UCLA baseball braces for battle of champions with Arizona

If the notion that numbers never lie is true, then UCLA baseball has a potential stalemate waiting for it in the desert. The duel will consist of an elite pitching juggernaut versus an offensive powerhouse that split the last two national championships.

“We’ve been probably the best road team in the country over the last three or four years, so we feel very comfortable on the road,” said coach John Savage. “Arizona’s going to be difficult. They give everybody a tough time at home.”

The 2013 national champion, UCLA (18-13, 6-3 Pac-12), is traveling to Tucson, Ariz., to do battle with Arizona (15-19, 4-7), the 2012 national champion.

Do not be fooled by the Wildcats’ record, as they boast possibly the best offense in the conference.

Arizona leads the conference in batting average, hits, RBIs, stolen bases and triples. It is also second in on-base percentage and walks, and third in slugging percentage and doubles.

The Wildcats have a team batting average of .300, with five starters hitting over .300, including outfielder Scott Kingery, who is hitting .409 for the season.

“They’re an aggressive team and they got some experienced hitters,” Savage said. “We know those guys fairly well. They won a national championship two years ago.”

In comparison, UCLA is hitting .254 as a team and has only one batter hitting over .300, junior catcher Shane Zeile, who leads the team with a .345 average.

The Bruins have struggled at times to capitalize on their offensive opportunities, as they are hitting a mere .269 with runners in scoring position (RISP). This has been a bigger problem recently as the Bruins have lost three straight and five of their last seven, hitting just .230 with RISP over this stretch. However, from March 9 to March 28, the team hit .311 with RISP and went 9-1 over that period.

“It’s something we all need to work on as a team,” said freshman second baseman Luke Persico of the team’s recent inability to cash in runners. “If we can get that down, we’ll start winning a lot more games.”

While Arizona may dominate in the batter’s box, UCLA holds the upper hand on the mound.

The Bruins’ pitching staff leads the conference in strikeout-to-walk ratio and walks allowed per nine innings. They are also second in ERA, WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched)and shutouts.

UCLA’s team ERA of 2.80 shines in comparison to Arizona’s 4.99 ERA, which the Wildcats can highly attribute to lacking a solid bullpen.

UCLA has only three pitchers with an ERA of 3.00 or higher, while Arizona has only three pitchers with an ERA below 3.00.

Thus, it will be important for the Bruins to knock in runs early and try to exploit Arizona’s biggest weakness, its bullpen.

“That’s what we do as a team offensively,” said redshirt sophomore catcher/first baseman Justin Hazard. “We always preach that we need to chop the guy down, chop the starter down and get in the bullpen as soon as possible. So this weekend, it will be huge to get out to the bullpen real early.”

Due to the fact that the offensive numbers have not been in UCLA’s favor over the last two weeks, Savage wants his team to get back to the basics of sacrificing and moving runners over that have made it successful in the past.

“We got to do a better job of scoring runs. We’re having some good at-bats, but we’re not doing enough to win innings, to score runs,” Savage said. “With our pitching and what we’ve done, it’s about scoring four or five runs and most nights we’ll be successful.”