Hawaii baseball team runs into hot pitching staff

The Hawaii baseball team’s best efforts added up to zilch in Friday’s 2-0 loss to Cal State Bakersfield at Hardt Field on the Kern County, Calif., campus.

Before a crowd of 509, the Rainbow Warriors had opportunities but no answers to the 1-2 pitching of Ryan King and Jacob Gutierrez nor a Roadrunner defense led by shortstop Elijah Pelayo and catcher Kanoa Morisaki.

“King was fantastic,” CSUB assistant coach Bailey Montgomery told ESPN+ reporters. And Guti was in control, as usual.”

King allowed three hits in six scoreless innings. Gutierrez, who was the Roadrunners’ Sunday starter a year ago, earned the nine-out save.

“The story of the night was offense or lack of it,” UH head coach Rich Hill said. “As coaches, we need to go back to the drawing board and be better and put guys in position to where they’re more prepared at the dish. Totally my fault.”

The Rainbow Warriors could not capitalize after placing five runners at third base.

In the UH third, Jake Redding drew a leadoff walk and went to second on Kody Watanabe’s single. On a wild pitch to Taylor Takata, Morisaki threw out Watanabe at second base as Redding sped to third. On an attempted squeeze, Redding was caught between third and home. He eventually was tagged out. It was a costly play because Takata followed with a single that would have brought home Redding.

The ’Bows loaded the bases with no outs in the sixth.

But King struck out Tate Shimao, then induced back-to-back popups to Pelayo.

“King slowed himself down and made some big pitches to get us out of the jam,” Montgomery said.

Hill said: “Many opportunities in the red zone, runners in scoring position with less than two outs. We just couldn’t get it done.”

Montgomery said: “The defense starts with Elijah Pelayo. He’s nails. He’s our guy. He’s the quarterback of the defense in the middle. A couple really big throws on the bag from Morisaki to get us out of some jams.”

In the third inning, CSUB’s Jacob May hit a one-out single and made it safely to second when Takata misplayed Evan Cloyd’s grounder to short. Devon Wilkes’ RBI single produced the game’s first run.

“It was a (potential) double play that we made an error on,” Hill said.

In the fifth, the Roadrunners loaded the bases with no outs. With Cloyd taking a wide lead off second, UH pitcher Isaiah Magdaleno threw to Takata. May then raced from third on the delayed steal to boost the Roadrunners’ advantage to 2-0.

“We knew they had the pickoff play to second with the bases loaded,” Montgomery said. “We had our guys prepared to run if they ran that play with two outs.”