Another night, another blowout victory for the Hawaii baseball team.
A turnstile crowd of 2,724 saw the Rainbow Warriors put up a seven-run fourth inning en route to routing San Diego State 16-0 at Les Murakami Stadium Saturday night.
The ’Bows won the first two of this three-game series by a combined score of 32-5. The ’Bows improved to 14-7. The Aztecs are 6-15.
The ’Bows amassed 19 hits, drew 12 walks and absorbed two hit by pitches. The Aztecs also dropped a fly ball and a pop-up.
Designated hitter Austin Machado drove in six runs with a three-run double and a three-run homer. Jake Tsukada had three hits and scored three runs. Randy Abshier pitched six scoreless innings for his first victory of the season. Dylan Waite, Sebastian Gonzalez and Brayden Marx each pitched a scoreless inning of relief.
Five Aztecs threw 226 pitches on Saturday for a total of 405 over 16 innings in two games.
In Friday’s opener, the ’Bows sent 14 batters to the plate in a decisive eight-run fifth inning. On Saturday, the ’Bows scored seven in a 13-batter fourth inning to expand a two-run lead to 9-0. Machado’s bases-clearing double was the big shot. Two batters later, Ben Ziegler-Namoa smacked a two-run double into the right-center gap.
Machado’s second home run of the season, a towering shot over the fence in right field, accounted for three of the runs in the five-run sixth.
The ’Bows did most of their damage against Omar Serrano, who entered as the Aztecs’ most effective pitcher (2.17 ERA). But Serrano, who held opposing hitters to a .223 average in his first five starts, was burned for 10 hits, three walks and nine runs (eight of them earned) in 3 1/3 innings. Of Serrano’s 91 pitches, 39 were outside the strike zone.
In contrast, Abshier allowed five hits, walked two and struck out seven to even his record at 1-1.
