LA JOLLA, Calif. - The 15th-ranked UC San Diego baseball team defeated visiting Cal State San Bernardino, 11-5, in a California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) contest Saturday night at Triton Ballpark.
With a season-high and current league-best sixth straight win, the Tritons improved to 18-7 overall and 14-3 in the CCAA. CSUSB dropped to 5-21 overall and 3-14 in league play. With Cal State Monterey Bay's 6-5 win in 11 innings at Cal State L.A., UCSD remains in a two-way tie for first in the standings with the Otters, who are an identical 18-7 and 14-3. UCSD had been idle since March 8, taking winter quarter final exams this past week.
Saturday's primetime affair was played in front of a season-high 306 spectators at the renovated Triton Ballpark, with more than a dozen professional scouts on hand to watch Triton ace Justin Donatella.
Though Donatella (5-1) saw his incredible shutout streaks end at 34.1 innings overall and 31.2 frames to begin the CCAA slate, the junior right-hander still fanned eight in an effective outing to notch his fifth winning decision in as many starts. He upped his league-leading strikeout total to 50. Donatella allowed two runs on four hits and one walk, with his season ERA going from 0.28 to a still-CCAA-best 0.70.
The Tritons produced 17 hits and scored six times over the first two frames to back Donatella. They batted around during a four-run first, with Brandon Shirley's three-run double to left center the big blow. The redshirt sophomore centerfielder later launched his second home run of the year, a mammoth solo shot in the fifth.
Donatella was perfect through three, retiring the first nine Coyotes all around the infield. He struck out two in each of those innings for a total of six, including three on called third strikes, and also fanned a pair in the fifth.
Leadoff man Damion Edmonds worked the count full and drew a walk to begin the fourth as the first base-runner against Donatella. He then advanced into scoring position on a wild pitch. After Kevin Meriwether popped out, Grant Buchanan lifted a fly ball that initially looked routine, but managed to find some grass in between a sliding Shirley and sprinting shortstop Tyler Howsley, with Edmonds scurrying around third to snap Donatella's string in the most improbable of manners.
Aaron Owen led off the fifth with a double. It appeared as though Donatella was going to leave him there after back-to-back strikeouts, but No. 9 batter Dillon Fahr managed to poke an RBI single to center to make it a 6-2 game at the time.
In the first, junior designated hitter Gradeigh Sanchez took a four-pitch walk from Coyote starter Kamden Haglund (1-5). Following successive strikeouts looking, Jack Larsen singled through the left side to keep the inning alive, and Troy Cruz (Chula Vista/Bonita Vista HS) singled to shortstop deep in the hole to load the bases. Senior second baseman Erik Lewis took Haglund's very next offering to the opposite field in left for an RBI single, setting up Shirley for a bases-clearing two-bagger up against the wall in the gap after he had fouled off a couple of 1-2 pitches.
UCSD added two in the second on RBI singles by Larsen and Lewis, both also perfectly slotted through the left side. Sanchez had opened that rally again, this time via opposite-field single to left.
Shirley's monster dinger to left with one away, his second of 2015, answered the single CSUSB run in the fifth in the bottom half. Despite surrendering three more runs in the latter three frames, the Tritons still countered with four more of their own. Sanchez and Michael Mann had RBI singles in the seventh for a pair of unearned scores. UCSD then loaded the bases on three singles in the eighth before Howsley walked and Sanchez beat out an RBI fielder's choice groundout.
Sanchez finished 3-for-4 with two walks, two runs and two RBI. He reached base to begin the first, second and fourth. Shirley went 3-for-4 as well, with the double, home run, a hit-by-pitch, two runs, two stolen bases, and a career-high four RBI. Lewis was 3-for-5 with two runs and two RBI. Mann, Larsen and Brett Levy added two hits apiece.
Senior Dan Kolodin threw the seventh and redshirt freshman John Erhardt handled the final six outs in relief. The latter induced a lineout double play to Lewis in the eighth before getting Dylan Lohman staring at strike three to clean up two singles.
These teams turn around and play a doubleheader at Fiscalini Field in San Bernardino on Sunday, March 22, beginning at 12 p.m. The four-game season series will conclude back in La Jolla on Tuesday night, April 21.
Triton Notes: Justin Flatt's nine-game hit streak, the longest by a Triton in 2015, was snapped ... The Tritons now have hit 11 home runs in 25 games this season, after connecting on exactly that many long balls in 54 contests a year ago ... UCSD has reached double digits in runs eight times during the current campaign.
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