March 13, 2015
IRVINE, Calif. - Kalei Contrades was dominant for a second straight outing and the Spartans' offense followed suit in San Jose State's 4-0 win over UC Irvine Friday night at Cicerone Field at Anteater Ballpark.
Contrades (2-2) nearly went the distance, tossing 8.2 innings of shutout ball and allowing only three hits while striking out three and walking one. After an error and a walk with two outs in the ninth, Contrades was lifted for Turtle Kuhaulua, who induced a first-pitch groundout for his fifth save of the season.
San Jose State (7-10, 1-5 MW) pounded out 13 hits off UC Irvine (6-10, 0-0 Big West) pitchers, with 12 coming off starter Elliott Surrey (1-2). Brett Bautista (3-3, double, run), Alec de Watteville (2-5, two doubles, RBI, two runs), David Campbell (2-3, triple, two RBIs) and Kuhaulua (2-5) led the Spartans's offense with multi-hit games. Shane Timmons, Josh Nashed, Jack Veasey and Dillan Smith each chipped in with a hit apiece.
"It all starts with the pitching, and Kalei did a great job," Spartans' head coach Dave Nakama. "I think our hitters settled in because they know that Kalei's going to put up some zeros, so all we have to do is score a couple runs. We had a couple hits and they threw the ball around a little bit and allowed us to score runs, so we'll take it."
The Spartans got on the board first in the top of the fifth with a two-out rally. After Andre Mercurio and Kuhaulua were retired to start the inning, Bautista hit a grounder to the right side that was snared by UCI second baseman Grant Palmer on a dive, but his throw was too late to get Bautista.
The next hitter, de Watteville, lifted a fly ball down the right field line that fell just inside the foul line and then was mishandled by right fielder Wyatt Castro, allowing Bautista to score. David Campbell promptly tripled over the first base bag and into the right field corner on the next pitch, bringing home de Watteville for a 2-0 lead.
The combo of Bautista, de Watteville and Campbell got it done again in the top of the seventh. Bautista ripped Surrey's 2-1 pitch into the right center gap for a double and scored on de Watteville's second double in as many at-bats, this one landing at the base of the left field wall. Campbell got down 0-2, but fought off a pitch over the third baseman's head for a base hit to plate de Watteville and push the Spartans' lead to 4-0.
"Those guys had some tough at-bats early in the game and came back and had good at-bats there," Nakama said. "It's easy to lose confidence after two tough at-bats, so that was good to see. We need that middle of the order to help us."
Friday night marked Contrades' second win in as many starts and the third consecutive outing in which he went at least 8.0 innings.
"I think they swing at his pitches early in the count. I'd like to see how many fly ball outs they, and they had a lot of them, because they swing early in the count," said Nakama. "He gets ahead so they have to be aggressive early because they don't want to see his slider late in the count."
Mercurio (0-5) and Tyler Olivet (0-1) saw their reached-base streaks of 15 and 11, respectively, end on Friday.
The win was San Jose State's first on the road this season and the first victory at UC Irvine since the 1990 season.
The Spartans will send Matt Brown (1-1) to the mound on Sunday in a 1:00 p.m. first pitch from Cicerone Field at Anteater Ballpark.