By snoadmin
Bats were afire on Sunday at Blair Field.
Balls were crushed and dirt flew as the offense suddenly exploded, and seven different pitchers were left kicking themselves all the way back to Davis.
The Dirtbags (23-14) out-hit UC Davis (13-23) 17-9 en route to a 9-6 win. Coupled with Friday’s 6-5 win, the Dirtbags have now won their third series in a row, despite Saturday’s 6-4 loss.
“I thought we hit the ball well. I thought we swung the bats really good,” said Dirtbags head coach Mike Weathers. “Maybe we were sluggish and didn’t make anything happen [in earlier innings], but it was a good bat scenario. We got a lot of hits and got a lot of guys on base.”
The Dirtbags came back from a three-run deficit to start the bottom of the seventh with a 5-3 lead.
After three consecutive singles to load the bases, Robert Perry was walked to make the score 6-3. AJ Pinocchio then slapped a single into left field on a slash bunt for his second RBI of the day. Danny Espinosa was then walked, and Travis Howell, Taylor Krick and TJ Mittelstaedt all followed with singles to end the inning with five runs.
Four Aggie pitchers were seen during the inning and none were able to stop the Dirtbags.
“I was excited to come through,” Espinosa said. “Before [today] I had been struggling with guys in scoring position, and to finally get some RBIs and get those guys in feels good.”
Espinosa struggled in his first two games back this weekend, but finally played like his old self on Sunday, going 2-for-3 with a double and a team-high three RBIs.
Pinocchio and Howell both finished behind Espinosa with two RBIs. Everyone in the starting lineup got at least one hit.
“When you get key RBIs and that five-run inning, it’s a little easier to come back from a three-run deficit,” Weathers said. “We got 17 hits and got key RBIs and we haven’t done that a lot.”
The nine runs on 17 hits was a stark contrast to the way the Dirtbags played the day before, when the team managed just four runs on 10 hits and fell to the Aggies, 6-4.
“Probably the biggest disappointment of the year was the way we competed yesterday,” Weathers said.
UC Davis, which will join the Big West Conference next year, may not be the top-30 club that the Dirtbags are used to playing, but there was no doubt in Weathers’ mind that their club was capable of doing damage.
On Saturday, damage was certainly done when starting pitcher Manny McElroy was positively lit up in the second inning.
McElroy gave up four earned runs in the inning, including two home runs, on six hits. He lasted only 1 2/3 innings, and threw just 24 pitches. Andrew Liebel came on in relief and went a career-high 7.1 innings, giving up two runs (one earned) on six hits.
Weathers has now lost his patience with McElroy and his inflated 6.75 ERA, and said that to win in the upcoming conference stretch Liebel needs to be considered a starter over McElroy.
Weathers said winning their third consecutive series is exactly what the team needed to get the Dirtbags back in the national rankings.
“Winning the series is our goal, no matter who we face,” Weathers said. “You’ve got to win the series because it seems like Baseball America, all they ever do is tell us how many series we’ve lost. So as long as we win series, we’ll be fine.”
Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn and his Aztecs will travel to Long Beach on Tuesday, as the Dirtbags take on San Diego State, before continuing conference play against UC Santa Barbara next weekend.
