The UCSB baseball team tried, but it couldn’t derail UCLA’s thus-far perfect season. The Bruins, ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation, got stellar pitching from Garret Claypool and used four Gaucho errors to come away with a 7-1 victory on Tuesday at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium.
Claypool shut the Gauchos down, allowing just one run on three hits in seven sterling innings, striking out 10. In all, 14 Gauchos went down on strikes in the game.
That didn’t help Jesse Meaux, who entered the game with a 1.71 ERA in his three previous starts. The junior allowed five runs – four earned – on 10 hits over five innings. However, three of UCSB’s four errors came with Meaux on the mound.
Yet, the Gauchos were looking to break through against Claypool early on. In the second inning UCSB had runners on first and third after Marty Mullins’ single moved Trevor Whyte, who was hit by a pitch, to third with one out.
Derek Eligio laid down a nice bunt in front of the plate, but Whyte was tagged out in a rundown between third and home and Eligio, who tried to go to second base on the play was eventually caught in his own pickle before being tagged out.
Until the Gauchos scratched out a run in the seventh inning, on Beck Wheeler’s groundout that brought in Sean Williams after he doubled and went to third, the second inning was their only previous threat.
UCLA scored five times in the fourth inning, as a pair of doubles and a groundout brought in the first two runs. Catcher Trevor Brown’s infield single scored another run before Beau Amaral’s single later scored Blair Dunlap. The Bruins added their fifth run when Justin Uribe’s single eventually scored Amaral.
The Gauchos will conclude an 11-game homestand when they host the University of San Francisco in a three-game series beginning Friday at 2 p.m. Both Saturday’s and Sunday’s games start at 1 p.m.
