Riverside—The UC Riverside Baseball Team gets back into conference play this weekend, hosting Cal State Fullerton for a three-game Big West series beginning Friday at 6 pm PT.
The Highlanders have won two of their last five games, but each of their three losses has been by just one run. Mark Contreras had his team-high 11-game hitting streak snapped in UC Riverside's most recent decision—a 5-4 loss at UNLV Tuesday afternoon (
box score/
recap).
Joie Dunyon makes his third straight Friday start for the Highlanders. In each of his last two starts he has gone eight innings allowing 11 combined hits and three earned runs. He also struck out 15 batters, and walked just one in those starts, dropping his season ERA from 4.39 to 3.38.
Kevin Sprague, who leads the team in innings pitched, makes his 11th start of the year on Saturday. He is coming off of a 7.1 inning effort against Cal State Northridge last weekend (
box score/
recap) that saw him allow just four hits and one run as he picked up his third win of the season.
Cal State Fullerton is 23-20 following a 5-3 win at USC on Tuesday. They also took two of three from UC Irvine over the weekend to improve to 8-4 in the Big West and into a tie for second place with UC Santa Barbara.
The Titans boast the most potent offense in the conference during Big West play with a slash line of .306/.385/.430. All three of those figures are tops in the league. Josh Vargas (.347/.461/.411) and Davi Olmedo-Barrera (.313/.417/.531) are the top two hitters in the Fullerton lineup.
Cal State Fullerton's pitching staff boasts the best strikeout-to-walk ratio in the Big West at 5.41 (92 Ks, 17 BBs). Their weekend rotation of Thomas Eshelman (4-5, 2.10) on Friday, Justin Garza (3-3, 3.56) on Saturday and John Gavin (5-1, 4.13) on Sunday have combined to start 32 of the team's 43 games on the year.
The Titans closer, Tyler Peitzmeier, leads the Big West with a dozen saves, and has 39 strikeouts in 32.0 innings.
The Highlanders are 22-38 all-time against Cal State Fullerton (
view results) with wins in three of the last four games, and five of the last eight.
