UCLA
25-6
East Carolina at UCLA
25-8
Toglia Powers UCLA Past No. 8 ECU, Savage Earns Career Win No. 600
April 12, 2019 | Baseball
LOS ANGELES – Junior first baseman Michael Toglia had five RBIs to lead No. 1 UCLA to a 7-5 win over No. 8 East Carolina in Friday night's series opener at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
The victory for UCLA (25-6) gave head coach John Savage the 600th overall in his career. He picked up his 500th career win at UCLA earlier this season with a triumph over Oregon State on Mar. 15.
Trailing 5-2 in the sixth, Toglia tied the game for UCLA with one swing of the bat, turning on a breaking ball from ECU reliever Sam Lanier and sending it over the fence for a three-run homer.
Two innings later in his next plate appearance, he drove a liner off the top of the wall in left-center field to score a pair and put the Bruins up for good.
The 5-RBI performance was his second of the last week (Saturday vs. Stanford) and the fourth of his career.
"Michael is a really talented hitter from both sides of the plate," said Savage. "When he's right, he's one of the more dangerous guys in the country. He's had some better at-bats over the last few weeks, he's been building, and then he put a couple good swings on the ball tonight. That double on a 2-1 changeup was very impressive."
While the Bruins' veteran first baseman got them over the hill in the late innings, a pair of freshman helped them established an early lead.
Freshman center fielder Matt McLain legged out a triple on a liner into the left-center field gap to plate Jack Stronach and open the game' scoring in the second inning.
An inning later, freshman catcher Noah Cardenas connected on a 1-0 offering from ECU starter Jake Agnos for a solo home run, the first of his career. That roundtripper put UCLA up 2-1.
The Pirates (25-8) made their big charge in the fourth inning, putting up a four-spot to take a 5-2 lead. ECU was able to load the bases with one out off UCLA's Zach Pettway after a walk, hit-by-pitch, and single. Savage made the move to the bullpen at that point, but the Pirates were still able to break through with back-to-back run-scoring hits as Spencer Brickhouse plated a pair with a seeing-eye single through the right side before Alec Burleson brought in two more with a line double into the right field corner.
From there on, it was all UCLA on both sides of the ball.
Freshman Jack Filby and Nate Hadley teamed up to go 12-up, 12-down from the fifth through eighth innings.
Hadley was practically unhittable in his two innings of work, doubling his previous season-high with four strikeouts while needing just 27 pitches to complete his two innings of work.
After inheriting a 7-5 lead, closer Holden Powell nailed down the result with a scoreless ninth.
On the offensive side, Toglia provided the exclamation point on a pair of multi-run rallies.
His sixth inning home run was set up by a leadoff walk to Ryan Kreidler and a base hit through the right side from Chase Strumpf. Agnos struck out the next two batters and looked like he might get out of it, but ECU decided to pull the left-handed Agnos and summon the right-handed Lanier, forcing Toglia to bat from the left side. Facing a steady diet of curveballs, Toglia crushed a 2-2 hanger for his team-leading fifth home run of the year.
Then in the eighth, a pair of quality two-out at-bats set up Toglia's go-ahead two-bagger. First, senior DH Jake Pries worked a nine-pitch walk to extend the inning after two quick groundouts. Stronach followed with another base-on-balls, bringing up Toglia. Facing righty Evan Voliva, Toglia stuck with a 2-1 change-up on the outer half of the plate and drove it deep to the opposite field for a two-run double. Landing near the top of the left-center fence, he narrowly missed out on his first multi-home run game of the year.
Hadley received the decision to move to 5-0 on the year, tying him for the fourth-most wins among Pac-12 pitchers.
UCLA and ECU conclude their series on Saturday with a doubleheader starting at 2:00 p.m.
Team Stats
Pitching:
W: Hadley, Nathan (5-0)
L: VOLIVA, Evan (4-2)
S: Powell, Holden (9)
Batting:
2B: BURLESON, Alec 1
RBI: BRICKHOUSE, Spencer 2 ; BURLESON, Alec 3
SH: HOOVER, Lane 1 ; LLOYD, Brady 1
SF: BURLESON, Alec 1
Base Running:
RUNS: PACKARD, Bryant 2 ; HOOVER, Lane 1 ; BRICKHOUSE, Spencer 1 ; BAKER, Dusty 1
HBP: PACKARD, Bryant 1 ; HOOVER, Lane 1
Batting:
2B: Stronach, Jack 1 ; Toglia, Michael 1
3B: McLain, Matt 1
HR: Toglia, Michael 1 ; Cardenas, Noah 1
RBI: Toglia, Michael 5 ; McLain, Matt 1 ; Cardenas, Noah 1
Base Running:
RUNS: Kreidler, Ryan 1 ; Strumpf, Chase 1 ; Prendiz, Jordan 1 ; Stronach, Jack 2 ; Toglia, Michael 1 ; Cardenas, Noah 1
