By Alex Stoev (@alexstoevsjsu) – Spear Reporter | Senior pitcher Dylan Smith celebrating with the other pitchers after his complete game (Photo courtesy of SJSU Athletics)
San Jose State baseball’s (20-25, 7-11 MW) defensive prowess helped lead to its 6-1 win over Grand Canyon University (17-28, 7-11 MW) on Sunday.
While down 1-0 in the fifth inning, the Spartans bats started to catch fire, scoring five runs in the inning to take a 5-1 lead.
As the Spartans were scoring, senior pitcher Dylan Smith was tossing strikeout after strikeout, earning his first complete game as a Spartan.
“It feels amazing,” Smith said. “I just wanted to go out there and compete on a Sunday and give us a chance to win the series.”
Smith was the second pitcher to have a complete game in the series, after senior David Thomas’ complete game on Friday.
Seeing Thomas have a complete game gave Smith a boost to try and do the same.
“I think seeing him do it kind of gave me the opportunity to go out and do it myself,” Smith said. “If he wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t know what hitters would get out with and all that kind of stuff.”
With two of the three games in the series having pitchers throw complete games, SJSU head coach Brad Sanfilippo enjoyed not needing to make pitching changes.
“That’s a luxury to be able to do that,” Sanfilippo said. “You’re usually trying to figure out the right matchups and stuff and to have a couple seniors give you efforts like that it says a lot about how much it means to them.”
On offense, the Spartans hit on 32% of their at-bats (10-31). Leading the way was senior designated hitter Neil Jansen, going 3-for-3 from the plate with a season-high of four RBI’s, one run scored and a stolen base.
Coming off a clutch home run on Saturday, Jansen was able to feed off that energy and continue to play very well.
“I think (Dylan) Smith set the tone today,” Jansen said. “Every Sunday he gives us an opportunity to win and because of how he played today we had to get him a dub and we made it happen.”
Three of Jansen’s RBI’s came with the bases loaded during the fifth inning scoring barrage for the Spartans, and with SJSU leaving men on base with the bases loaded earlier in the game, Jansen didn’t want to replicate that again.
“I wasn’t trying to do much,” Jansen said. “I just wanted to make sure I was confident in the box to get the job done and pick up my guys.”
With two conference series left, being against the top Mountain West team in San Diego State, Sanfilippo is not getting too ahead of himself.
“We just can’t worry about other people,” Sanfilippo said. “We just got to play. We got a tough road series next weekend in San Diego and we just got to find a way to win.”
The Spartans will travel down to San Diego to play a three game conference series against the Aztecs starting at 6:05 p.m. on Friday, May 8 at Tony Gwynn Stadium.
