There was a lot to like about UC Santa Barbara’s performance in Thursday’s opener of a three-game baseball series against Big West-leading Cal Poly at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium:
Starting pitcher Tyler Bremner struck out a career-high 13 batters and walked only one in seven complete innings; the pitchers out of the bullpen gave solid efforts; the offense rallied from a two-run deficit in the eighth inning to send the game into extra inning; the defense played errorless baseball and made a clutch play in the ninth to keep Cal Poly from scoring a go-ahead run.
Even with all of that, the Gauchos still wound up on the short end of a 4-3 decision in 11 innings.
A two-out, two-strike single to the right side by Casey Murray Jr., scored Ryan Fenn from second base for the game-winning run in top of the 11th.
The Mustangs improved to 15-1 in Big West play and 27-9 overall while UCSB fell to 10-9, 24-12.
“(Cal Poly) did a good job with a couple big two-strike hits there that ended up kind of being the blows for us over the course of the day,” said UCSB coach Andrew Checketts of the seventh home loss of the season. “It’s been kind of a recurring theme for us during the year of giving up a lot of big two-strike hits. But Bremner was competitive on the day and the bullpen was competitive. And we had some chances offensively and just couldn’t get some swings going.”
Murray’s go-ahead single off freshman reliever Raymond Olivas came after Fenn stole second base with two outs.
Jack Collins also came through for the Mustangs on a two-strike pitch with a runner in scoring position. He drove in Alejandro Garza with a sacrifice fly into deep right field on a full count that broke a 1-1 tie in the fourth inning.
UCSB batters made good contact against Cal Poly starter sophomore Griffin Naess, but many of the balls were hit right at Mustang fielders. Naess allowed one run and four hits, struck out four and walked two in seven innings.
“We’ve had quite a few games like that this year where we’ve lined out a lot,” said Checketts. “I guess the moral of the story is hit it over their heads — hit it where they can’t catch it.”
Nate Vargas did just that in the eighth inning, blasting a delivery from Cal Poly lefty reliever Chris Downs to the right-center field fence. Vargas’ drive eluded a diving center fielder Murray for a triple that scored Trey McCollum and Cole Kosciusko to knot the score at 3-3.
A big hit like Vargas’ or balls hit over the fence “are hard to defend,” said Checketts. “We’ve got to be able to find a way to score when we don’t hit it over the fence or hit over them defensively. We had some opportunities.”
The Gaucho defense spoiled a Cal Poly opportunity to break the 3-3 tie in the top of the ninth. With Murray at third base after a single, sacrifice and wild pitch, freshman reliever Nathan Aceves threw a pitch in the dirt against Nate Castellon. Murray started to break for the plate but Vargas, the Gaucho catcher, dug out the ball and chased Murray back up the line before tossing the ball to third baseman Xavier Esquer for the tag out.
The Gauchos took a 1-0 lead in the second inning. Jack Holman singled, moved to second on a sacrifice by Rowan Kelly and scored on a double to left by Ian Fernandez. Fernandez, however, pulled up at second base and left the game. He was replaced at catcher by Vargas, who started as the designated hitter.
Bremner was dominating to start the game, striking out six straight Mustangs and eight of the first nine. He walked lead-off hitter Dante Vachini to start the fourth but Vachini was erased on a fielder’s choice by Fenn. Garza collected the first hit off Bremner, a double for a RBI. After a wild pitch, Collins hit a sacrifice fly for Cal Poly’s second run.
With the Gauchos shorthanded due to injuries, Bremner was allowed to bat in Fernandez’ spot in the fourth inning. He struck out looking in his first collegiate at-bat.
“I know we can cry river about the injury side of it,” said Checketts. “We had to pull our DH and Tyler Bremner got his first college at-bat today because of injury, because Fernandez went down. We brought our DH (Vargas), or our backup catcher, into the game, and that means the pitcher has to hit in that spot. So, he had to hit while he was still in the game, and then we made pitching changes every time we pinch hit after that.”
Bremner allowed three runs on six hits in seven innings.
Cal Poly reliever Jake Torres picked up the win while Olivas suffered the loss.
While it was a tough game to lose, Checketts said the Gauchos need to keep grinding and improving.
“Nobody’s gonna feel sorry for us. We need to keep getting better, and that’s been the focus: Can we play quality baseball? Because it feels like even with some of our wins, we haven’t played really quality baseball during the year.
“This was a loss but I would say on the pitch and defensive side of it, we didn’t give them a bunch of base runners and make a bunch of errors. I would like to have buried that breaking ball (at) three-two with the open base there on that one hit for them. But our leg time wasn’t great to give up the stolen base. So those are a couple details to get away from you and end up costing you a game, and things that we need to keep getting better at.”
