The six-time defending California Collegiate League champions weren’t about to lose their conference opener.
Tim Kelley of Wichita State pitched six scoreless innings Tuesday afternoon at Caesar Uyesaka Stadium to lead the Santa Barbara Foresters to a 3-1 win over the visiting Santa Maria Packers.
“The big stat of the day is that we’re 1-0 in the league,” said associate head coach Pat Burns. “There’s a perception in the league that the Foresters win, and any time we start out by fulfilling that perception it puts the other teams on edge.”
The big stat of the season so far is that the Foresters (4-0, 1-0) have allowed just two runs thus far.
“Early in the season there tends to be an edge for the pitchers because guys are still getting used to the wood bats, but this is an extreme edge,” said Burns.
Kelley gave up just three hits on four walks while striking out five, facing a physically unorthodox Packers lineup. Leadoff hitter James Roland stood at 6-4, 215 pounds, and the batters that followed him tipped the scales at 200-220-250-220. In other words, small-ball wasn’t the Packers’ approach.
It paid off for them on at least one swing, when 250-pound Azusa Pacific slugger Brice Cutspec sent one sailing over the fence in the top of the eighth to score Santa Maria’s only run.
“We were calling them the “Beefeaters” because of how big those guys were,” said Burns. “That home run was just massive, and it was on a change-up so he was the one who put all the power behind it.”
Santa Barbara scored as UCSB’s Steve Cook hit his sixth straight single to leadoff the game and fellow Gaucho John DeAlba followed with an RBI double to drive him in. Casey McMurray scored from third on a Packers throwing error in the fourth, and Patric Tolentino responded to Cutspec’s homer with an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth.
The Foresters play at Santa Maria’s Elks Field Wednesday at 6 p.m. All games are broadcast on AM 1490 or www.sbforesters.org.
