Bears Roll to 6-1 with Doubleheader Sweep of UConn and Cal Poly

BERKELEY – Cal baseball’s scorching start to the 2023 season continued today as the Bears swept games 2 and 3 of their round-robin weekend with a 4-2 win over UConn in the afternoon opener and a 7-3 nightcap victory over Cal Poly -their second victory over the Mustangs in two days, giving the 6-1 Bears their best start since their 2011 College World Series team over a decade ago.

In the opener win over UConn, the Bears’ parlayed just 5 hits into their 4 runs, with a pair coming from a booming RJ Greene homer to center.

“RJ -he had a 3-0 count and we gave him the green light,” Cal head coach Mike Neu said. “We weren’t swinging the bat that great in that game and I thought their pitcher did a great job mixing his offspeed stuff in. We were struggling with it but we said, ‘Rj’s probably going to get a fastball here so let’s let them lose and he hit it over the batter’s eye, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen done here. It had to have gone at least 450.

In the win over 3-3 UConn, soph pitcher Paulshawn Pasqualotto got the start, throwing two shutout innings with 3 Ks.

 
In the bottom of the fourth, Cal struck first. Tucker Bougie walked to begin the rally, he moved to third on the one-out single down the right field line by Kade Kretzschmar. Kretzschmar stole second to put two runners in scoring position for freshman Cade Campbell who missed a three-run home run when the ball curved just foul. Two pitches later Campbell collected his first collegiate hit with a single to shallow center field that scored both Kretzschmar and Bougie.

The fifth brought Green’s 2-run blast to give the Bears the rest of their runs. The homer was Green’s second of the young season and the eighth of his career at Cal.
 
A trio of Bear relievers, Daniel Colwell, Joe Williams, and Chris Stamos combined to throw three scoreless innings. Stamos was credited with the save coming in to get the final out in the top of the ninth, it was his first of the year.

In the nightcap, soph pitcher Tucker Bougie (1-0) gave the Bears 7 strong innings and got better as the game went on. The former reliever gave up just three hits and one walk with six strikeouts in his 90-pitch effort.

“Early on, he was a little bit and they barreled a couple balls like the one that Bove caught (in a leaping grab over the fence to rob UConn of a potential home run) but from the third or fourth inning on, he created a little more angle with his fastball and his curveball had some bite,” Neu said. “And then he’s always ultra-competitive but when his stuff kind of ticked up and he had that competitive fire going with it, it just seemed like he was going to roll.”

 
In the second, Peyton Schulze led off the inning with a standup double to left center. One batter later, Jack Johnston sat on a breaking ball and smashed it over the left-field wall for his first career home run.
 
The third inning saw Luca Bove rob the Mustangs of a potential go-ahead three-run home run. Bove tracked the ball down into deep left center and climbed the wall for the catch to keep the Mustangs from taking the lead.

 
Cal added on scoring three in the fifth and two in the sixth to break it open. A three-run home run by Carson Crawford did the damage in the fifth and chased Cal Poly's starter Ryan Baum (1-1) from the game.
 
Cal Poly scored two in the eighth on a two-run home run from Ryan Stafford. The Mustangs scored their final run of the night on a solo home run in the ninth by left fielder Collin Villegas.  

 
UP NEXT
The Bears look to make it five in a row and finish the Cal Baseball Classic undefeated when they conclude the three-day tournament taking on UConn in the finale tomorrow at 1:05 p.m. Live stats and video will be available at CalBears.com.

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