Washington State baseball travels down to Baggett Stadium this weekend to take on the Cal Poly Mustangs. The Cougars are coming off a series loss to Alabama, but showed promise according to head coach Nathan Choate.
“Thought we were getting momentum on both sides of the ball.” Choate said in the Cougar Baseball Podcast on Wednesday.
Offensively for the Cougs, Max Hartman looks to continue his strong senior campaign after totalling an impressive 1.300 OPS and .400 average in the opening series. The other dominant player for WSU was redshirt freshman Matt Priest who got his season started with three hits and two runs batted in. Priest was a patient batter at the plate, getting team high three walks as well. One final highlight for the Cougs is true freshman Dane Chavez getting a hit in his first collegiate at-bat.
As for the pitching, WSU was led by Luke Meyers who allowed one run over 3.2 innings pitched.
In his outing, Meyers did a good job keeping the ball on the ground and out of the air. The Cougars’ bullpen was shaky in the series, allowing 10 runs in 13.2 innings. WSU will need to see a better performance from their bullpen to get a series win against a higher powered Cal Poly offense.
Head coach Choate felt confident in what he saw on opening weekend and was confident that the pitching mistakes were minor errors that will get cleaned up throughout the season.
“I thought our pitchers continued to attack. I thought there was no quit in them. Like I said, if we can clean up some of the other stuff, I think we’re going to be just fine,” Choate said.
The Mustangs are coming off a strong offensive showing against Campbell, totalling 22 runs in their opening three game series. Junior Alejandro Garza is off to a hot start for Cal Poly, tallying six hits in twelve at-bats. Garza also leads the Mustangs in RBIs as well with four. Another player to look out for on the offense is Ryan Tayman, who leads the team with a 1.162 OPS. Tayman also has the lone homerun on the season for the Mustangs.
As for pitching, Cal Poly had really strong performances from starting pitchers Griffin Naess and Laif Palmer. Both Naess and Palmer pitched five innings and allowed two runs in their respective performances. Out of the bullpen, Pettey Corden and Nick Bonn earned saves and tallied a total of nine combined strikeouts. After their first series on the young season, Cal Poly has been dominant on both hitting and pitching.
WSU starts their four-game series at 6:30 p.m on Friday Feb. 20 in Baggett Stadium. Game two is at 3:05 p.m on Feb. 21 and game three is at 1:05 p.m on Feb. 22. Finally, the Cougs will play game four of the series at 5:05 p.m on Feb. 23.
