FRESNO— The tightrope the Chico State baseball team walked Friday night had company. The Wildcats also walked a dozen Fresno Pacific hitters, opening the door for the Sunbirds to rally back from a three-run deficit before walking off the Wildcats in the bottom of the ninth for an 8-7 win in Fresno.
The Wildcats' offense stayed hot after posting 59 runs in their season-opening four-game sweep of Saint Martin's last weekend, pounding out 17 hits. Reigning California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) and West Region Player of the Week Willie Lajoie led the attack with three hits, stretching his hitting streak (which dates back to 2020) to 12 games. Jarret Lindsay logged three hits as well and is now 8-for-11 on the season. But it was the Sunbirds who had the big hits late: a two-run single in the seventh and game-tying hit in the eighth.
Chico State slipped to 4-1 while Fresno Pacific improved to 3-2 while snapping the Wildcats' five-game winning streak against the Sunbirds.
Lajoie was called out on strikes with the bases loaded to end the Wildcats' half of the ninth and the Sunbirds had a one-out triple to set up the winning run. With two down, Chico State shortstop Elijah Jackson took a grounder and threw up the line at first. Lajoie stretched and argued that he kept his foot on the bag while laying out to make the catch, but the umpire signaled that his foot came off, allowing the winning run to score.
No Chico State baseball team had walked a dozen before Friday night according to the online records that go back to the start of 1999.
Jacob Jablonski, Grady Morgan, Jackson, and Andrew Crane contributed two hits apiece for the Wildcats. Jack Murphy's RBI single gave Chico State an early lead. Ernie Arambula tied the game with an RBI single in the third ahead of Jablonski's two-run double that put the Wildcats ahead. It was a lead they held onto until the eighth.
Lindsay gave Chico State a 5-3 lead with an RBI bunt single bunt single in the fifth and Lajoie's RBI double in the sixth made it a 6-4 game. Jackson's RBI single up the middle later in the inning made it 7-4.
A leadoff walk in the seventh seeded a two-run Fresno Pacific rally, and the Sunbirds turned three walks into the game-tying run in the eighth.
The three-game non-conference series concludes with a doubleheader Saturday at noon.
