MALIBU, Calif. – No. 10 Pepperdine scored three runs on five singles in the seventh, rallying to beat Evansville 4-2 in the nightcap of Saturday’s doubleheader at Eddy D. Field Stadium. The Waves lost the first game 2-0 but won their third series in as many weeks by taking three of four games from the Purple Aces.
Including Tuesday’s win at UCLA, Pepperdine posted a 4-1 record this week and improved its overall mark to 9-3. Evansville’s record stands at 3-8 following its Spring Break trip to Malibu and Northridge.
“This was a good week for us to win four of five games, so I’m pretty excited about what we have here,” head coach Steve Rodriguez said. “We’ll get the guys back into their groove again starting Monday and I’m looking forward to playing Cal Poly here before hitting the weekend at Wichita State.”
Pepperdine’s hitters were left frustrated most of the day by an Evansville staff that held them largely in check right up to the aforementioned seventh inning. But up until that point, the Waves couldn’t scrape together more than just one run on six hits and a walk.
Entering the inning down 2-1, Colin Rooney (Yorba Linda, Calif./Esperanza HS) led off with a hit and his pinch runner Tyler Brubaker (Valencia, Calif./Saugus HS) followed with a steal of second before moving to third on Ryan Van Amburg’s (Campbell, Calif./St. Francis) bunt single.
Two more singles off the bats of Bryce Mendonca (San Leandro, Calif./Bishop O’ Dowd) and Brian Humphries (El Cajon, Calif./Granite Hills HS), combined with Denny Duron’s (Shreveport, La./Evangel Christian Academy) sacrifice hit, plated both Brubaker and Van Amburg, and then Bobby Cozine (Highland Ranch, Colo./Thunder Ridge HS) added an insurance run with a ground ball to second.
Pepperdine’s work at the plate earned redshirt freshman Cole Cook (Los Angeles, Calif./Palisades HS) his second win of the week in improving to 2-0. Cook entered the game in relief of starter Aaron Gates (Villa Park, Calif./Orange Lutheran HS) in the sixth and used a biting slider that struck out four of nine batters.
Unfortunately, Cook’s outing wasn’t completely smooth sailing as the Evansville coaches immediately took issue with the umpires regarding his unorthodox windup, which they believed constituted a balk. Cook’s irregular hand-shaking motion with his glove down is similar to that of the Tampa Bay Rays’ Matt Garza.
“I fiddle with the ball when the glove is down, but it’s just the way I get my pitches picked out of my glove,” Cook said. “It can take a second for batters to get used to and I think it kind of freaked them out.”
“Everyone’s going to have a different view of it,” Rodriguez added. “The umpires originally said it had to be one continuous motion, but I explained that it doesn’t have to be when he’s going into his glove and getting the pitch up in his hands.”
Senior Nick Gaudi (Lancaster, Calif./Paraclete HS) followed Cook to the mound in the ninth and picked up where he left off last Tuesday at UCLA by striking out the first two batters he faced before inducing a ground ball that ended the game.
Gates was fairly effective for five innings mixing together a fastball, changeup and curveball that struck out six Purple Ace batters. However, he also made two mistakes that gave Evansville an early 2-0 lead.
Gates walked the game’s first batter in Jim Viscomi who scored easily on a stolen base and pair of groundouts, and later allowed a Cody Fick home run on the very first pitch of the third inning.
“I threw him a fastball right down the middle just trying to get ahead in the count and it didn’t work,” Gates said. “But I think I did alright after that one pitch.”
Gates certainly did more than alright as he retired the next five batters and picked off Alex Atcheson trying to steal second.
“We’re really competing hard on the mound,” Rodriguez said of his starting pitchers. “Sure we’re missing a few spots with some pitches, but they’re doing a good job overall in giving us a chance to win. And if there’s one thing this offense is sure of, it’s that our pitchers are going to get after it.”
The old baseball adage says, ‘walks will haunt,’ and that was certainly the case for game one starter Scott Alexander (Windsor, Calif./Cardinal Newman HS) who dropped to 1-2 on the year despite matching a career high with seven strikeouts.
Like Gates after him, Alexander began the game by issuing one of his five walks to Viscomi and watched him roam the bases via stolen base, ground out and sacrifice fly. Evansville then made it a 2-0 game in the sixth, scoring a run on a combination of two walks and two singles.
The Purple Ace pitching combination of Wade Kapteyn and J.R. Carbonell, which earlier in week shutout Cal State Northridge 3-0, held the Waves’ offense at bay by scattering three hits over the scheduled 7-inning contest. Cozine picked up two of those three hits and Rooney had the other.
Carbonell struck out six batters over the final three innings to earn his first save of 2009.
“The pitchers we saw today we’re pretty much the same pitchers we we’re seeing the whole weekend,” Rodriguez said. “We made good adjustments to what they were throwing at us yesterday (W, 15-5) and we didn’t today.”
Pepperdine completes its five-game homestand (3-1) Tuesday at 3 p.m. vs. the Cal Poly Mustangs.
Game 1 Linescore
Score by Innings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R H E
Evansville (3-7) 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 4 0
Pepperdine (8-3) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0
Pitchers: Evansville - Kapteyn, Wade; Carbonell, J.R.(5). Pepperdine Waves - ALEXANDER, Scott;
HARMSTON, Jonathan (7).
Win - Kapteyn, Wade (2-1) Save - Carbonell, J.R. (1) Loss - ALEXANDER, Scott (1-2) T - 2:05 A - 460
Weather: Sunny, 60
Game 2 Linescore
Score by Innings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Evansville (3-8) 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 1
Pepperdine (9-3) 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 x 4 9 0
Pitchers: Evansville - Baehl, Jared; Obenchain, Mark (4); Davisson, Corey (7). Pepperdine Waves -
GATES, Aaron; COOK, Cole (6); GAUDI, Nick (9).
Win - COOK, Cole (2-0) Save - GAUDI, Nick (2) Loss - Obenchain, Mark (0-1) T - 2:32 A - 460
HR UE - Fick, Cody (1).
Weather: Sunny, 64
Courtesy: Stephen Wandzura
