Charles Whisnand
RENO - Travis Sutton turned out to be a quick learner for the University of Nevada baseball team.
One week after being pounded in a loss to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in which he continued to keep his pitches up, Sutton was able to keep the ball down against Cal State Northridge. The end result was a 10-5 win over Northridge on Friday at Peccole Park.
Sutton allowed just one run through the first seven innings before making one of his few mistakes when he gave up a three-run home run to to Michael Paulk. But the Wolf Pack responded with five runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to put the game away. Sutton ended up allowing four runs in 7 2/3 innings and didn't walk anyone.
"When you don't do that the other team has to get a lot of hits to win," said Nevada coach Gary Powers about not walking any batters. "Travis did a nice job of mixing up his pitches."
Carson High graduate Joe Mercer started at third base and went 0-for-1 with three walks. Galena High graduate Brandon Evans pitched the last 1.1 innings for the save, allowing Nick Mahin's homer in the ninth.
Powers faced a quandary in the eighth. Northridge had runners at first and second with one out and the left-handed Paulk at the plate. Powers had the left-handed Evans warming up in the bullpen.
But a right-handed hitter, Alberto Quintana was on deck. Powers decided to stay with the right-handed Sutton. Paulk took Sutton's first pitch over the right field wall. "I just left the curveball up a little bit and he did a good job with it," Sutton said.
"Travis had done a nice job of pitching to that guy all day long," Powers said. "He didn't throw a whole lot of bad pitches all day. Those things are going to happen."
Sutton went on to retire Quintana before giving way to Evans. "I kept the ball down this week," Sutton said. "It's a lot harder for them to hit it when the ball's down."
Evans came in to face the left-handed Luke Riordan. Right-handed Drew Aguilar pinch hit for Riordan, but Evans got him to fly out.
Brian Gazerro tripled to begin Nevada's five-run eighth. The rally was highlighted by a two-run single by Chris Gimenez and Bub Madrid's two-run triple.
"The big inning was the eighth inning," Powers said. "When we needed to score we did."
Another key inning was the fourth when the game was still scoreless. Sutton allowed two hits to give Northridge runners at first and second with no outs, but Sutton got out of the inning unscathed. "I think that inning was the big inning for him," Powers said.
Nevada took a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth. Jacob Butler began the rally with a single and scored on Ben Mummy's single. Mercer drew a walk to load the bases and Erick Streelman followed with a deep sacrifice fly to the center field wall to make it 2-0. Gazerro's RBI single that scored Mercer finished the rally and made it 4-0.
Brett Hayes singled and Mummy eventually followed with an RBI single that made it 5-0 in the fifth. The left-handed Mercer was able to draw a walk off of the left-handed Kyle Jean to load the bases, but Nevada failed to score any more runs.
Mercer drew another walk off of Jean in the seventh. Madrid then came in to pinch run for him.
Hayes, Butler, Mummy and Gazerro all had two hits and Gabe Mayorga doubled for Nevada.
Notes: Carson High graduate Owen Brolsma was warming up in the bullpen in the bottom of the eighth and was set to come in for the save in the ninth when the score was 5-4. But when Nevada broke the game open, Powers stayed with Evans... Gimenez came into the game leading the Western Athletic Conference in four categories - hit by pitch, on base percentage, slugging percentage and runs scored. Gimenez was hit twice on Friday.
Contact Charles Whisnand at cwhisnand@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1214.