Baseball hoping to elevate play in final home series against Oregon

Though last season ended in a championship celebration for UCLA baseball, there hasn’t been much to celebrate this year.

In a downtrodden season headlined with injuries, inexperience and heightened expectations, this weekend will present the team an opportunity to celebrate its most veteran players.

UCLA (23-26-1, 10-14 Pac-12) will face Pac-12 foe Oregon (37-16, 14-10) in the final home series of the year at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

Before Sunday’s game, the team will honor its four seniors – outfielder Brian Carroll, first baseman Pat Gallagher, designated hitter Kevin Williams and redshirt senior third baseman Aaron Weimer – with a few planned surprises in its annual Senior Day ceremony on the field.

“The seniors have had great runs. … They’ve really done many things that no player has done at UCLA,” said coach John Savage. “Whenever you can say you’re the first national champion at a school in a major sport, I think that’s pretty special. I’m looking forward to honoring them and they deserve everything that they get.”

In the past week, junior catcher Shane Zeile received several honors of his own, being named to multiple award watch lists, but he downplayed the individual accolades, instead focusing on the team’s struggles, stating that the team has bigger problems on its hands right now.

One of those problems is the Ducks, who are the third-best team in the conference, four games ahead of the Bruins, who sit in the eighth spot.

“They always bring their A-game to us … every time we face them,” Zeile said. “We’re gonna have our hands full this weekend.”

The Bruins will certainly be challenged, if only for the fact that they have not played well at all in their previous 12 games, in which they are 1-10-1.

“We need to get better in every asset of the game,” said sophomore shortstop Trent Chatterton. “Position players, we need to hit better and play better defense. Pitchers just need to throw more strikes.”

Regardless of what the Bruins do in the next three games, they will finish with an under .500 record at home, where they’re 11-17. In order to finish off the home schedule on a high note and pick up some victories, Savage could sum up what his team needs to do in three simple words: “Play better baseball.”

“You name it, we need to do it better,” Savage said. “It’s tough, you got a lot of guys out there that haven’t played. I don’t want to make excuses, because we’re at a level that you can’t make excuses. … Those injuries have seemed like they’ve really caught up to us.”

While Savage certainly could make excuses as the injuries have piled up and the inexperience has cost the team games, it’s clear that no opponent is going to take pity on the Bruins down the stretch as UCLA’s two remaining opponents – Oregon and Washington – fight for playoff position.

“It’s not one thing that we’re not doing well. Now, I thought we swung the bats very well up at Oregon (State), but we didn’t have a whole lot of runs to show for it,” Savage said. “But if you don’t pitch and play defense, and that’s what we’re not doing right now, we’re chasing our tail.”

If the Bruins are able to make an improvement on the field against the Ducks, it’ll only add to the weekend celebration.