IRVINE, Calif. --- UC Irvine baseball dropped the opener of the Black & Blue Rivalry Series Thursday night at Anteater Ballpark, 11-6.
The visitors Long Beach State (19-9, 7-3) hardly let the fans find their seats with a single and home run in the first four pitches to take the 2-0 lead. LBSU kept the bats going with three more singles and a walk to go up 4-0 and knock out UCI (17-9, 4-6) starter
Nick Pinto with just one out in the first inning.
The Anteaters got a run in rebuttal in the bottom half of the inning off a
Chase Call two-out double to make it 4-1, but Long Beach State was not done scoring in each of the next three innings to grow the lead to 10-1 in the fourth inning.
UCI's bullpen fought back with
Finnegan Wall and
Max Martin coming up with three straight scoreless innings all the while the Anteaters chipped away with run in three of the next four innings to climb back to a 10-5 deficit including
Thomas McCaffrey's booming two-run home run off the left field scoreboard.
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The Anteaters would run out of innings for the slow-building comeback as LBSU closed out the 11-6 victory to drop UCI to 4-6 in Big West action.
Pinto's shortest out of the season led to his second loss.
Michael Stanford ate up some innings but allowed six runs in the process over 3.2 innings.
Finnegan Wall was the most-effective pitcher on the evening with two spotless innings and a strikeout.
The offense pounded out nine hits with two-hit nights from four players led by
Caden Kendle who reached four times and scored three runs. McCaffrey belted his first home run of 2023 and led all Anteaters with three RBIs.
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The Black & Blue Rivalry Series continues Friday with
David Vizcaino and Nico Zeglin going toe-to-toe with a 6:00 p.m. first pitch at Anteater Ballpark.
