Cal Poly to Host No. 4 Cal State Fullerton for Big West Showdown Series
4/18/2013 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
WEEKLY NOTES: CAL POLY | CAL STATE FULLERTON | BIG WEST
PREVIEWS: ESPN.COM | BASEBALL AMERICA | PERFECT GAME
BLOOMQUIST, ELLIS SPARK CAL POLY TO WIN OVER SANTA CLARA
AUDIO STREAM: FRIDAY | SATURDAY | SUNDAY
LIVE STATS | VIDEO STREAM
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- No. 16 Cal Poly (25-9, 6-3 Big West), which sprinted to 7-0 and 13-1 starts in the first four weeks of the 2013 baseball season and has opened Big West Conference play with six wins in nine contests for second place, concludes a seven-game homestand this weekend by hosting No. 4 Cal State Fullerton (32-5, 8-1 Big West) for a three-game Big West Conference series in Baggett Stadium (1,734).
First pitch is set for 6 p.m. both Friday and Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. All three games 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, returned 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 (snapping a 14-game winning streak over two seasons), put together a six-game winning streak before falling to Kansas State 10-4 in the series finale at Manhattan, Kansas.
Cal Poly swept UC Davis to open Big West play three weeks ago, lost two of three at UC Santa Barbara and won two of three against Hawai'i, in the process reaching the 20-win mark before the end of March for the first time since the NCAA's uniform start date was implemented in 2008. Cal Poly bounced back from Sunday's 7-6 loss to the Rainbows with a 7-2 non-conference victory over Santa Clara on Tuesday night behind the pitching of Casey Bloomquist (6 1/3 innings, two runs, four hits, career-high eight strikeouts) and the hitting of Jordan Ellis (two singles, one triple, one RBI) and Denver Chavez (one single, one double, three runs scored).
Cal State Fullerton won its first 10 games of the year and has won 20 of its last 22 contests, including an 8-4 victory over Pepperdine on Tuesday in Malibu. The Titans' only losses this season are to Oregon, San Diego, Loyola Mary-mount, Texas A&M and a 2-0 decision against UC Santa Barbara last Sunday.
Cal Poly has hit over the .300 mark in five of its nine weekend series, including a .358 mark in the non-conference series against UC Santa Barbara four weeks ago and .342 against UC Davis. The Mustangs, however, hit just .237 in their Big West series at UCSB two weeks ago and .239 against Hawaii last weekend.
Chavez leads the Mustangs and the Big West with his .403 batting average. He also leads the conference in runs scored (33), hits (56) and doubles (11) and is second in on-base percentage (.468), third in steals (11) and fourth in total bases (71). He has a seven-game hitting streak. Sophomore right fielder Nick Torres sports a .328 mark with six home runs and leads the team in RBI with 30 and the Big West with six sacrifice flies while freshman shortstop Peter Van Gansen is hitting .300.
Freshman designated hitter Brian Mundell has 24 RBI and seven home runs on the year, second only to Matt Jensen (nine) among freshmen in Cal Poly's 19-year Division I history. Junior third baseman Jimmy Allen (pictured above) is hitting .291 with a six-game hitting streak. Torres had an 18-game hitting streak, fourth-longest in Cal Poly's 19-year Division I history, snapped by UC Davis on March 29.
The Mustang starting rotation of senior right-hander Joey Wagman (7-2, 2.95 ERA), sophomore southpaw Matt Imhof (4-1, 1.51 ERA) and sophomore righty Bryan Granger (5-3, 4.47 ERA) has allowed just 52 earned runs in 34 games while relievers Reed Reilly, Michael Holback, Chase Johnson and Taylor Chris have combined for 11 saves in the first nine weeks of the season.
Lee earned his 300th win last May 5 in a 12-7 decision at UC Davis. Lee (333-262-2) 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.
Cal State Fullerton, coached by Rick Vanderhook (second season, 68-26, Trinity '03), returned 24 lettermen, including seven position starters and nine pitchers, off a team which went 36-21 a year ago, won its third straight Big West Conference title at 16-8 and finished 1-2 in the NCAA's Eugene Regional.
Top hitters for the Titans are center fielder Michael Lorenzen (.343, seven home runs, 36 RBI, seven steals), first baseman Carlos Lopez (.338, 19 RBI, 12 steals), designated hitter J.D. Davis (.323, 33 RBI), left fielder Austin Diemer (.355, six steals), catcher Chad Wallach (.330, 19 RBI) and shortstop Richy Pedroza (.282, 20 RBI, five steals). The Cal State Fullerton pitching staff is paced by Thomas Eshelman (7-1, 1.09 ERA), Justin Garza (7-0, 2.36 ERA) and Grahamm Wiest (6-2, 2.70 ERA), all right-handers. The closer is Lorenzen with 12 saves along with a 1-0 record and 2.84 ERA.
The Titans are hitting .288 as a team with 46 doubles, 20 triples and 22 home runs, while the pitching staff has compiled a 2.51 earned run average. The Titans have committed 37 errors in 37 games for a .974 fielding percentage.
Cal State Fullerton captured NCAA College World Series titles in 1979, 1984, 1995 and 2004, has appeared in the NCAA postseason 34 times, including 21 straight, has reached the College World Series 16 times and has claimed 26 conference championships. The Titans, who are hitting .330 in Big West games and is 16-1 on the road this season, have never had a losing season in 38 Division I campaigns.
Cal Poly and Cal State Fullerton have met 95 times on the baseball field since the series began when both teams were California Collegiate Athletic Association members back in 1966. The Titans hold a 61-34 advantage, though Cal Poly has enjoyed some recent success with seven victories in the last 18 meetings over the last six seasons, winning series at home in 2007 and 2011 and beating the Titans 8-6 in the middle game of last year's series at Goodwin Field.
Cal Poly, which jumped four spots to No. 16 in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper poll Monday, three spots to No. 22 in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll and two positions to No. 22 in the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association poll, returned to the Baseball America and Perfect Game polls at No. 23 this week after winning the Hawai'i series, two games to one. Last year the Mustangs were ranked No. 22 by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper after their 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 recently finished a stretch of playing 10 of 11 contests in Baggett Stadium. After playing four more games on the road at UC Santa Barbara and CSU Bakersfield, Cal Poly is in the midst of a seven-game homestand.
Next week, Cal Poly hits the road for a single game Tuesday at Cal followed by a three-game Big West series at Long Beach State on April 25-27.
