right-hander is 9-3 with a 4.30 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 73 1/3 innings this season, and he has won four of his last five outings. Montgomery enters the series tied for fifth nationally in wins, owns one complete game victory and has held five different opponents to one earned run or less this season.
What's to come after Montgomery, however, is a question mark. Nine different Dirtbags have started games this season and four -- including Montgomery -- are listed as probable weekend starters. The group includes a pair of sophomores (right-handers Josh Donegan and Owen Geiss) and redshirt freshman (right-hander Jake Fields). Geiss (6-7, 4.23 ERA) joined the weekend rotation on March 15.
It's no wonder the Dirtbags have surrendered the fourth-most runs (318) and own the third-highest ERA (6.01) in the Big West Conference.
And their offense has been even worse. Long Beach State is batting just .245 and has scored just 268 runs this season, which rank ninth and 10th, respectively, in the 11-team Big West.
Outfielder Kyle Ashworth, the only Dirtbags' player hitting above .300, is the most imposing threat in the lineup. He leads the team in batting average (.346), hits (64), doubles (12), runs scored (41), total bases (86) and on-base percentage (.467), and brings an 11-game hitting streak into the series. Ashworth has 20 multi-hit efforts and nine multi-RBI performances this season.
The Beavers' strong week -- and 6-1-1 record in May -- has helped them maintain an impressive ranking in the RPI. Oregon State enters the final weekend of the regular season sitting at No. 6 in the RPI, which the NCAA baseball tournament selection committee uses (in part) to seed the postseason. It's hardly a lock that the Beavers will earn a top eight national seed (see below), but their strong RPI certainly won't hurt their case.
No Oregon State hitter is hotter than Weber, who on Tuesday was named a Dick Howser Trophy National Player of the Week.
The senior catcher, who owns a five-game hitting streak, is batting .375 with five homers, 18 RBIs, nine runs scored, two doubles, one triple and five walks in eight games this month.
During the red-hot stretch, Weber has a two-homer game, a grand slam, a go-ahead single, a four-hit performance and five multi-RBI efforts.
"Wilson's a beast," redshirt freshman James DeCremer said Tuesday night after watching Wilson crush a seventh-inning triple and score the go-ahead run in a 5-3 win over the Portland Pilots.
He's also a stabilizing force. As multiple players have battled slumps (see below), Wilson has surged, pushing his individual statistics to career-high levels. He's batting .328 with nine homers, 10 doubles, 45 RBIs and 36 runs scored.
As a result, Wilson has been moved up to the three hole in the lineup.
"It's been good, I'm feeling good," Weber said. "But winning games is important right now, so that's the main focus. Who cares about stats necessarily right now? It's just, we need to win."
Even though the Beavers are approaching 40 wins, boast a No. 6 ranking in the RPI and have survived a road-heavy independent schedule, they are not a lock to land a top eight national seed and home-field advantage through the super regionals.
In fact, at least two major national college baseball publications are predicting the opposite.
In the latest Field of 64 predictions, D1Baseball and Baseball America are both forecasting that Oregon State will be outside, looking in at the top eight seeds.
D1Baseball has tabbed Oregon State as a No. 12 seed in a bracket opposite the Nashville Regional, meaning its road to Omaha would likely travel through host Vanderbilt, the projected No. 5 seed. Baseball America, meanwhile, has pegged the Beavers as a No. 13 seed opposite No. 4 seed Georgia, likely sending the OSU to Athens, Georgia, for a super regional.
There's a lot to be decided across college baseball this month, including the final weekend of the regular season and a barrage of conference tournaments. But the Beavers' chances at a top eight seed are teetering on the bubble.
Dallas Macias has been in a season-long funk. Trent Caraway has struggled for the better part of the the last month and a half. And now a third prominent piece of the Beavers' once-potent lineup has descended into an extended slump.
Outfielder Easton Talt, who performed so well most of the season he was moved to the top of the batting order, is in an 0 for 31 rut. The junior from Everett, Washington, has not recorded a hit since his final at-bat against Gonzaga on April 21, when he delivered a 12th-inning walk-off infield single to give the Beavers a 4-3 win.
The dry spell has stretched a stunning 13 games and sent his batting average tumbling from .341 to .275. He has not started in four of the last eight games.
The slump came as opposing pitching staffs started working Talt on the outside part of the plate -- "nibbling away on him," Canham said -- which has tested his patience and caused him to chase outside pitches. As a result, he started hitting too many pop-ups and harmless grounders to second.
"I know that lifestyle really well -- F7, 4-3," Canham said, smiling, referring to his long-ago professional playing career.
So Talt has tweaked his approach and worked on leveling his swing and driving the ball the other way. But the Beavers' road-heavy schedule has not helped, Canham said.
"It's just the look, right, of extreme confidence, and I think maybe a little bit of the road trips and stuff like that," Canham said. "It just kind of got everybody just a little off.
"But I think it'll come back."
The good news? Talt arguably has as good an eye as anyone on the team, and he has continued to get on base during his slump, drawing 12 walks over nine different games. He has 59 walks this season, tied for the four-highest single-season total in school history.
Canham has moved Talt out of the leadoff spot and he's optimistic the worst in in the past.
"He probably just needs a quick breath and get back out there and roll," Canham said. "But he, like Dallas and all the other guys, have been putting in an incredible amount of work. So now you've got to trust that work and not overdo it and wear yourself out."
This is the 17th all-time meeting between the teams and the Dirtbags own a 9-7 edge. But the Beavers have won three in a row and five of the last six meetings in the series. They swept a three-game series in Corvallis in 2022, the last time the teams played.
Jacob Kmatz. The three-year OSU starter, who was selected in the fifth round of the 2024 MLB draft by the Tampa Bay Rays, earned his sixth career victory the last time these teams met. Kmatz, a freshman Sunday starter on the 2022 team, allowed three runs, four hits and recorded five strikeouts in five innings. He improved to 6-0 and went on to finish 8-2 that season.