TURLOCK — In a conference series that took 25 days to complete, the 8th ranked Cal State Monterey Bay Otters used two huge innings to come from behind for a doubleheader sweep on a weird day at Stanislaus State on Monday.
Monterey Bay used a 10-run inning in game one to beat the Warriors 13-9 and then had a six-run inning that erased a 7-2 Stan State lead for a 10-7 nightcap win for the twinbill (and series) sweep. The Otters improved to 21-6 overall and 10-5 in the CCAA North to get within a half-game of leader Chico State.
The Warriors had a chance to make up some ground in the North standings, but instead surrendered two golden opportunities and fell to 14-12 overall and 7-9 in league play.
The four-game set started way back on March 4 in Seaside with the game suspended due to rain and had to be completed four days later, on March 8. After the Otters finally won the series opener 9-1 over a five-day period, CSUMB narrowly took game two, 4-2. The other two games of the series was finally made-up on Monday due to rain — and the rain made its return in Turlock.
The weather was all over the place on Monday with bright sunshine turning into dark skies. Then strong winds were followed by intermittent pouring rain — but the teams played through it all.
On the field, a total of 10 errors were made — eight by the some-how twice-victorious Otters.
With the depleted pitching staff, the Warriors got two decent outings by spot-starters
Ryan Paramo (5 2/3 innings, 0 earned runs, 3 hits) and
Chris Senn (solid first four innings). However, walks and hit-batters plus key Otters hits resulted in a couple of really ugly innings for the home team. The bullpen was also not able to hold leads against an opportunistic and power hitting Otters team.
In all, the Warriors issued 14 walks and hit seven batters in the doubleheader.The Otters sent 15 batters to the plate and scored 10 times in the eighth inning to erase a 5-3 Warrior lead. In the nightcap, a sixth-run fifth finally chased Senn, who had four nice innings to start the game, to take-away a 7-2 Stanislaus lead.
Monterey Bay added another homer to its totals, this time off the bat of Will Rosado in game two. This season, in six games, CSUMB collected nine homers against Stan State pitching. The Warriors allowed just one homerun in the other 20 games (Feb. 5 at Fresno Pacific).
Kyle Nixon and
Charlie Gaff each had three hits in the twinbill.
Scott Stetson was 2-for-4 and
Aldo Koutsoyanopulos drove in three runs in game one.
Garrett Serino also had a pinch-hit double that scored two runs in the first game.
Nick Ippolito was 2-for-4 to lead the Warriors in the nightcap.
Jeffery Amaral led CSUMB with two hits and drove in three runs in game one and Kevin Davidson went 2-for-4 with a double and drove in four runs in the nightcap.
Before hitting the road for their next CCAA series in La Jolla next weekend, the Warriors will host the defending NAIA champion Lewis-Clark State Tuesday night at 6 p.m.
