The UCI Baseball team (17-9, 4-6) fell to the Long Beach State Dirtbags (19-9, 7-3), 11-6, at Anteater Ballpark on Thursday, April 6.
After a rocky start to conference play, the Anteaters looked to carry the momentum from their dominant Tuesday victory against Fresno State into the weekend series against conference rivals Long Beach State.
The Dirtbags had other ideas, however, jumping on UCI redshirt junior starting pitcher Nick Pinto from the word go.
Long Beach leadoff hitter sophomore infielder Eddie Saldivar got the Dirtbags off to a quick start, stinging the second pitch of the game into left field for a single. Junior infielder Jonathon Long followed up Saldivar with a barrel of his own, clobbering a second pitch curveball over the trees in dead center field for a two-run homerun.
Two more singles and a walk loaded the bases for Long Beach junior infielder Nick Marinconz. Marinconz proceeded to join the hit parade with a two RBI single while Pinto exited in the first after only recording one out, forcing redshirt senior Michael Stanford to come on in relief for the ‘Eaters. The Dirtbags batted around in the first inning, scoring four runs and putting UCI in a quick hole.
The Anteaters scratched across a run of their own in the bottom of the first as junior outfielder Caden Kendle reached on an infield single. Kendle was cashed in two batters later thanks to a booming double into the right centerfield gap of the bat of sophomore outfielder Chase Call.
After the Dirtbags batted around, Saldivar again led off the second inning with an almost identical single to the one he hit in the first, followed by another single from Long.
A walk loaded the bases for sophomore outfielder Kyle Ashworth, who promptly unloaded them for LBSU with one swing — sending a triple to the opposite field gap and adding another three runs to the ‘Eaters deficit, making the score 7-1 going into the bottom of the second.
The Dirtbags redshirt junior starting pitcher Graham Osman kept the ‘Eaters quiet all night collecting two 1, 2, 3 innings in both the second and third innings.
Long Beach State got an RBI single from Saldivar in the third inning and an RBI double and a run scored off of Marinconz in the top of the fourth inning to put their run total at 10.
UCI junior catcher Thomas McCaffery offered some hope to the UCI faithful in the bottom of the sixth inning as he connected with a rocket two-run home run off the scoreboard in left to pull UCI to within 6, 10-4.
Both teams put up one run each before the end of the game. However, UCI could not overcome the early hole and fell to the Dirtbags 11-6.
Long, Saldivar, Ashworth and Marinconz combined for nine total RBIs and gave Osman the cushion to go five and two thirds innings while only allowing three earned runs.
The ‘Eaters fell to Long Beach on Friday, April 7 9-0, however, they bounced back on Saturday, April 8 with an 11-2 victory.
Zeke Bellino is a Sports Staff Writer. He can be reached at zbellino@uci.edu.
