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UCLA baseball earns 1st 3-game series sweep of season, scores 42 runs total

Junior right-hander Jesse Bergin turned in 6-plus innings and struck out a season-high nine batters, contributing to UCLA baseball’s Sunday win over Utah. The win secured the Bruins’ first series sweep of 2021. (Jefferson Alade/Daily Bruin)

Baseball


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UCLA9

By Sam Connon

April 18, 2021 7:58 p.m.

This post was updated April 18 at 9:47 p.m.

The Bruins had already snapped their series losing streak by blowing out the Utes on Friday and Saturday, but there was still something on the line in the weekend finale.

They secured their first three-game sweep of the season, as well as a coincidental achievement that aligned with a weeklong spotlight on a trailblazing alumnus.

UCLA baseball (21-11, 9-6 Pac-12) bested Utah (8-21, 4-11) 9-2 on Sunday, bringing the final score of the series to 42-5 in favor of the Bruins. While the seven-run win was its smallest margin of victory of the past week, UCLA’s winning streak is now at five games following a 1-4 stretch to open April.

The number of runs scored in the series also matched the one the Bruins wore on their hats to honor Jackie Robinson all weekend. And when sophomore designated hitter Josh Hahn homered to lead off the seventh, he came back to a dugout full of rowdy teammates swarming him for plating the 42nd run of the weekend.

“We really wanted to honor Jackie the right way, and the Robinson family,” said coach John Savage. “It was a complete team effort all weekend, but it’s just crazy it was 42 runs. That’s pretty special because we talked about it all week, so it was kind of fitting that it ended up that way.”

The Bruin bats kept the scoreboard operators busy throughout the day, scoring in each of the first three frames and six of their eight total innings to reach the 42-run threshold. The two runs in the first, one in the second and another two-spot in the third gave junior right-hander Jesse Bergin several runs of support, as had been the case with the rest of UCLA’s starters in the Utah series.

“We always have our pitchers’ backs. We’re always going to be trying to drive in runs,” Hahn said. “We know all the Pac-12 teams – there’s no easy lineup, so trying to give (the pitchers) as much run support is a big deal.”

Bergin attacked the strike zone with efficiency early and often Sunday afternoon, racking up a season-best nine strikeouts. But after needing just 13 pitches to get three outs in the first, Bergin went down 3-0 to the leadoff man in the second.

The righty battled back to pick up the punch out and wound up tossing 16 of his next 17 total pitches for strikes – the only ball during that stretch was on a check swing. Bergin faced the minimum nine batters across the first three frames and was hitting the zone on 65.7% of his pitches.

Three singles to open the fourth put Bergin in a bases-loaded jam without an out, prompting a mound visit from Savage, and he eventually walked in a run and allowed a sacrifice fly before escaping the inning. UCLA’s lead got cut to three, but Savage said the inning was still a good example of Bergin’s ability to work out of tough spots.

“I just told him that I liked what I was seeing – I liked his aggressiveness,” Savage said of the mound visit. “He pitched out of problems pretty well, that was a pretty good two. That could have been a lot worse, so I thought he did a good job of making pitches.”

Bergin would strand a man on second with a strikeout to end the next inning, but he said beating center fielder Jaylon McLaughlin to the bag for the second out after an attempted drag bunt got him much more excited.

“I’m just glad that guy finally got out,” Bergin said. “I just started running and picked up the ball along the way to get the out because that kid thinks he’s fast.”

The following inning, junior shortstop Matt McLain slapped a leadoff homer to right – his eighth of the year – and although none of them came around to score, three Bruins drew walks to finally chase Ute right-hander David Watson out of the game.

Watson finished his start with six earned runs, two strikeouts and four walks in 4.2 innings, while Bergin pitched 6-plus and allowed two earned runs with nine strikeouts and one walk.

Bergin’s season ERA still sits at 4.29 despite the quality start Sunday, mostly thanks to his 0.1-inning, six-earned run performance against Stanford on April 10. Bergin said putting that performance in his rearview mirror was a major focus over the past week.

“With that Stanford game, it was pretty rough just overall,” Bergin said. “It was kind of one of those games where you just have to flush it and trust the work you put in afterwards.”

Senior right-hander Adrian Chaidez came in to relieve Bergin in the seventh, striking out three and preventing the inherited runner on first from scoring. Senior right-hander Michael Townsend and freshman right-hander Max Rajcic helped close things out in the eighth and ninth, giving the bullpen a 1.50 ERA across its last five games.

The Bruins scored three runs on the Ute relievers Sunday, one of which came on Hahn’s solo home run in seventh. Hahn finished the game with a team-high three RBIs after going 3-for-3, while McLain, redshirt sophomore first baseman JT Schwartz and redshirt junior center fielder Kevin Kendall drove in the rest.

UCLA will have a chance to extend its winning streak to six games Tuesday at Pepperdine.

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Sam Connon | Alumnus
Connon joined the Bruin as a freshman in 2017 and contributed until he graduated in 2021. He was the Sports editor for the 2019-2020 academic year, an assistant Sports editor for the 2018-2019 academic year and spent time on the football, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, men's soccer, cross country, men's golf and women's golf beats, while also contributing movie reviews for Arts & Entertainment.
Connon joined the Bruin as a freshman in 2017 and contributed until he graduated in 2021. He was the Sports editor for the 2019-2020 academic year, an assistant Sports editor for the 2018-2019 academic year and spent time on the football, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, men's soccer, cross country, men's golf and women's golf beats, while also contributing movie reviews for Arts & Entertainment.
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