Cal State Fullerton baseball took two out of three games over Big West rival Long Beach State to improve its record to 17-17 on the season and back to the .500 mark.<\/p>\n
The win on Sunday at Blair Field marked the second straight series victory over Long Beach State, the first time CSUF has accomplished that feat since 2019 \u2013 a season in which the Titans went a perfect 6-0 against the Dirtbags.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Titans\u2019 pitching staff showed out in the series, allowing just six total runs across 27 innings of work. CSUF did an excellent job of limiting the free passes, allowing just four walks across the three games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senior Mikiah Negrete added another vintage outing to his dominant season Friday evening, tossing seven innings of shutout baseball and allowing just four Dirtbags to reach base. The performance marked his third consecutive start in which he has gone at least seven frames.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During that span, Negrete has thrown 23 consecutive scoreless innings, punching out 22 hitters and walking just one. He lowered his ERA to 1.53 on the season, good for second best in the Big West.<\/p>\n
Junior Paul Contreras capped off a 10-0 win in the first game of the series with a two-run homer in the third inning, his team-high eighth homer of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CSUF\u2019s offense missed Contreras desperately Saturday, as the Titans lost in walkoff fashion 4-3 for their lone loss of the series. Contreras has raked all season for the Titans, ranking inside the top five in batting average, on-base plus slugging, on-base percentage and slugging percentage in the Big West.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The middle game of the three-game set didn\u2019t come without controversy, as Head Coach Jason Dietrich was ejected in the ninth inning by home plate umpire Kelly Gonzales.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dietrich argued that Long Beach State catcher Damon Valdez missed a tag on shortstop Cade O\u2019Hara that would have given the Titans a one-run lead in the top of the ninth. Due to replay being unavailable, the call stood and CSUF would surrender a walk-off hit to redshirt junior Kaiden Smaka.<\/p>\n
With the series tied at one apiece, the Titans delivered and picked up a 6-2 victory behind sophomore Dylan Smith\u2019s finest performance of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With every Big West matchup becoming more important than the last, Smith fired a gem for the Titans. He logged a career-high eight innings, allowing just four hits, one walk and no runs. It marked just the second time this season Smith allowed zero runs in an outing \u2013 the first coming in his season debut against California Baptist University back on Feb. 14.<\/p>\n
The Titans improved to 8-10 on the road this season and 11-7 in the Big West Conference. CSUF currently resides in fourth in a jam-packed race, where the top five teams advance to play in the Big West Championship, which kicks off May 20 at Cicerone Field.<\/p>\n
CSUF will look to build on the series win as they head home for a midweek nonconference game against the University of San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First pitch is set for Tuesday at 6:05 p.m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cal State Fullerton baseball took two out of three games over Big West rival Long Beach State to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3005,116465,116464,131,133,132,1817,115225,115226],"class_list":{"0":"post-266462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-csuf","9":"tag-dylan-smith","10":"tag-jason-dietrich","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-long-beach-state","15":"tag-mikiah-negrete","16":"tag-paul-contreras"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}