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The Long Beach State Dirtbags have played at three different Major League Baseball stadiums in their history, and they’ll add Angel Stadium to that list tonight when they take on USC. First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m.
This is the tenth Dirtbags game at a big league park after playing at the Kingdome in Seattle, AT&T Park in San Francisco and Petco Park in San Diego. In 2004, the Dirtbags and San Diego State played in San Diego before a crowd of 25,175. That ranks as the sixth-highest attended NCAA baseball game. LBSU is 5-4 in these MLB park games.
Tonight the Dirtbags will send Jake Rons to the mound for the start while USC counters with Jaden Agassi.
USC (25-17-1) has struggled on the road where they’ve only won five of 18 games.
The Dirtbags (24-17) are coming off an inconsistent weekend in Reno where they split four games with Nevada and Grand Canyon.
Statistically this has been a successful season for LBSU, but the results aren’t matching those impressive numbers. The Dirtbags’ 43 home runs are second in the Big West while their 85 doubles are third. First baseman Jonathon Long leads the Big West in RBI with 44 this season. He also ranks third in slugging (.627), doubles (15), and home runs (11), and fourth in OPS (1.049). Middle infielder Eddie Saldivar ranks fourth in hits (54) and sixth in runs (36).
On the mound, Dirtbags pitchers have 402 strikeouts and a 9.9 K/9 rate which is second in the conference and 37th in the nation. LBSU pitchers also have the tenth-best strikeout/walk ratio at 2.89 and the 17th best walks per nine in the country at 3.41. Saturday starter Nico Zeglin leads the conference with 84 strikeouts while also ranking third in innings (65.1), third in opponent average (.208) and fourth in ERA (2.62).
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