During their best stretch of baseball since 1997 in which they won 14 of their last 16 games, the No. 18 Bruins (22-17, 8-1 Pac-10) have relied on strong starting pitching, stout defense and quality at-bats to drive in key runs.
On Tuesday night against UC Riverside (24-16, 4-2 Big West), the Bruins only had one of those components: the starting pitching.
The absence of concrete defense coupled with the inability to capitalize on critical at-bats led to a disappointing 3-1 loss for the Bruins, ending their seven-game winning streak.
“It shows that you can’t show up to the ballpark, roll out on the field, and expect to win,” catcher Ryan Babineau said, who led the Bruins in hitting, going 3 for 3. “We need to show up to the ballpark every day ready to play no matter who the opponent is.”
Freshman Garett Claypool (1-0) took the mound for the Bruins looking for his second collegiate win. Claypool was effective and kept the Highlander hitters under wraps for the most part, spreading two hits, one run and one walk over three innings of work while striking out two.
“I thought that I pitched well,” Claypool said. “My problem was I was leaving too many of my pitches up. I wasn’t pitching my pitches as well as I could, leaving them up too much, and it cost me.”
His only mistake came in the first inning when Riverside shortstop Jaime Pedroza took a 2-2 pitch over the right-field wall for an early 1-0 lead. In the fifth, the Bruins tied the game off an RBI single by second baseman Alden Carrithers.
However, mistakes on defense quickly became costly for the Bruins. With one out in the sixth, Pedroza walked and then advanced to second off a single by first baseman Mark Samuelson. Then, an error by shortstop Brandon Crawford allowed for Pedroza to score the go-ahead run. Two batters later, Brendan Lafferty committed an error when he misplayed a ground ball that bounced off the mound, allowing for Samuelson to score from third to put Riverside up by the final score of 3-1.
“It’s tough because we had considerably more hits than they did,” Babineau said. “Most of the time when you commit three errors in a game though, it’s tough to win. We just need to regroup and move on.”
“We just did not play well on defense and that proved to be the difference in the game,” coach John Savage added.
The Bruins’ main problem earlier in the season was their inability to drive in runners for key runs. This problem was absent for the most part during their recent stretch, but it reared its head yet again on Tuesday.
In the first two innings, the Bruins had two runners on base with two outs, yet fell victim to strikeouts in both instances. Then in the third, following a one-out double by Crawford, the white-hot first baseman Cody Decker lined into a double play, one of three double plays suffered by Bruins.
Despite the disappointing loss, the Bruins must now prepare to host the No. 12 Arizona Wildcats (31-9, 9-3 Pac-10).
“Tonight was an experience because that is the pitching that we can expect to see the rest of the year,” Savage said. “Riverside has good pitching and Arizona has good pitching, so we are going to see that the rest of the year. But we are excited for this weekend against Arizona. We are up to the challenge and we will step up.”