Getting the bat on the ball wasn’t a problem for Utah in its weekend series against Cal. The Utes racked up 30 hits in the three-game series but had trouble converting runners on base to scores, thus giving Cal the series sweep.
The Utes dropped the first two games by a score of 9-5 and fell 6-4 in the final contest.
“We swung the bats better as a whole for these three games than we have all year,” said head coach Bill Kinneberg.
The Utes (8-9) left a total of 21 runners on base during the weekend and failed to steal any bases.
“The one thing that we didn’t do that we’ve been doing for four weeks is executing our offense and executing the little things,” Kinneberg said. “We did none of that this weekend.”
Although Utah didn’t execute its offense as well as it wanted to on the base paths, the Utes were able to score hits against their first Pac-12 opponent. Trey Nielsen accumulated three RBIs on six hits throughout the series.
“I just felt comfortable this weekend,” Nielsen said. “I’ve been working in the cage a lot, mechanically trying to shore some things up. It’s about being comfortable up there and getting a few hits here and there adds up.”
In the opening game of the series, Cal took a four-run lead early on, but the Utes made a comeback in the sixth. Utah had six hits that plated five runs to take the lead. Konnor Armijo knocked in two of those runs with a ground ball that went right between the pitcher’s legs.
“Down 0-2 with one out I just had to put the ball in play,” Armijo said. “It was just a slider low, I just stayed with it and the baseball had eyes and found its way through.”
That was the end of Utah’s offensive production for the day as they went hitless in the final three frames. Cal came back and claimed the victory 9-5, scoring two in the seventh and three in the eighth.
On Saturday, Kody Davis’ error led to a game-changing grand slam in the second inning. With two outs, Davis booted a ground ball to load the bases. Cal slugger Devon Rodriguez stepped up to the plate and brought everybody home on his slam over the right-field fence, giving the Bears a 5-0 lead. The Utes continued to battle though, getting a big two-out RBI triple from Tyler Relf in the bottom of the frame.
Utah jumped out to an early 4-0 lead on Sunday before Cal started chipping away. With the game tied at four apiece in the bottom of the sixth, Utah was threatening, but Tyler Yagi was tagged out after a failed suicide squeeze attempt. Then, with runners on first and second, Braden Anderson smoked a line drive to right center where a spectacular diving catch by Cal’s Devin Pearson spoiled what would’ve been two runs for Utah. Cal tacked on two more runs to take the final game of the series 6-4.
Despite losing the opening series, Relf is still optimistic. More than half of the Utes’ starting lineup are freshmen and their performance versus their first Pac-12 opponents was solid at the plate.
“I honestly am super proud of our freshmen. Especially Dallas Carroll at third base,” Relf said. “He’s just not scared of any pitcher. It doesn’t really matter who is on the mound as long as you go out and know what your job is and execute that job. If we can do that we’ll win some ball games.”