UCLA Baseball Drops Opening Series to UNC
UCLA Baseball lost the season opening series to North Carolina this weekend, two games to one. What does this say about the team’s prospects going forward?
In our season preview, I outlined three key metrics against which we could reliably measure UCLA’s success this season:
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- How will the starting pitching rotation limit the dropoff in talent from last year’s departed class of superstars?
- Will the offense step up and produce more than they had to last year?
- Can the Bruins fill the void at catcher following Darrell Miller Jr.‘s season-ending injury?
Additionally, these were based on some assumptions about areas of strength for John Savage-coached teams: the defense will be excellent, the bullpen will be reliable, and the offense will play small ball.
Friday – Starter Grant Dyer allowed four runs on seven hits through five innings. The offense seized up, striking out fourteen times and amassing only five hits all game. The bullpen held strong for four scoreless innings.
Saturday – Griffin Canning allowed three early runs, but the offense took advantage of Tar Heel errors and strung together enough singles to take a short-lived lead. The bats came through again in the ninth for a walk-off single with two down in the bottom of the ninth. It was high drama, if not a dazzling display of power. Again, the bullpen threw four shut-out innings.
Sunday – UNC again ran out to an early lead on starter Kyle Molnar. The Bruin power finally showed up, as Sean Bouchard‘s two-run homer helped to eventually tie the game at five in the sixth inning. Then the bottom fell out of the bullpen, and the Tar Heels strung nine unanswered runs together to win 14-5.
Even the best bullpens collapse from time to time, so I’m not yet concerned that relief pitching will become an unforeseen issue for this team. Additionally, John Savage’s reputation as a pitcher-whisperer gives me some confidence that the starting pitching will only get better from here – which it needs to, as no starter was able to keep a clean sheet through five innings.
No, the biggest area of concern coming out of this series is, unsurprisingly, the offense. The Bruins struck out 14, 16, and 8 times, for a total of 38 strikeouts in 27 innings – compared to 26 for the Tar Heel batters. Savage’s offenses do well when they focus on putting the ball in play, making the defense make mistakes, and stringing together opportunities. That means minimizing strikeouts.
Next: UCLA Baseball Season Preview
On Tuesday, the Bruins host Long Beach State and hope to get back on the right foot.