Simson Garcia | Sports Editor
From Feb. 16-17, Western baseball traveled to California State University-Monterey Bay to compete over three games against the 6-0 Otters. In game one, the Wolves went down 3-13, and in games two and three, while close, also resulted in losses, 14-13 and 4-3 respectively.
From the get-go of the first inning in game one, the Otters activated their offense. The Otters managed to get the bases loaded a few times on the game. The first happened before senior catcher Hayden Duer, who leads the CSUMB squad with 12 runs batted in on the season, doubled to center field to run three of his teammates in.
A CSUMB home run in the next at-bat scored two that made it 5-0.
The only three Wolf scores of the game came in the second. The first score came from a double to right center, scoring one. But junior infielder Drey McInnis delivered the Wolves’s highlight home run, to score two more.
At 7-3 in the fourth, CSUMB loaded up the bases again to make it 10-3. Runners on base was a circumstance that the Wolves couldn’t evade as 11 Otter players were walked on the day.
Duer hit for seven RBI’s in four at-bats in the game, and included the last RBI to put finishing touches to a 13-3 win.
The next two games were much closer, and the second game included heavy action.
The first score was from a single up the middle by Western senior infielder Nyles Nygaard. But runners on bases continued to be a theme of the series, as CSUMB scored two off of consecutive walks to gain advantage, 2-1, to end the first inning.
In the fifth, Western got further behind, 5-1, and even further in the sixth, 8-2, the latter of which came off a Duer homer.
The lead plummeted to 13-5 before a miraculous come back from the Wolves ensued in the final inning. With one out away, the Wolves had runners on bases and in a sacrificial play, Nygaard flied out to centerfield to score one. Western followed again with more runners on bases and ran in eight of them to tie it up. The game tying and saving run came off a homer from senior infielder Justin Spinner, although senior Wolves’s pitcher Jay Leverett got caught stealing to end the inning. The Wolves had to prevent Monterey Bay from scoring to proceed to extras, but the Otters got one off a single after the bases loaded to end the game.
Both teams only scored in the third inning of the final game. Nygaard homered two that made it 3-0. But the Otters filled the bases again after which they tripled in their half of the inning to score it 4-3. Kept at bay for the rest of the game, Western only managed to get one hit and never got a chance to tie or grab the lead. Now at 0-7, Western looks to produce numbers in the win column where they’ll travel to Lewis & Clark college in Lewiston, Idaho, where they’ll play a three-game series from Feb 23-25. The Wolves will first hit the mound at 3 p.m.
Contact the author at journalsports@wou.edu
Photo by: wouwolves.com
