Ryan ChartrandThe Cal Poly baseball team honored its three senior players Sunday with a short ceremony before the game, followed by a 3-1 win for its first series victory over Cal State Fullerton in 34 years.
One of Cal Poly’s seniors, right fielder Bryan Kepner, was especially happy to win the game, which was played before a crowd of 1,611 at Baggett Stadium.
“It feels great because I’m from down there (Whittier) and it’s a school that passed up on me,” he said. “I wanted to stick it to ’em all weekend.”
Before Sunday, the Mustangs had lost every series against the Titans since 1973.
While Cal Poly improved to 29-24 overall and alone at fourth place at 10-8 in the Big West Conference, Cal State Fullerton – ranked 24th by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper – fell to 32-21 and tied for fifth in conference at 9-9.
The Mustangs assured themselves of a fourth straight winning season after going five games above .500 for the second time this year.
After a scoreless first inning, Kepner faced Cal State Fullerton starter Paul Canedo in the second with one out and Adam Buschini on first base because of a walk. Kepner roped the ball to center field for a single, but when Buschini rounded second, it appeared as if the throw to third would beat him. At the last second, Titan third baseman Evan McArthur ducked under the toss, allowing Buschini third and Kepner second.
Cal Poly’s next batter, catcher Joshua Thomas, laid down a squeeze bunt that puttered out to the right of the mound and appeared likely to end up an easy out. Looking to throw the ball home and force out Buschini, Canedo picked up the ball barehanded and lost his grip, flipping it behind him, allowing Buschini to score and Thomas to reach first unfettered.
In a gutsy coaching decision, second baseman Pat Pezet followed Buschini’s squeeze bunt with yet another squeeze bunt. This time Canedo fielded the ball, threw Pezet out at first and let one run score.
Now with Buschini on second, center fielder Logan Schafer drilled a shot to center that sent Buschini home. The throw home from Titan center fielder Clark Hardman was just late and Buschini scored.
When asked why he resorted to back-to-back squeeze bunts, Cal Poly head coach Larry Lee said, “When you have someone with the caliber of (Thomas) Eager on the mound, you just wanna get a lead and try and tack on, plus we were down in the bottom of our lineup.”
The Mustangs’ three unearned runs in the second would be their only runs of the game and the Titans would only answer with one run of their own in the fourth.
Eager (10-3) gave up one run on seven hits in 7 1/3 innings. The sophomore right-hander walked two and struck out two, with 74 of the 110 pitches he threw going for strikes. Evan Reed threw 1 2/3 scoreless innings of relief to earn his 10th save of the season.
Asked about his thoughts while the Mustangs went on their second-inning scoring run, Eager said, “I was like, ‘here, give me a couple and I think I can hold them.'”
Of Reed, Eager said: “Evan Reed came up and did a great job, so you can’t ask for anything better. He’s been nails for the last couple of weekends.”
Cal Poly closes the regular season at Big West rival UC Santa Barbara next weekend.
Lee answered whether the team has a chance to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament with a definitive, “I don’t think so.”
Part of Eager’s pitching success Sunday was because of the umpire’s calling of outside strikes, especially on left-handed batters.
“Early in the game we thought, ‘hey, maybe we could get these guys inside a little bit more,'” Eager said, “but we caught on real quick and said, ‘hey, we can get outside.'”