Following one of its more impressive performances of the season Friday night, the Arizona baseball team (7-5) showed just the opposite Saturday afternoon in 9-8 loss to Massachusetts (3-2).
Minute Men starting pitcher Mitchell Clegg collected nine strikeouts while allowing just one earned run through seven innings of work. The southpaw kept the Wildcat hitters off balance throughout the day as only four batters managed to collect hits.
“”You gotta give (Clegg) a lot of credit,”” UA head coach Andy Lopez said. “”He pitched a great game. For seven innings he was pretty special.””
Arizona’s offense finally showed life in the 8th inning when Wildcat hitters jumped on Massachusetts right-hander Bryan Leigh for four runs. Following a pair of walks to start the inning, Arizona third baseman Jett Bandy blasted a long ball off the batter’s eye in center field to bring the Wildcats within four. Second baseman Mike Weldon added an RBI single before the inning was over to cut the deficit to three.
In the ninth – after Arizona pitcher Jason Stoffel gave up a solo homerun in the top of the frame – the Wildcats mounted another late surge after a pair of walks as left fielder Bobby Coyle and Bandy collected RBI’s on a triple and single respectively putting Arizona within one run of the Minute Men.
But with two runners on, Weldon popped out to Massachusetts’s closer Mike Gedman to quench the Arizona comeback effort.
“”We had good energy there at the end,”” Bandy said. “”We should have had that throughout the rest of the game. But it came a little too late and that cost us in the end.””
While struggles at the plate plagued Arizona’s effort Saturday, the Wildcats’ woes did not end on the offensive end. Poor starting pitching from right-hander Donn Roach along with a trio of errors in the field helped the Massachusetts offense jump out to a 5-0 lead through five innings.
The Minute Men added another three runs off UA relievers Matt Chaffee and Joe Allison over the next two innings, increasing their lead to 8-1.
“”We got a really bad start out of (Roach) and we didn’t really get any help out of anyone else except maybe (right-hander Corey) Burns,”” Lopez said. “”We simple have to pitch a lot better than that.
