LONG BEACH, Calif. — Long Beach State dropped the series finale to Cal State Fullerton, 6-2, Sunday afternoon at Bohl Diamond at Blair Field as the Titans claimed the rubber game.<\/p>\n
Freshman right-hander Jason Gerfers<\/a> got the start and opened with a clean first inning, retiring the side on two flyouts and a strikeout. Cal State Fullerton broke through in the second, as Ty Thomas doubled off the left field wall and later scored on a single from Niko Lombardi. After a groundout advanced runners, Hunter Meyer lifted a sacrifice fly to center to bring home Andrew Kirchner, giving the Titans a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n The Titans added on in the fourth when Kirchner doubled into right-center and moved to third on a bunt before Cade O’Hara delivered a sacrifice fly to extend the lead to 3-0. In the fifth, Paul Contreras drew a walk and came around to score on another Thomas double that carried to the wall in left, pushing the advantage to 4-0. Gerfers worked out of further trouble in the inning, leaving the bases loaded with a strikeout.<\/p>\n Cal State Fullerton created separation in the eighth, loading the bases with a pair of walks and a stolen base before a Eli Lopez sacrifice bunt resulted in two runs scoring on the play, stretching the lead to 6-0.<\/p>\n Long Beach State threatened late in the ninth. After two quick outs, Kaiden Smaka<\/a> singled through the right side to keep the inning alive. Dylan Lina<\/a> followed with a towering two-run home run to deep left field, cutting the deficit to 6-2, but the rally ended on the next at-bat.<\/p>\n The Dirtbags were limited offensively for much of the afternoon, recording six hits while leaving multiple runners stranded in scoring position.<\/p>\n Long Beach State will continue its homestand with two midweek games starting Tuesday against USC and Wednesday against San Diego State, both games set for a 6:05 p.m. first pitch.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, Calif. — Long Beach State dropped the series finale to Cal State Fullerton, 6-2, Sunday afternoon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-268762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268762","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=268762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}