Cal Poly Baseball to Visit CSU Bakersfield for Single Game Tuesday Night
4/9/2013 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
WEEKLY NOTES: CAL POLY | BIG WEST | CSU BAKERSFIELD
AUDIO STREAM | LIVE STATS
SAN LUIS OBISPO,Calif. -- No. 20 Cal Poly (21-8, 4-2 Big West), which sprinted to 7-0 and 13-1 starts in the first four weeks of the 2013 baseball season, opened Big West Conference play with a three-game series sweep over UC Davis but stumbled at UC Santa Barbara over the weekend, losing two of three, visits CSU Bakersfield (21-11, 6-3 Western Athletic) for a single non-conference game Tuesday night at Hardt Field (500).
First pitch is set for 6 p.m. and the game will be aired live on ESPN Radio 1280 with Tom Barket calling the play-by-play. The game also will be available via audio stream 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. Despite sweeping UC Davis two weeks ago and 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 has won just eight of its last 15 games, falling twice in three Big West games at UC Santa Barbara over the weekend. Senior second baseman Denver Chavez went 7-for-13 with two doubles and a pair of RBI and has collected seven hits in each of Cal Poly's last three weekend series (21-for-39, .538), bumping his batting average for the season up to .407.
CSU Bakersfield climbed into a first-place tie with Texas-Arlington in the Western Athletic Conference by winning two of three games in Texas last weekend.
Cal Poly has hit over the .300 mark in five of its eight weekend series, including a .358 mark in the non-conference series against UC Santa Barbara two weeks ago and .342 against UC Davis. Last weekend, however, the Mustangs hit just .237 in their Big West series at UCSB.
Chavez leads the Mustangs with his .407 batting average, second in the Big West. Chavez leads the conference in hits (41) and is second in on-base percentage (.467) and runs scored (23). Sophomore right fielder Nick Torres sports a .325 mark with five home runs and shares the team lead in RBI with freshman designated hitter Brian Mundell, both with 22. Mundell is hitting .313 and has seven home runs on the year, second only to Matt Jensen (nine) among freshmen in Cal Poly's 19-year Division I history. 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. Freshman shortstop Peter Van Gansen is hitting .306.
The Mustang starting rotation of senior right-hander Joey Wagman (6-2, 3.29 ERA), sophomore southpaw Matt Imhof (3-1, 1.72 ERA) and sophomore righty Bryan Granger (5-2, 3.80 ERA) has allowed just 47 earned runs in 29 games while relievers Reed Reilly, Michael Holback, Chase Johnson and Taylor Chris have combined for nine saves in the first eight weeks of the season.
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.
CSU Bakersfield, coached by Bill Kernen (fifth season, 118-130, Redlands '70), returned 15 lettermen, including seven position starters and seven pitchers, off a team which went 25-30 a year ago. The Roadrunners, an independent since launching their baseball program in 2009, are in their first season in the WAC.
The Roadrunners sprinted to 10-4 and 16-6 starts with series wins over LIU-Brooklyn, UC Davis and Northern Colorado but have split their last 10 games, still earning series wins over Sacramento State, New Mexico State and Texas-Arlington.
Top hitters for the Roadrunners are shortstop Tyler Shryock (,390, 12 RBI), catcher/first baseman Cael Brockmeyer (.369, three home runs, 32 RBI) and third baseman Mylz Jones (.359, 16 RBI), who had a 21-game hitting streak snapped by Texas-Arlington.
CSU Bakersfield is expected to start sophomore right-hander James Barragan (0-0, 0.75 ERA) against Cal Poly on Tuesday. He will be opposed by Mustang freshman right-hander Casey Bloomquist (pictured above) (0-0, 11.12 ERA).
The Roadrunners are hitting .299 as a team with 48 doubles, 15 triples and four home runs, while the pitching staff has compiled a 2.53 earned run average. CSU Bakersfield has committed 33 errors in 32 games for a .974 fielding percentage.
Cal Poly and CSU Bakersfield have met 14 times on the baseball field since the series began in 2009. The Mustangs hold a 9-5 advantage in the series, winning six of the first seven before the Roadrunners swept Cal Poly by scores of 3-1, 10-3 and 3-1 on the final weekend of the 2011 season at Hardt Field. The Mustangs won three of four games against the Roadrunners a year ago, igniting a season-ending seven-game winning streak with a 6-2 triumph at Hardt Field last May 15, two days after winning two of three games at Baggett Stadium.
Cal Poly, which dropped three spots to No. 20 in the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper poll this week, four spots to No. 25 in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll and four positions to No. 24 in the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association poll, fell out of the Baseball America and Perfect Game polls. 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. Tuesday's game at CSU Bakersfield ends a four-game road trip and Cal Poly will follow with seven consecutive home games, hosting Hawai'i this weekend and Cal State Fullerton next weekend for Big West series sandwiched around a non-conference contest next Tuesday night against Santa Clara.
