The last time Beau Amaral had a game this productive?
“Never,” he said, and there wasn’t much hesitation.
The sophomore center fielder with the sweet swing and the major-league pedigree homered, doubled, singled and drove in six runs to lead UCLA to an 8-5 comeback victory over Arizona on Sunday, which gave the Bruins (19-12, 9-3 Pac-10) the series victory, their fourth straight to begin conference play.
The Wildcats (23-13, 5-7) built a 5-2 lead on Sunday as the Bruins went about shooting themselves in the foot. UCLA committed five errors ““ all in the first six innings ““ that contributed to the early deficit.
“Hard to win when you make five errors,” Amaral said. “Being down 5-2, we felt like we were down 10-2.”
But coach John Savage told his team to relax, to take things pitch by pitch. Things started to turn.
“We could have put our head in the sand and said, “˜It’s not our weekend,'” Savage said. “There was a lot of resiliency, and guys stuck together and fought out of it.”
Having Amaral in the lineup helped; the son of former major leaguer Rich Amaral blasted a two-run homer in the seventh to tie the game at 5. The next inning, he came up with the bases loaded.
Amaral promptly cleared them with a opposite-field double down the left-field line that gave him six RBIs, the most by a Bruin since Gabe Cohen’s six in March of 2008.
“Being able to be up in what I call the “˜moment of truth,’ it’s what you play for,” he said. “(The previous hitter, Jeff Gelalich) walked, and I had all the confidence in the world that I was going to get it done.”
The confidence was well-founded, the moment of truth verified. A year after emerging as one of the Bruins’ most valuable players as a freshman, Amaral served notice that he is still a force.
“He’s one of our best hitters, he proved that last year,” Savage said. “You’ve got to give him credit, he came through in the clutch today.”
While Amaral came through at the plate, freshman starting pitcher Adam Plutko was forced to deal with the shoddy defense. The right-hander was charged with all five Arizona runs, but only two were earned.
“He’s had such tough luck, the guy’s pitched so well,” Savage said. “Just a rare deal that we didn’t take care of the baseball.”
It was a bit of a different story on Saturday, which featured just another run-of-the-mill outing by junior starter Trevor Bauer, who posted another record-setting performance in what is turning into a historic season.
The right-hander struck out 13 in a complete game, 4-0 victory. He gave up four hits and one walk in running his record to 7-1 and lowering his ERA to 1.47. In earning his 28th career victory, Bauer moved into first place on the UCLA all-time list. The honor comes three weeks after he set the UCLA career strikeouts mark.
Arizona won the opener on Friday, getting to UCLA’s other ace Gerrit Cole for nine hits in a 5-4 victory. Cole struck out 11 but still took the loss, his third of the year.
Despite dropping the series opener, UCLA was able to win its fourth straight Pac-10 series, a significant accomplishment in one of the nation’s toughest conferences.
“They’re not always pretty,” Savage said. “When you lose on Friday and win a Pac-10 series, you really got to tip your cap to our team.”