Game 57 - Cal Poly at Cal State Fullerton

April 2 at Goodwin Field in Fullerton, CA
espn3.com

Three standouts for Cal Poly in its Big West Conference-opening, 5-0 victory.

1. Casey Bloomquist. In a match up of junior aces, Bloomquist tossed 7 2/3 scoreless innings and scattered six hits to out-duel Fullerton's Thomas Eshelman. The righty's finest work came in the seventh when Josh Vargas tripled leading off, but was left at third after Bloomquist got a come backer, a strike out and an inning-ending ground out as second baseman Mark Mathias made a nice play to his right and got Tyler Stieb by a step at first.

2. Brian Mundell. The junior hit a pair of solo home runs (doubling his HR total coming in), one a two-out shot in the first and the other leading off the eighth.

3. Ryan Drobny. Eshelman, who gave up more than two runs for just the second time in eight starts, had only allowed one long ball in 51 1/3 innings coming in. He tripled that total on Thursday, surrendering Mundell's shot in the first, then serving up Drobny's two-run blast off the right field foul pole an inning later. It was Drobny's first career home run and it put the Mustangs up 3-0.

It was Eshelman's fourth straight walk-free outing and he still has an absurd 14.7 strike out-to-walk ratio.

* Vargas told the espn3 announcers that he modeled his game after Erick Aybar and David Eckstein. Color commentator Wes Clements then said about Aybar and Eckstein that they are "both tough, hard-nosed, going to play 162 games."

My immediate reaction to that statement was I bet neither player has ever played 162 games in a season. It sounded like classic Baseball Phrase Nonsense (cBPN) and Clements probably meant it more as a cliche then as actual statistical fact. But that's the problem: just because it's a cliche to say THIS GUY NEVER TAKES A DAY OFF, HE PLAYS 162 GAMES doesn't take away from the fact that it's also an actual statistic and you can't just say whatever you feel like saying.

Anyway, after checking baseballreference.com, we found out that no, neither Aybar nor Eckstein have ever played 162 games. Aybar's career high in nine seasons was last year when he played in 156 games, and during Eckstein's 10-year career, which ended in 2010, the most he played in a single year was 158 in 2005.

I guess it doesn't sound as good to say "both tough, hard-nosed, going to play 158 games."

* Fullerton sophomore catcher Niko Pacheco, welcome to the Webb Bobo All Stars.