REDLANDS, Calif. – The University of Redlands Baseball team (22-12, 11-7 SCIAC) pushed their win streak to four as they swept their home doubleheader with Occidental College Saturday at The Yard picking up their first conference series sweep on the season.
Game 1 (W, 5-2)
The Bulldogs tied the game at one in the fourth when they scored thanks to a throwing error by the Tiger shortstop. The error extended the inning, which the Bulldogs took advantage of as they scored two more unearned runs on a Mason Chetcuti (Redwood City, CA) two-run single that plated Jake Burgess (Riverside, CA) and Will Cell (Seattle, WA).
In the sixth Luke De Vries (Irvine, CA) doubled the lead with a two-run single. Burgess and Nate Miller (San Jose, CA) came around pushing the lead to 5-1.
Brett Edwards (Santa Monica, CA) came on in the ninth and sat the Tigers down one-two-three for the save.
De Vries, Mark Kirkland (Redlands, CA), and Chetcuti all had two-hit games. De Vries was 2-for-3 with two RBI's, Kirkland was 2-for-4 scoring once and Chetcuti was 2-for-4 driving in two. Erik Radder (San Diego, CA) got the win, improving to 4-1 after throwing 6.0 Innings, giving up one run, scattering six hits on just 74 pitches. Gavin Duenez (Redlands, CA) worked two innings with the lone run scoring after his own throwing error allowed the base runner to advance to third, which allowed him to score on a ground out.
Game 2 (W, 11-8)
In the first high-scoring game of the series the Bulldogs took advantage of eight runs in the first two innings to hold off the late comeback attempt by the Tigers.
Kirkland and Kaiya Saito (Bellevue, WA) had RBI's to put the Bulldogs in front 3-1. That half inning the Bulldogs had four hits with De Vries and Kirkland both doubling to right field along with Saito driving one to left center and Gabe Ceja (Long Beach, CA) singling to left.
Rylan Morris (Fullerton, CA) and Tyler Preece (Bellevue, WA) added runs four and five in the second on a double and a single. Kirkland then drove in Morris on a single of his own. Saito and Ceja had productive at bats with runners at third and less than two outs as they both got RBI's on sacrifice flies.
Following a solo home run by Occidental in the top of the fifth, Morris and Kirkland added base knocks to drive home teammates putting UR up 10-2.
Occidental made their comeback attempt in the sixth when they scored four times and had a runner at third with one out before Jack Brown (San Diego, CA) was brought in out of the bullpen.
Brown came on and got a pop up to Kirkland in foul territory and then a line out to De Vries in center that stopped the bleeding and the last true Tiger threat.
The 11th run of the day came in the next half inning when Cell singled to left, bringing in Morris who walked earlier in the inning.
Kirkland added three more hits, while De Vries, Morris, Cell, and Burgess had two hits each. Brown and Edwards were the two lone pitchers to keep Occidental off the scoreboard as they each had scoreless outings. Nathan Buchan (Mercer Island, WA) stayed perfect on the season, moving to 8-0 after throwing 5.0 Innings giving up two runs on six hits and striking out five.
Redlands returns to the diamond to take on Chapman University in a three-game series beginning this Friday, April 18 at 3:00 p.m. inside The Yard.
