Cal Poly Baseball took home their first road Big West series this past weekend against Cal State Fullerton.
The Mustangs (14-11, 6-3 Big West) are on a hot streak as they secured their third straight Big West series, this time on the road against the Titans (9-17, 2-7 Big West.)
Cal Poly is currently tied for third in the Big West Conference standings with CSU Northridge and sits behind UC Santa Barbara and first-place UC Irvine.
The three-game set was originally supposed to span over three days, Thursday through Saturday, but Friday was changed to a doubleheader to avoid rain in the area.
Mustangs drop game one
Cal Poly lost their first matchup against Cal State Fullerton on Thursday 8-2. The Mustangs seek to stay above .500 and win the series on the road.
The Mustangs had a hot 4-2 start to the conference season, winning two of three games against No. 25 UC Santa Barbara.
Junior Steven Brooks struggled on the mound for Cal Poly as the Titans took a quick 3-0 lead in the first inning with a double scoring one and a two-run homer right after.
Despite junior Ryan Stafford hitting a two-run home run in the third, the Titans responded with two runs of their own.
The third inning also saw redshirt junior Ryan Fenn extend his hitting streak to 18 straight games with a single to center, which is now in the top-10 longest hitting streaks in Cal Poly history for Division I baseball.
Down 5-2 for the next few innings, freshman Caden Pearlman shut out the Titans until the 8th, but the offense could not capitalize and mustered just three hits through the last six innings and seven total.
Jakob Wright stays on track
Game two of the series and game one of the doubleheader, scheduled to beat the rain on Saturday, saw redshirt sophomore Jakob Wright take the mound, sporting a 2.84 earned run average (ERA).
That number would take a ding after Wright gave up a second-inning solo home run to give the Titans the early advantage.
It would quickly swing back towards the Mustangs in the top of the third as Stafford stayed hot and slapped a two-strike single into right field to score the tying run. Stafford would steal second to put runners on second and third with senior first baseman Joe Yorke at the plate. Yorke would also hit it to the right side to score both runners and pick up his team-leading 25th RBI.
The Mustang offense continued in the next frame with senior shortstop Aaron Casillas putting an RBI double into the right-center gap and senior center fielder Jake Steels adding an RBI single.
Those five runs were all that Wright needed to cruise through the Fullerton offense, leaving with a line of six innings pitched, six strikeouts and just the one run on his ledger.
Junior Jake Torres relieved Wright for the final three innings and only gave up an RBI single in the eighth to end game one of the doubleheader with a 5-2 victory.
Naess flirts with a no-hitter, offense continues momentum
The rubber match saw freshman Griffin Naess stifle the Fullerton offense with seven hitless innings before his no-hit bid was broken up in the eighth inning. Despite only giving up one hit and one walk through eight innings of work, Naess hit five Titans with pitches throughout the game.
The offense started the party in the third, scoring the first run on a fielder’s choice by Fenn. Then a throwback to the “small-ball” type of baseball by scoring the second run of the inning with a sacrifice bunt from freshman third baseman Alejandro Garza.
In the fifth inning, the Mustangs jumped on a Titan fielding error scoring three runs with contributions from Fenn, Yorke and junior outfielder Dylan Kordic.
A Steels single up the middle in the sixth brought home the sixth and final run for the Mustangs on the night. It was all Naess needed; despite a hint of traffic in the bottom of the frame, Naess was still working on a no-hitter. A Fullerton hit in the eighth inning would end that bid and redshirt sophomore righty Tanner Sagouspe came in to sit down Fullerton in the ninth inning. Cal Poly left with two wins on the night and the series win, 6-0.
Cal Poly will host the San Diego State Aztecs for a midweek two-game set on Tuesday, April 2, and Wednesday, April 3 with both games at 6 p.m. at Baggett Stadium.