STOCKTON, Calif. — The San Francisco State baseball team's historic season came to a close on Thursday after a 10-7 loss to Cal State LA.
Facing elimination, the Gators sent senior
Matthew Hernandez to the mound. Hernandez was perfect through three innings and struck out the side in the second, then things unraveled in the fourth. The Golden Eagles pulled to within a run with back-to-back home runs, then tied it on a groundout. Noe Garcia's two-out RBI put Cal State LA ahead 7-6 and
Grant Vogenthaler was summoned to get the Gators out of the inning.
Hernandez recorded four strikeouts in his final appearance. His 86 strikeouts in a season are third-most in a single season by a Gators pitcher and he is third all-time in program history with 151 total strikeouts. He is sixth all-time with 211 innings pitched and seventh with 50 games pitched.
Vogenthaler surrendered a three-run home run in the seventh and the Golden Eagles added an insurance run in the ninth on a sacrifice fly off of reliever
Cameron Crone.
Jordan Yrastorza pitched a scoreless eighth in the senior's final appearance for the Gators.
Things looked bright early on. The Gators jumped all over Golden Eagles starter Saxon Andross for an early 5-0 lead.
Zac Neumann's two-out single in the second put the Gators on the board first. In the third, all with two outs,
Brady Dorn singled, Tyler Rogers walked, and
Chris Smutny unloaded for a three-run home run that hit off a rocking chair in the right field bleachers. The homer was initially ruled a triple but the umpires huddled and ruled it a home run.
Jack Harris went back-to-back by sending a 3-1 pitch to right center to make it a 5-0 Gators lead.
Harris led off the eighth with a walk and senior backstop
Johnny Juarez cut the lead to 9-7 with a two-run shot to left center, the sixth homer of the game and 18th of the tournament. The Gators got the tying run up to the plate in the ninth but Harris popped up behind the plate to end it.
Despite Friday's loss, the Gators made history on the final day of the season by punching their ticket to the program's first-ever CCAA Championships appearance under third-year Head Coach
Tony Schifano.
Brady Dorn was named All-CCAA First Team; Kritsch and Hernandez were named to the All-CCAA Second Team; Harris,
Dillon Houser, and
Harley Lopez all garnered Honorable Mention. Kritsh was honored in a pregame ceremony as the CCAA Baseball Championship Scholar. It was also announced on Thursday that he was named to the
2018 Google Cloud Academic All-District® Team.
