Photo by: Tony Leon/ActionWestPhotography.com
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The Whittier College baseball team opened up their three game series with the Tigers of Occidental College Friday afternoon and came away with a 4-3 victory improving to 11-13, 8-5 SCIAC.
Despite seeing a two run shot from A.J. Libunao that pulled the Tigers within one in the bottom half of the 8th, the Poets managed to shut the door on the comeback thanks to Bobby Santoyo who registered his fourth save of the season.
Sophomore Ben Cerami came out and picked up his third win of the season after going 8.0 strong giving up three runs on 11 eleven hits to go with six strikeouts. His counterpart Kling was on the opposite side picking up the loss after going 6.2 innings giving up four runs on nine hits, which included a homerun.
The Poets struck first in the top half of the third when Jonathan Whipple drove in Christian Loera with a sacrifice fly. They would then add two insurance runs and extend their lead to 3-0 the ensuing inning after Cody Martinez knocked in Julian Barzilli with a two run blast.
Oxy would tack on their first run in the bottom half of the fourth after getting the bases loaded and a two out single from Brooks. But the Purple & Gold responded scrapping together a couple of hits in the top half of the seventh to plate one more, which proved to be the eventual game winner. Loera led off the inning with a double through the left side and was then driven in by Stephen Zavala who added his own double to left field.
The Poets finished with 10 hits on the afternoon with two coming from Alex Mitchell, Martinez, and Loera.
Whittier completes their series with Occidental tomorrow, Saturday, March 30 at Memorial Field with game times slated for 11:00am and 2:30pm.
