FULLERTON — The Cal State Fullerton baseball team was staring down a low point in program history.
The Titans had never lost nine consecutive games in nearly 50 years of Division I play, but that’s what they were facing when they took the field on Sunday afternoon in the finale of their three-game series against rival Long Beach State.
Fullerton picked a good time to play one of its best games of the season, however, benefiting from a clutch performance from starting pitcher Evan Yates, mistake-free defense and several quality at-bats in a 9-1 victory at Goodwin Field.
The win also moved Fullerton back into a tie for first in the Big West Conference standings with three games left in the regular season next weekend at Cal Poly. The Titans (29-21 overall, 18-9 Big West) are tied with UC Santa Barbara (35-17, 18-9), which will complete its regular season with three games at Hawai next weekend. UC San Diego (34-18, 21-9) actually has the best conference record but remains ineligible for postseason play as it continues transitioning from Division II.
“We had the three elements we always talk about; pitching, offense and defense,” second-year Fullerton coach Jason Dietrich said. “For the last couple weeks, we’ve been kind of struggling at that, so it was good to see us finally put it together. We’ve done it in the past, but for some reason we were scuffling.”
LBSU (30-22, 14-13) won’t be making any postseason plans this year after its momentum was seized with three-game sweeps at UC San Diego and Hawaii during conference play, but Long Beach coach Eric Valenzuela is feeling better about the overall season after the Dirtbags took two of three at UCSB last weekend and two of three against Fullerton.
“That’s two good weekends in a row against two really good teams,” Valenzuela said.
LBSU closes its season with three games against struggling UC Davis (17-34, 7-20) next weekend at Blair Field.
With an overworked bullpen, Dietrich turned to Yates, a sophomore right-hander who came through with a career-high seven innings on 122 pitches.
Yates (2-2) allowed one run and five hits, striking out seven and walking two.
“We always say, ‘We need something special to happen,’” Dietrich said. “I thought he did a good job of just battling for us and limiting them to one run.”
Brendan Bobo provided Yates an early cushion with a two-run double in the first inning for a 2-0 lead.
Bobo went 6 for 11 in the series with four RBIs.
“He’s been scuffling all year,” Dietrich said. “Confidence is crazy what it can do when you start seeing the ball a little better.”
LBSU scored its lone run in the third inning on a sacrifice fly by Nick Marinconz, but the Titans got the run back in their half of the third on a successful squeeze play to make it 3-1.
Zach Lew’s hit-and-run single put runners on the corners in the fourth and set up a sacrifice fly by Moises Guzman for a 4-1 lead.
Lew led off the sixth with his fifth home run of the season to make it 5-1.
“I was just trying to put a good swing on a good pitch and it went,” Lew said.
Fullerton continued to add to its lead in the seventh, scoring on a bases-loaded walk, a wild pitch, another sacrifice fly and Nate Nankil’s fourth single of the game to make it 9-1.
Dietrich was impressed with how the Titans manufactured runs on Sunday and the way they shut down their rivals in each of the five innings after they scored, key elements they struggled with during the losing streak.
“We picked a bad time to play some inconsistent baseball,” Dietrich said of the recent slide. “And then when we did play some decent baseball, we didn’t get the hit when we needed, we didn’t make a pitch when we needed to, or we didn’t make the play, so it’s baseball, it happens, but it’s good to have our guys come out today and do what they did.”
