By Ryan Barnhart
After sweeping the Wolf Pack (11-26) at home back in March, the Spartans (13-20-1) made their way to Peccole Park over the weekend for another three-game series, this time in Reno.
While the team has played well at home this season (11-4-1), SJSU has been abysmal on the road (2-16), which was made more apparent over the weekend.
Despite winning the first game of the series 6-5, the Spartans lost the two following games against the Wolf Pack, 5-4 and 6-2, respectively.
Saturday’s game had the highest run differential of all games between SJSU and Nevada. The previous five games were all decided by a single run.
Starting pitching was one of the glaring issues for the Spartans as no starter went longer than six innings in any of the three games. While Matt Brown, Jake Swiech and Joseph Balfour all did well to keep the score close, being knocked out of the game early led to a large workload for the relievers who combined to give up seven runs in 10.1 innings pitched.
SJSU as a whole did a poor job of shutting down Nevada hitters with the team going a combined 36-102, good for a .353 average. In the previous series, the Wolf Pack batted .245 with 27 hits in 110 at bats.
As for Nevada, much of its success was do in part to strong performances from its starting pitchers. Mark Nowaczewski tossed a complete game on Friday and Riley Ohl went eight innings Saturday. Both pitchers only allowed 2 earned runs a piece in their starts.
Another problem that plagued SJSU was its hitting as only five Spartans recorded multi-hit games in the series.
There were just two home runs hit by Spartans in the three games played, both coming on Thursday. Chris Williams hit a solo shot in the seventh inning to put the Spartans up 3-2 and Jack Veasey hit a 3-run bomb pinch hitting for Cal Koga in the eighth inning which would be the difference in SJSU’s sole win.
Defense was fairly even between the two teams with the Spartans committing four errors in the series to the Wolf Pack’s three. In its previous matchup, SJSU made as many mistakes as both teams did in the most recent series, being charged with seven errors.
The one win and two losses against the Wolf Pack puts the Spartans at 4-2 for the season series. In Mountain West play, SJSU is 7-9-1 on the season and Nevada is 7-11, good for fourth and sixth place, respectively, in the conference.