Toreros’ Sunday rally rescues one win from three against Aztecs
USD, SDSU combine for 86 runs over three-game slugfest of a series
Eric Boose / Sports Editor
In the middle of the sixth inning of Sunday’s series finale between the University of San Diego and their neighbors and rivals San Diego State University, the visiting Aztecs looked well on their way to sweeping the Toreros. Leading 12-3 and with two wins — 14-7 on Friday and 19-18 after 10 innings on Saturday — already in their pockets, all SDSU had to do was keep USD’s bats quiet and maybe tack on a couple more runs. They did neither of those things.
The Toreros scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth, four in the seventh, and six in the eighth. First-year relief pitcher Ivran Romero quieted the Aztec hitters, allowing only one hit across the final three innings, and USD stole Sunday’s game, 16-12.
Even after his team engineered a 13-run surge in Sunday’s comeback, head coach Rich Hill aimed to keep the game in perspective.
“Well, we stay away from terms like ‘big win, big pitch, big (at bat),’” Hill said. “The lessons learned that you can take out of a win like that are the important things, such as a relentless approach to inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch baseball … and really our underlying theme of ‘there is no clock in baseball’ and anything can happen.”
And Hill added that the entire series, not just Sunday’s win, provided valuable experience for his team.
“I think there’s tremendous value in playing a heated cross-town rivalry series early in the game,” Hill said. “It gets our young players in a very intense college baseball environment immediately. The games are always close, they’re always heated.”
Friday’s opener started well. Junior Shane McGuire hit a double to the wall in left center on the game’s very first pitch, and Thomas Luevano’s infield single, which bounced off the glove of SDSU’s first baseman, scored McGuire to put the Toreros on top early. A stolen base got Luevano to second, tagging up on a fly ball got him to third, and junior outfielder Tora Otsuka’s line drive up the middle brought Luevano home.
The Aztecs went down one, two, three in the bottom of the first, as did the Toreros in the top of the second. In the bottom of the second, however, SDSU’s bats came alive. The first five Aztec batters reached base, and four of them came home to give the hosts a 4-2 lead, which they never relinquished.
SDSU scored another run in the third inning, three more in the fifth, four in the sixth, and a final two in the seventh. USD scored a pair of runs in their half of the fifth inning, which cut the Aztecs’ lead to one at the time, but that was as close as they would get. Their three runs in the top of the seventh inning gave the Toreros a glimmer of hope, but it was not enough to spark a rally.
Twenty-four hours after their first clash, SDSU and USD put on an even higher scoring display Saturday afternoon. With former Torero Kohl Simas on the mound for San Diego State, the visiting ‘Ros started even better than they had on Friday. Otsuka earned a lead-off walk, McGuire tripled down the right field line to score Otsuka, and sophomore catcher Caleb Ricketts hit a double into left to score McGuire. Three batters, two runs. Simas got two outs before Luevano doubled to score Ricketts, and redshirt junior outfielder RJ Teijeiro’s single into center field brought home Luevano.
McGuire, a key part of the Toreros’ first-inning scoring on Friday and Saturday, explained that he thrives under the pressure of first-inning at-bats.
“You still have those butterflies, it’s your biggest at bat of the day, your first at bat,” McGuire said. “I feel like that helps my game, I feel like I’m more focused in those situations, and it was fun getting things started for the team.”
The Aztecs started Saturday’s game hot as well, scoring two runs of their own in the bottom of the first, and so began the shootout. USD scored again in the top of the second to make it 5-2, but SDSU erupted for eight runs in the bottom of the inning, highlighted by redshirt senior shortstop Mike Jarvis’s two-run home run of his own to left field.
In the top of the third and trailing 10-5, the Toreros responded in kind. First year Will Worthington pinch-hit for Teijeiro and reached first after being hit by a pitch. USD’s next two batters both got on to load the bases. Otsuka then earned a walk to score Worthington, McGuire’s single right scored a pair more, and Ricketts was hit by a pitch to load the bases for senior third baseman Adam Lopez.
Lopez launched the ball high into the afternoon sky, just clearing the wall in left center field for a grand slam, putting the Toreros ahead, 12-10. But they weren’t done scoring. Jeffris, the next batter after Lopez, hit a single up the middle. Luevano followed Jeffris and launched a two-run homer to the same region of the park as Lopez’s slam. The Aztecs got the next two outs to finally end the inning, but the Toreros had tallied nine runs and retaken the lead, 14-10.
