CSU Bakersfield holds on to even baseball series against Hawaii
Ryan Koch cleared the bases with a three-run double in the fifth inning and CSU Bakersfield survived another late-inning Hawaii comeback attempt in an 8-4 baseball victory tonight at Les Murakami Stadium.
Roadrunners starter Darius Vines (3-1) worked a season-high seven innings and struck out eight to earn the win for CSU Bakersfield (10-10), which has won eight of its last 10.
Hawaii (9-9), which won its fifth game of the season when trailing after seven innings in the series opener on Thursday, was down 6-2 in the bottom of the eighth when it started the inning with a walk and a single.
Shortstop Maaki Yamazaki’s grounder to second brought in one run and Alex Baeza tripled off the wall in right to cut the deficit to 6-4.
After an Ethan Lopez walk, reliever Kenny Johnson got Brennen Hancock to hit into a fielder’s choice at second.
Redshirt sophomore Carter Loewen threw 2 2/3 scoreless innings in relief of starter Jeremy Wu-Yelland (1-1), who allowed six runs on four hits with four walks and a hit batter to take the loss.
Bakersfield added two unearned runs in the top of the ninth.
Left-hander Dominic DeMiero (1-0, 2.38 ERA) will attempt to give UH the series lead in Game 3 on Saturday at 6:35.