For the first time in four years, the UCLA baseball team will not be playing in the postseason.
That is a tough realization for a team that entered the season ranked No. 12 nationally by Baseball America.
The Bruins, though, still had hope heading into this past weekend’s three-game set against conference powerhouse Arizona State in Tempe, Ariz. Players and coaches alike felt that a series victory over the highly ranked Sun Devils at Packard Stadium, where ASU was 29-3 going into the weekend, would put the Bruins on the selection bubble. Yet, after splitting the first two games of the series, the Bruins dropped the final game with a 6-5 loss to the Sun Devils on Sunday afternoon.
“Players played extremely hard and got after it,” coach John Savage said. “We felt that we could have won the series, but it just seemed like a microcosm of the season ““ we just came up short.”
The Bruins lost the series opener 4-0 on Friday night but responded with a sound 10-4 victory on Saturday. Despite Sunday’s defeat, UCLA (27-29, 15-12 Pac-10) finished the season as the third-place team in conference standings.
With the Bruins sporting a losing record, the results of Monday morning’s selection show came as no surprise. For the first time in four seasons, UCLA was not one of the 64 teams chosen to compete in the NCAA Tournament.
“After losing (Sunday’s) game, we kind of expected it,” said senior first baseman Cody Decker, who had reached the postseason in each of his previous three seasons. “I felt that we really needed that win to get in.”
Decker did his part by hitting a two-out, two-run blast in the third inning to give the Bruins a 3-1 advantage. The home run was his conference-leading 21st of the season.
The score remained 3-1 until the Sun Devils (44-12, 21-6) scored three runs in the fifth inning. The Bruins added a run in the top half of the sixth to tie the score. ASU countered with one of their own in the bottom half of the same frame to regain the lead.
The Sun Devils held a two-run edge in the ninth when UCLA redshirt junior outfielder Blair Dunlap led off with his seventh home run of the season. Fellow redshirt junior Dustin Quist followed with a pinch-hit single. But Quist, who represented the potential game-tying run, was stranded at third base.
“The players stayed together and really played hard,” Savage said. “I think it proves that we can play with anybody out there.”
“We fought in every game,” Decker said. “We were in every game. It’s tough when you lose by a run because we’re in those games.”
The Bruins were in Friday night’s game as well. Freshman pitcher Gerrit Cole matched ASU’s junior Mike Leake pitch for pitch until the Sun Devils struck for runs in the fifth and sixth innings. Meanwhile, Leake, a likely first-team All-American, did not budge, striking out 12 Bruin batters to toss a complete game shutout and improve his record to 14-1 on the season.
“Leake is a hell of a pitcher,” Decker said. “He’s got great stuff and great command.”
UCLA responded with a complete game of its own on Saturday, thanks to freshman pitcher Trevor Bauer’s 147-pitch performance.
The right-hander hurled his fourth complete game of the season to earn his team-leading ninth win and improve to 7-0 in conference play.
“I think they can be the best 1-2 punch in the country,” Savage said of Cole and Bauer. “Anybody that saw them pitch this year knows that they are very capable of dominating a game. There’s not many guys out there in college this young that are capable of doing that.”
For Decker, whose collegiate career has come to an end, the youth in the Bruins’ pitching staff is a reason to hope for future success.
“I think next year, they’ll be as dangerous as any team you’ll see,” he said.