Even with 24 runs already on the board, the scoring was far from over. SDSU was next to score, plating two runs in the bottom of the fourth. USD re-established their four-run advantage in the fifth, with Lopez and Worthington both recording RBI singles. From there, the two teams’ scoring diverged, with the Toreros’ bats cooling while the Aztecs heated up. USD scored a run in the seventh, and another in the eighth, but SDSU exploded for four in the seventh, and two more in the eighth to bring themselves level, 18-18.
The game went to extra innings, when both teams would automatically start with a runner on second base. The Toreros almost brought that runner home in the top of the tenth, but McGuire was caught in a rundown between third and home and tagged out, killing the momentum.
The Aztecs had more success. With runners on first and second and one out, Cruce hit a ground ball that was a near-perfect setup for USD to turn a double play and end the inning. They didn’t. Cruce was safe at first, and Jarvis advanced to third. Two outs. With SDSU outfielder Jaden Fein at the plate, the Toreros changed pitchers, swapping first-year reliever Eddy Pelc, who had allowed only one run and one hit in two innings pitched, for sophomore Jack Dolak. Dolak only threw one pitch. His curveball got away from Ricketts behind the plate, the wild pitch allowing Jarvis to come home to score the winning run.
“That’s a bad matchup, Pelc versus Fein,” Hill said, explaining the pitching change. “It just had not gone well, Fein smoked a double off him the night before, and Jack Dolak was a much better matchup.”
Hill also explained the importance of being able to forget mistakes like Dolak’s wild pitch easily.
“We call it the five-minute rule,” Hill said. “You’ve got five minutes to feel bad, to feel regret, to sit in that space of pain, and in the game of baseball we just move on.”
Sunday’s game brought a new venue, USD’s Fowler Park, after the first two games were played at SDSU’s Tony Gwynn Stadium. It also brought a different, low-scoring start, featuring, for the first time in the series, a scoreless second inning.
The Aztecs scored two runs in the top of the first and an additional run in the top of the third before the Toreros got their first score of the game. That came in the bottom of the third inning, when McGuire launched a pitch 353 feet to right field, over the wall for a two-run homer. That opened the floodgates a bit.
SDSU scored three in the top of the fourth, aided by a pair of wild pitches. Then, Luevano led off the bottom of the fourth with another home run, a 408-foot moonshot into the trees behind the left field wall. That made it 6-3 Aztecs, with plenty of baseball left to be played. The game came alive in the sixth inning, which the visitors started by scoring six runs, largely thanks to redshirt sophomore catcher Wyatt Hendrie’s three-run homer.
But from the bottom of the sixth inning on, the momentum firmly belonged to the Toreros. It started with a three-run bottom of the sixth. Romero took the mound in the top of the seventh, facing the top of the Aztec order. He gave up a lead-off single to Jarvis, but was perfect from then on, finishing the game with three strikeouts in three innings pitched.
While Romero shut down the SDSU offense, USD’s offense battered the Aztecs’ relief pitchers. A pair of walks and a hit-by-pitch loaded the bases to start the bottom of the seventh, and the Toreros got four runs across the plate that inning, thanks in part to another walk and another hit batter, both with the bases loaded.
With his team down two, sophomore designated hitter Max Jung-Goldberg earned a walk to start the bottom of the eighth inning. A pair of excellent bunt singles from redshirt freshman center fielder Camden Vazquez and Otsuka (plus a throwing error by SDSU pitcher Casey O’Sullivan) brought Jung-Goldberg home to start the rally. A walk loaded the bases, and Luevano hit a one-out single to score the tying run. Jeffris, the next batter, smacked another single to give USD the lead, and Jung-Goldberg hit a blooper of a single in his second at-bat of the inning to bring home the final runs of the game.
Romero took the mound with a four run lead, needing three outs in the top of the ninth to end it. He forced a pair of flyouts to right field, plus a lineout to Ricketts at first to finish off the comeback.
Looking back on Sunday’s game, and the series as a whole, McGuire explained that the clash with the Aztecs had boosted the Toreros’ confidence as they started their season.
“Reflecting with the team after, we all agreed this set the tone for the season and got a lot of confidence in our team, because we just knew that that series is going to make us better,” McGuire said. “Just seeing our team fighting back was something I really loved seeing, that was where I got my joy, just the competitive side of our team coming out, so early in the season especially.”
Next up for USD is a weekend series against Cal State Fullerton starting on Friday, Feb. 26 at 3 p.m. The Toreros have won three of their last four games against the Titans.
