With baseball season coming to an end, the Dirtbags have put themselves in position to make a run into the postseason.
Only two weekend series remained on the Dirtbags’ (29-24, 14-7) schedule, as they won the first of those series against UC Riverside (24-26, 11-10 ), taking two out of three over the weekend at Riverside.
Game one went to the Highlanders was the Dirtbags dropped the Friday night contest, 8-2.
The Highlanders scored three times in the first inning with the help of some Dirtbag defensive miscues. In total, the Dirtbags had three errors which led to four of the eight Highlander runs. That was more than enough for the Highlander pitching, who held the Dirtbags to nine base hits, all of which were singles.
Andrew Rohrbach took the loss for the Dirtbags, his first since opening weekend against Vanderbilt. He was charged with six runs, three of them unearned in his five innings on the hill. The Dirtbags got their revenge in game two, taking Saturday’s contest 6-1.
The offense was led by Richard Prigatano, who drove in three runs in support of Josh Frye. Frye went eight solid innings, giving up eight hits and one run to get his seventh win of the season.
The Dirtbags had runners in scoring position in each of the first four innings, but were held off the scoreboard by Riverside. They finally scored a run in the fourth on a sacrifice fly by Garrett Hampson. Prigatano hit a chopper over the left side of the infield to drive in a second run, and then Johnny Bekakis drove a two-run single to left to put the Dirtbags up 4-1.
Frye found himself in trouble in the fifth, but escaped the bases loaded jam to keep the Highlanders to one run. Frye’s performance lowered his ERA to 1.56, which is second on the team behind Ryan Millison.
The Dirtbags ran away with game three of the series. They put up three runs in three different innings en route to a 12-2 victory to clinch the series.
The offense was clicking on all cylinders, as eight of the nine starters had at least two hits in the game. Michael Hill and Bekakis each drove in two runs, while Hampson, Prigatano, Ino Patron and Daniel Jackson each scored twice.
The 12 runs were more than enough for Nick Sabo, who only allowed two hits in his eight innings on the hill.
Ty Provencher came on in the ninth and gave up a solo home run, but struck out Shuyo Chang to end the game.
Sunday’s win ensured that Long Beach will finish the season with a winning record for the fifth straight time under head coach Troy Buckley.
The Dirtbags finish off the season at Blair Field next weekend against the UC Irvine Anteaters in a series for second place in the Big West. Cal Poly clinched the conference with a sweep against Northridge over the weekend.