The562’s coverage of Dirtbags Baseball for the 2024 season is sponsored by P2S, Inc. Visit p2sinc.com to learn more.
The Long Beach State Dirtbags continued their scorching-hot start to the season on Tuesday evening at Bohl Diamond at Blair Field, as they picked up their second consecutive shutout in a big 2-0 win over UCLA. The win improves the ‘Bags to 9-1-1 overall, with a looming trip to Kansas this weekend for a series with Wichita State.
The win over UCLA was a big deal for the Dirtbags and their fans, with more than 2,000 in the stands for the victory, which came a week after an extra innings loss to the Bruins.
“Like we talked about before the game, this isn’t a revenge game or anything like that, because that would indicated that we have to do something different,” said Dirtbags manager Bryan Peters. “We just needed to play our style, need to play our brand.”
Subscribe to the562 on GiveButter to make a recurring donation and keep Long Beach sports coverage free!
The Dirtbags took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the third, as Ty Borgogno doubled, was moved to third on Nick Marinconz’s single, and then sacrificed home on a fly ball by Kyle Ashworth.
The Dirtbags opened with Van Larson, who went 1.2 innings and yielded two hits. Larson gave the ‘Bags a great opening tone against a lefty-dominant UCLA lineup, then gave way to Josh Donegan, who gave up four hits and struck out six in 5.1 innings of work. Donegan came out in the eighth inning with the Dirtbags clinging to a 1-0 lead, with runners on the corners and no outs.
Nick Williams came in and was electric, striking out three batters in a row to get the Dirtbags out of the jam.
“I thought he was the player of the game, he came into the game with runners on base and to strike out the side under that pressure, it was so beautiful,” said Peters. “It kept the momentum on our side when we had a chance to lose it. It sparked the whole team.”
The Dirtbags added an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth after Alex Champagne was hit by a pitch. Champagne stole second with two outs, and then took off on the full-count pitch to Kyle Ashworth. He ended up coming home easily on Ashworth’s single into left field, making it 2-0 Dirtbags.
Peters got to make one of the easiest calls he can make at that point, putting Dirtbags closer Mike Villani in for the ninth inning. Villani’s fastball was sitting 94-96 mph but he was locating his breaking pitches as well, getting the first batter to ground out, striking out the second, walking a batter, and then striking out Dean West to end the game.
“He always throws hard, the difference today was he had to pitch, he landed a couple of good breaking balls and when you do that, 94-96 becomes a lot harder to deal with,” said Peters.
The Dirtbags pitchers have been dominant for the last week, putting together two straight shutouts and a scoreless streak that now extends to 26 innings.
