Box Score
LOS ANGELES - The Cal Poly Pomona baseball team completed a perfect 4-0 first week on Saturday, as the Broncos flashed some resilient and potent bats to defeat Cal State L.A. by a score of 17-9.
CPP found itself down 5-2 after four innings but outscored the Golden Eagles 15-4 during the final five frames of Saturday's contest. While the Broncos improve to 4-0 in the 2011 season, CSULA falls to 1-1. Although the teams are California Collegiate Athletic Association rivals, Saturday's contest counts as a non-conference affair.
Seven CPP players tallied a multi-hit game in Los Angeles, as the No. 3 and No. 4 hitters in the lineup – Jenzen Torres and Travis Taijeron – led the Broncos' offense on the afternoon. The pair reached base in 12 of their combined 13 plate appearances and Taijeron registered his first career five-hit game.
Torres scored a career-high five runs on Saturday while matching his career mark in walks with three. While Torres and Taijeron are returners to the CPP lineup this season, five of their new teammates in 2011 collected two hits apiece Saturday.
That group of five featured second baseman Ryan Goodman and shortstop Mike Santora out of the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in the lineup and the seven through nine hitters in rightfielder Jordan Whitman, third baseman Humberto Tovalin and leftfielder Joseph Eusebio.
The 17 runs scored by CPP matched the team's high of 2010 recorded on April 25 against Cal State Stanislaus.
To start the action Friday, the Broncos rallied for two runs in their first at-bat with a two-out single from Torres and three bases on balls later in the frame.
CSULA bounced back for four runs during the second inning, featuring a two-RBI double by Brett Whalen. After Kevin Bosson replaced CPP starter Erick Ruvalcaba in the fourth, a wild pitch allowed the Golden Eagles to push their lead to 5-2.
Torres and Taijeron initiated the Broncos' fifth-inning rally, which was capped off with RBI singles from Whitman and Eusebio. That spurt brought the score even at 5-5. The game wasn't tied for long though as CSULA rallied for three runs in the bottom half of the fifth.
The big strikes came in the sixth and seventh innings for CPP though, with the visitors scoring seven runs unanswered in that span. The clutch knocks came in the form of a two-run Taijeron double in the sixth and a three-run home run by Torres in the seventh. It marked the first homer of the season for Torres.
Bosson ended up settling in a bit on the mound for the Broncos and finished with the win to improve to 1-0. On Saturday he totaled 3.1 innings and three strikeouts while allowing four earned runs.
Michael Parker finished the game on the rubber for CPP, throwing two scoreless innings and striking out two Golden Eagle batters.
Up next for the Broncos will be a home-and-away series with Vanguard next weekend. CPP will host the Lions at 2 p.m. Friday before traveling to play the same team Saturday in a doubleheader starting at 11 a.m. VU, a squad playing Cal State East Bay this weekend, competes out of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).
