UC Riverside Baseball Begins Conference Play Friday At UCSB

Santa Barbara, CA—Big West Conference play gets underway this weekend for the UC Riverside Baseball Team (7-11, 0-0) as they travel to UC Santa Barbara (12-11, 0-0) for a three-game series with the Gauchos beginning Friday at 3 pm PT.

Since taking the first two games of their series vs. Sacramento State, the Highlanders have dropped three of four. UC Riverside's pitching staff has kept them in games of late allowing four or fewer runs in seven of the Highlanders' last nine contests, but the offense has scored more than three runs in just three of those nine games.

UC Riverside's Saturday starter, Eddie Orozco, continues to serve as the standard bearer for Highlanders pitching with a 3-2 record and the third best ERA in the conference at 1.62. Friday hurler Dylan Stuart also boasts a 3-2 mark along with a 3.86 ERA. Trevor Frank (0-3, 5.00) gets the call for UCR on Sunday afternoon.

The Highlanders offensive slash line of .256 avg/.370 obp/.322 slg is down significantly from last season's .280/.358/.375, but the team's patience at the plate has them ranked third in the Big West in on base percentage. This year's power numbers have been provided primarily by Phil Holinsworth whose .515 slugging percentage is seventh best in the conference. He has UC Riverside's only two home runs of the season, and three of its five triples to go along with three doubles.

UCSB is skippered by a man whose name should be familiar to Highlanders fans: Andrew Checketts, who served as UC Riverside's pitching coach from 2001 to 2007, was named the Gauchos ninth head coach on June 22, 2011.

Although known for his pitching acumen, Checketts has a number of the Santa Barbara bats among the conference leaders: Brett Vertigan (.413), Greg Mahie (.411) and Bryce Tafelski (.407) are all hitting better than .400 on the season, and rank one, two and three in the conference in batting average. Each member of the trio also boasts an on base percentage of at least .466 and Vertigan (.587) and Tafelski (.500) are among the Big West leaders in slugging as well.

The Gauchos also like to employ the running game averaging two stolen base attempts per contest, but they have only been successful on 24 of 46 attempts on the year.

UCSB will start Andrew Vasquez (3-2, 1.23) on Friday afternoon, Austin Pettibone (4-1, 5.00) on Saturday and TBD on Sunday. The Gauchos lead the Big West in strikeouts with 197, but their team ERA of 4.06 is the seventh highest in the conference, and their 117 walks on the season are 23 more than their nearest competitor. Defensively, they have a league-high 37 errors which have led to a Big West high 32 unearned runs.

UC Riverside Baseball Begins Conference Play Friday At UCSB

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