March 21, 2014
Albuquerque, N.M. --- San Jose State's season-high five errors led to a 10-1 loss to New Mexico in Mountain West action on Friday night at Lobo Field.
SJSU had the game within reach, but costly errors helped the Lobos to seven unanswered runs in innings seven and eight.
Trailing 3-0, Mike Simonini's RBI-single scored Alec de Watteville in the Spartans' seventh inning to cut into the Lobos lead. The Spartans' rally which included three hits and a walk was killed when Brett Bautista weakly grounded out to second base with the bags loaded.
The next half inning San Jose State committed three errors and gave up three hits that let the Lobos increase the lead to 7-1. Easy New Mexico runs came in when the Spartans dropped a pop fly in right field and made an errant throw trying to catch a base stealer.
The Lobos continued in the eighth with four hits and three more runs bringing the score to 10-1.
Jonathan Hernandez started for San Jose State and allowed five runs, with only two earned in 6.1 innings. Hernandez made an error of his own with a high throw over the head of the first baseman that allowed a run to score with two outs.
"Hernandez pitched well enough to win, but he didn't help his cause and neither did anyone else," said Spartans' head coach Dave Nakama. "If we catch a couple of those balls then maybe we are looking at a 4-1 game in the seventh instead of 7-1."
The errors certainly hurt, but New Mexico also pounded out 14 hits. Alex Real was 4-for-5 with four RBI and fellow teammates Aaron Siple and Ryan Padilla each had three base knocks.
Jon Cuellar (2-1) earned the win for the Lobos scattering seven hits with no runs allowed in 5.0 innings. The save goes to Taylor Duree (1).
The Spartans (6-17, 3-7 MW) and Lobos (15-7-1, 5-2 MW) will face again tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m. PDT in game two of the series.