UC San Diego Club Baseball took on Cal State Fullerton Club Baseball this past weekend of November 5-6 in a three game pre-season series. The Tritons dropped the first two games by a score of 6-5 but battled back to win the final game 8-3.
In the first of the three games, the Tritons sent senior starting pitcher Kevin Nieh to the hill to face off against the Fullerton Titans. Kevin did a great job battling through 4 ⅔ hard fought innings before having to leave the game down 2-1. The Titans were able to capitalize on some wild pitching from UC San Diego scoring 5 runs in the 5th inning and breaking out to a 6-1 lead. The score remained 6-1 until the 8th inning, where the Triton bats finally caught fire, striking for four runs in the inning to pull within one, making the score 6-5. Unfortunately, the Tritons weren’t able to complete the comeback and dropped the first game of the series 6-5. The big 8th inning rally for UC San Diego was sparked by key hits from Alex Uy, Shane Sudsbury, and Ray Estrada.
In the second game, Yuki Komine took the hill for UC San Diego and went four solid innings. Unfortunately, the Tritons didn’t bring their A-game on defense and some key errors in the third inning led to Fullerton scoring 5 runs and spelled the end for the Tritons. Fullerton would add one more run to make it a 6-0 lead and that was more than UC San Diego’s offense could handle. The Tritons were shut out until the 6th inning where they scored 2 runs to make it a 6-2 game. In the 7th inning, the Tritons showed late resilience as they did in the first game, with a two out, three run rally courtesy of great at bats from Hunter Woodruff, Seamus Beyerle, and Zeke Haenelt to make it a 6-5 game. Unfortunately, UC San Diego could not get that last big hit and dropped game two by the same count as game one, 6-5.
In the final game of the series, senior Shane Aldas started for the Tritons looking to salvage at least one win for the weekend. Shane was sharp throughout his four innings of work, only surrendering one run. The Triton offense came to life in this final game, giving Shane and other pitchers Joshua Barragan, John Driscoll, and Ray Young plenty of room to work with on the mound. The Tritons exploded for five runs in the third inning and added three more throughout the rest of the game thanks to great performances from Seamus Beyerle, Richie Mendoza, Alec Lopez, and Matthew Demarest. The Tritons won the game 8-3 and were able to head back to San Diego with something to be happy about.
This series wrapped up the Triton’s fall season. UC San Diego Club Baseball will have the rest of the 2016 calendar year to rest, practice, and gear up for what should be a great 2017 SoPac South campaign and hopefully another shot at making it to the conference regional tournament. We thank everyone for their support and look forward to seeing you cheering us on again when January rolls around!
