Cal Poly to Open Big West Play by Hosting UC Davis for Three-Game Series
3/27/2013 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
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LIVE STATS | AUDIO | VIDEO
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- No. 21 Cal Poly (17-6, 0-0 Big West), which sprinted to 7-0 and 13-1 starts in the first four weeks of the 2013 baseball season and won a non-conference series against Central Coast rival UC Santa Barbara over the weekend before falling to Pepperdine on Tuesday, opens Big West Conference play Thursday night with the opener of a three-game series against UC Davis (10-12, 0-0 Big West) in Baggett Stadium (1,734).
First pitch Thursday and Friday nights is set for 6 o'clock with Saturday's series finale to begin at 1 o'clock. All three games of the series will be aired live on ESPN Radio 1280 with Tom Barket calling the play-by-play. The games also will be available via audio and video streams as well as live stats at GoPoly.com.
Cal Poly, 36-20 a year ago and winner of 14 of its final 17 games, returns 23 letter winners, including seven position starters and 11 pitchers (four starters), off its 2012 squad which swept six series, won nine of 14 weekend series, finished one game behind champion Cal State Fullerton in the Big West and ended atop the conference in most key offensive categories, including average, runs, hits, doubles, home runs and RBI.
Under 11th-year head coach Larry Lee, the Mustangs won their first seven games of the 2013 season, then after their first loss, a 2-1 decision at Washington, put together a six-game winning streak before falling to Kansas State 10-4 in the series finale at Manhattan, Kansas. Cal Poly has lost five of nine games since sweeping the Wildcats in a March 8 doubleheader, losing a series against Notre Dame before capturing its series against UC Santa Barbara last weekend as senior second baseman Denver Chavez and sophomore right fielder Nick Torres each collected seven hits and freshman designated hitter Brian Mundell homered twice and knocked in five runs. Pepperdine scored two unearned runs in the ninth inning Tuesday for an 8-6 victory.
UC Davis, which played its first nine games at home this season, opened the year by winning three of four against Washington and beating San Jose State 22-4 for a 4-1 start, but the Aggies won just four of their next 15 contests, losing series to Utah, Oklahoma State, CSU Bakersfield and Seattle. UC Davis beat San Jose State again 9-2 on Monday and rallied for two runs in the bottom of the ninth to edge Stanford 2-1 Tuesday in its final Big West tuneups.
Cal Poly hit .321 in the season-opening quartet of Bay Area games, but the mark fell to .234 in the Seattle series and .210 in the Washington series before hitting .307 in winning four of five games against Holy Cross and Kansas State. The Mustangs hit .310 the following week against San Jose State and Notre Dame, then produced a .358 mark in winning their series against UC Santa Barbara.
Chavez went 7-for-11 against the Gauchos with two doubles while Torres extended his hitting streak with a 7-for-12 series, including two doubles, his fifth home run of the year and four RBI. Mundell added five hits, scored four times and knocked in five runs. He has seven home runs on the year (all in the last 10 games), second only to Matt Jensen (nine) among freshmen in Cal Poly's 19-year Division I history. Chavez sports a .395 batting average while Mundell is hitting .358 and Torres .355.
Torres now has a 17-game hitting streak following a sixth-inning single against Pepperdine on Tuesday. The streak is the fourth-longest in Cal Poly's Division I history. Ryan Lee has the record of 26 straight games.
The Mustang starting rotation of senior right-hander Joey Wagman (5-1, 2.70 ERA), sophomore southpaw Matt Imhof (2-0, 1.41 ERA) and sophomore righty Bryan Granger (4-2, 4.02 ERA) has allowed just 32 earned runs in 23 games while relievers Reed Reilly, Michael Holback, Chase Johnson and Taylor Chris have combined for eight saves in the first six weeks of the season.
Wagman (pictured above) seeks his 20th career win Thursday night. He leads the Big West in strikeouts (53) and strikeouts looking (25) and is second in wins with his 5-1 record. Wagman is No. 9 all-time at Cal Poly and fourth in its 19-year Division I history with his 19 career wins (19-9).
Lee earned his 300th win last May 5 in a 12-7 decision at UC Davis. Lee (324-257-2) surpassed Berdy Harr (297-249-6 from 1973-83) as Cal Poly's winningest head baseball coach during the Pacific series a week earlier. Steve McFarland was 290-257 in 10 seasons (1984-93) at the helm of the Mustangs while Ritch Price was 217-228-1 in Cal Poly's first eight years of play in Division I (1995-2002).
Lee has guided Cal Poly to a quartet of 3-0 starts with season-opening series sweeps over San Diego in 2005, Fresno State in 2006, Oklahoma State in 2012 and San Francisco this year. The Mustangs won their first seven games for the first time since 1981. The 1954 and 1974 Mustangs started 8-0 and the school record start to a season was 10-0 by the 1951 team coached by Robert Mott.
UC Davis, coached by Matt Vaughn (second season, 37-42, UC Davis '92), returned 23 lettermen, including four position starters and seven pitchers, off a team which went 27-30 a year ago and finished fifth in the Big West Conference at 12-12.
Top hitters for the Aggies are first baseman Nick Lynch (.365, 15 RBI), second baseman Steven Patterson (.320, 13 RBI), right fielder John Williams (.313, 16 RBI) and third baseman Paul Politi (.308, 17 RBI). The UC Davis pitching staff is paced by Harry Stanwyck (3-2, 5.28 ERA), Spencer Koopmans (0-3, 6.31 ERA) and Evan Wolf (1-0, 2.59 ERA), all right-handers. Righty Max Cordy (4-2, 3.46 ERA, three saves) is the closer.
UC Davis is hitting .292 as a team with 38 doubles, six triples and three home runs, while the pitching staff has compiled a 5.20 earned run average. The Aggies have committed 39 errors in 22 games for a .954 fielding percentage.
Cal Poly and UC Davis have met only 30 times on the baseball field since the series began in 1951. Twenty-four of those meetings are over the last eight seasons after the Aggies announced their intention to move to Division I, a transfer that was completed in time for the 2008 season.
The Mustangs hold a 23-7 advantage in the series despite losing two of three games to the Aggies a year ago in Davis. Cal Poly had won seven consecutive series against UC Davis. Cal Poly is 18-6 against UC Davis since the Mustangs moved to Division I prior to the 1995 season.
Cal Poly, which dropped one spot to No. 21 in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper poll this week and also is ranked No. 23 in the Perfect Game and Baseball America polls and No. 25 in both the USA Today coaches and National College Baseball Writers Association polls, last year was ranked No. 22 by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper after its 7-1 start and No. 27 after sweeping UC Irvine in early April.
Cal Poly has won at least 30 games eight times in the last 13 seasons, in 2012 posted its 10th winning season since 2000 and has finished in the upper half of the conference standings nine times in the last 11 years.
The Mustangs played 10 of their first 15 games on the road and currently are in a stretch of playing 10 of 11 in Baggett Stadium.
Next week, Cal Poly has a return date with Central Coast rival UC Santa Barbara. The two teams played a non-conference series last weekend with the Mustangs winning twice at home and the Gauchos winning once in their home ballpark.
Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara will play their Big West Conference series at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium next week, with first pitch slated for Friday at 3 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
