UCLA baseball didn’t get to see Cameron Bishop showcase his 95 mile-per-hour fastball back on April 21.
Instead, the Bruins saw UC Irvine’s 6-foot-5 freshman left-hander play right field and take three at bats. One of them just happened to result in the ball landing behind the Jackie Robinson Stadium outfield scoreboard – over 400 feet away from home plate.
On Tuesday night, No. 2 UCLA (41-12) finally faced Bishop on the mound, and exercised some payback.
Bishop came in as a relief pitcher in the top of the fourth inning, UCLA leading UC Irvine 6-3. It was the first time the Bruins had ever seen the former 32nd round pick of the Arizona Diamondbacks take the mound.
They didn’t see him for long.
The Bruins went a perfect 6-for-6 against the hard-throwing left-hander from Brea, scoring five runs to increase their lead to 11-3. Bishop was only able to record one out before being removed from the mound.
Senior third baseman Chris Keck said he was able to get a read on Bishop after initially being caught off guard with a first-pitch slider.
“He threw me a slider first pitch and it kind of fooled me,” Keck said.”I kind of took a half swing at it.”
On the next pitch, Keck took a fastball low for ball one. Then came the slider again, this time high in the zone.
“Against lefties, I mainly try to go to the opposite field,” Keck said. “And I was able to hit it right over the shortstop’s head.”
For a Bruin offense that entered Tuesday’s game with only 17 hits in its last 90 at bats against lefties, the strong performance against Bishop was a sign of improvement. And as the regular season enters its final weekend before postseason play, that’s exactly what coach John Savage said he’s looking for.
“(Our) teams that have made it to Omaha … those teams did not look behind and they weren’t satisfied until the end and they kept getting better,” Savage said. “We have the mindset of: There’s a lot of baseball left and we’ve got to keep on getting better.”
Heading into the final weekend of the season, one area where UCLA has already improved is pitching. The Bruins went through the initial portion of the season ranked in the top 10 in ERA, but now stake claim to the top team ERA in the nation at 2.07, a development that junior pitcher Cody Poteet attributed to the team’s strong fielding.
“Our team has played tremendous defense this year, so we rely on them a lot,” Poteet said.
Contributing reports by David Gottlieb, Bruin Sports contributor.