Arizona’s Clark Candiotti named Pac-12 Pitcher of Week

Across the board, Arizona’s pitching has been vastly improved from a year ago. The Wildcats have the top ERA in the Pac-12 in conference play, at 3.40, and they lead the nation in strikeout-to-walk ratio and walks per nine innings.

But the individual awards had been lacking for the staff, with only Jackson Kent’s season-opening start against Northeastern garnering recognition over the first 11 weeks of the season.

Clark Candiotti took care of that Saturday night, firing a 5-hit shutout against Stanford to earn him Pac-12 Pitcher of the Week.

The senior right-hander tossed his second complete game of the season, the first UA pitcher to do so since Garrett Irvin in 2021 and the first to have a pair of complete games in Pac-12 play since Cameron Ming in 2018. For the season Candiotti is 5-2 with a 2.93 ERA, 2.12 in conference games.

That 5-0 win Saturday, part of another weekend sweep for the Wildcats, was the second time this season they’ve shut out a conference foe. That hadn’t happened since 2016.

Arizona, which climbed to No. 17 in the D1Baseball.com rankings and is back in the Baseball America Top 25 at No. 23, sits at 33 in the RPI. The Wildcats (29-17, 17-7) have a 2-game lead on Utah, whom they visit this weekend, for the Pac-12 lead, but first they visit ASU (26-23) Tuesday in Phoenix.