Pacific turns triple play in victory over Spartans
Elizabeth Kang
Issue date: 4/15/09 Section: Sports
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"We should have beat these guys," said Eric LeBaron, Spartan relief pitcher.
The Tigers are now 13-18, and have previously lost to the Spartans three times this season. SJSU is now 24-9.
The Spartans had runners on first and second base in the second inning, but Danny Stienstra hit into a triple play.
By the end of the game, the Spartans managed to leave 11 runners on base, seven of them in scoring position.
"The one thing about baseball is it's not the number of hits you get, it's the number you get with guys in scoring position," said SJSU head coach Sam Piraro. "That's the number we really look at. We had some hits that really didn't amount to much. I didn't feel, offensively, that we really did a good job."
The Tigers scored seven runs before the Spartans earned their first.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, center fielder Jason Martin hit a ground ball that brought home catcher Anthony Aguilera, scoring a desperately needed run.
Piraro blamed the slow start on the fast winds.
"Obviously, the conditions we had to play in were not great," he said. "It was not easy to play in these conditions and I thought it manifested itself in the first inning."
Indeed, the first inning saw little action for the Spartans as second baseman Karson Klauer was the only player to reach base after being smacked by a pitch in the left shoulder.
"The first inning was not something that we were happy with," Piraro said. "That kind of set the tempo for the day."
The Tigers scored two runs in the first inning to jump to an early lead.
In the top of the third inning, the Tigers scored two more runs, advancing their lead to 4-0. In the bottom half of the inning, the Spartan offense followed with three consecutive outs, and things started looking grim to first baseman Stienstra.
"We started off slow," he said. "The conditions were tough out there. The wind was blowing out to left field. We had a few hits to right field that just died because the wind was melting them down."
During the top of the fifth, the Tigers gained three more runs.
The Spartans spent the rest of the game playing catch-up, scoring three more runs in the sixth inning.
"We did a pretty good job coming back," Stienstra said. "We just couldn't finish it."
The Spartans loaded the bases in the eighth inning, but only managed to bring one runner home.
They weren't able to score in the ninth inning after getting the potential winning run in the batter's box.
Third baseman Corey Valine hit a grounder to the shortstop for the final out.
"We get that ball up in the wind in the last inning, we win the ball game, but we
weren't able to do it," Piraro said.
"We dug ourselves too deep of a hole and came up a little bit short."
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