The San Jose State baseball team battled Mountain West’s No.1 ranked San Diego State Sunday, but came up short in an 8-3 loss.
The tenth game of conference started slowly for both teams at the Tony Gwynn Stadium in San Diego. It wasn’t until the Spartans (2-8 MWC) scored two runs during the top of the fourth inning that the teams started to pick up momentum.
SJSU’s Charles McAdoo hit a single RBI right down center field, which allowed Ruben Ibarra to run home and score.
McAdoo performed skillfully on the offensive end, finishing the night going 1-for-3 at the plate. His RBI clutched his fourth consecutive game with a hitting streak.
“The freshman [McAdoo] extends his hitting streak to four games and puts us ahead with this RBI single,” the baseball team stated in a Sunday Twitter post.
After McAdoo’s RBI, the Spartans were able to test their luck again when Ruben Mercado hit a fly ball out to the right field, allowing McAdoo to score. SJSU finished the end of the fourth with a 2-0 lead.
The Aztecs weren't seeing much success offensively and both teams didn’t score again until the bottom of the sixth when the Aztecs started to gain more traction.
After a couple of walks and stolen bases, SDSU was finally able to get a foot in the game. When Poncho Ruiz walked, Ryan Orr advanced to home plate to secure SDSU’s first score of the night.
The Aztecs tapped into higher energy and began to rally. The team finished the bottom of the sixth with five points that changed the game to a 2-5 score with the Aztecs in the lead.
SDSU continued its momentum during the bottom of the seventh when the bases were loaded and Ruiz smacked a home run out to left field. Ruiz totaled three RBIs during the game. The Aztecs’ Caden Miller and Mike Jarvis were both able to score off of Ruizs’ homer.
Starting the top of the eighth inning, the Spartans were still trailing the Aztecs’ six-point lead.
SJSU was never able to recover after SDSU’s rally. It wasn’t until the top of the ninth inning that Andrew Jurado scored for the Spartans, leaving the score 3-8.
The advance by Jurado wasn’t enough to get the team’s momentum back and SJSU lost the third game in its series against SDSU.
The Spartans did better on the defensive end with only one error on the field.
As far as pitching, SJSU tried out three different pitchers for the night: Jonathan Clark, Wesley Clawson and Darren Jansen.
Clark was the Mountain West’s reigning Pitcher of the Week from April 26 to 2 and pitched five out of the nine innings against the Aztecs.
Though the Spartans ended the night with a loss of 3-8, they’re looking ahead to today’s match, where they’re expected to face Stanford at 6:00 p.m.
