It’s important to learn from mistakes, and if they didn’t know it already, the Pepperdine Waves found out the hard way that it’s very difficult to commit five errors and win a baseball game.
Three of UCLA’s (32-13, 12-9 Pac 12) six runs were results of Pepperdine (26-19, 9-6 West Coast Conference) errors in a game that was one-sided from the fourth inning on.
A big reason for that was UCLA’s defense, which returned with a vengeance and held Pepperdine scoreless for eight innings after surrendering 15 runs to Purdue on Sunday.
Freshman left-hander Grant Watson started on the mound, held the Waves scoreless for the first three innings and did not receive a decision.
“Watson came out and did a nice job, he gave us a quality start. … It was a good bounce-back game for us,” said coach John Savage.
UCLA scored first in the fourth inning following two singles by junior catcher Tyler Heineman and junior infielder Trevor Brown. Heineman was glad to see UCLA’s defense dominate the game.
“Today everyone wanted the baseball at every moment, and we played well,” Heineman said.
Pepperdine responded with two runs of their own in the bottom of the fourth, but gave up five unanswered runs to end the game.
Brown noted that despite Pepperdine’s errors, UCLA was still offensively efficient.
“We had 13 hits, so we put the ball in play quite often and that put a lot of pressure on them. I think that’s where our advantage came from,” Brown said.
Watson was pulled in the sixth inning and replaced by redshirt freshman Eric Jaffe, who notched his first win.
Sophomore shortstop Pat Valaika added a run in the eighth and junior outfielder Jeff Gelalich put the cherry on top with a solo homer in the ninth inning.
The Bruins will play three games in Seattle this weekend, starting on Friday.