What a difference a week made for Arizona baseball right-hander Preston Guilmet.
Seven days removed from his four and 2/3 inning effort in which the senior allowed five earned runs while issuing three walks, Guilmet rebounded nicely with one of the best performances by an Arizona starter this season.
In a 13-4 win over Massachusetts (2-2) Friday night, Guilmet (1-1) pitched seven and 1/3 strong innings in which he allowed only two earned runs prior to the eighth. The 8 1/3 effort was the Wildcats’ (7-4) longest outing by a starter this season and the first time Guilmet went that deep in his last nine starts.
“”I expect to go that deep in every start,”” Guilmet said after collecting his first win in his last seven starts. “”It’s a pretty big upset when I don’t get to the seventh. But its way early and I’m just taking things one game at a time and figuring things out.””
The leader of the Arizona pitching staff appeared to be back in form throughout the night. The righty hurler attacked the Minute Men hitters with a steady 87-88 mph fastball resulting in a total of five strikeouts for Guilmet.
The Wildcats also received an impressive performance from relief pitcher Daniel Workman who entered for Guilmet in the eighth when the senior was touched up for two more earned runs after the first four Massachusetts batters reached base.
The sophomore from Salt Lake Community College retired the following two batters and sat down his final three hitters in order in the ninth to clinch the win for Arizona.
Friday’s performance was the second impressive look Lopez got of his young arm. Workman threw two innings of shutout ball in relief during last Tuesday’s win over Holy Cross. With his current performance, Lopez said there will likely be more of the right-hander to be seen.
“”Workman’s starting to make a name for himself,”” Lopez said. “”He looked impressive again tonight and we’ve been looking for guys to get us into those later innings and he’s certainly been starting to make a little bit of an impression on us.””
Offensively Arizona again lit up the scoreboard with13 runs on 13 hits. Only two Wildcat hitters failed to find a hole in the Minute Men defense while five finished the night with two RBI’s.
Arizona is back in action Saturday afternoon for game two of the three-game series beginning at 2 p.m.
