Fresno State Athletics
Fresno State
New Mexico
'Dogs Rout Lobos on Senior Day
5/16/2015 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
By: Andrew Rich
arich1221@mail.fresnostate.edu
GoBulldogs.com
FRESNO, Calif. -- The Fresno State baseball team jumped all over New Mexico in the first inning and never took its foot off the gas on the way to an 11-2 route of the Lobos on Saturday afternoon at Beiden Field.
The win secured the No. 3 seed for the Bulldogs for next week's Mountain West Tournament at Peccole Park in Reno. Fresno State will open up play on Wednesday afternoon at 3 p.m. against the winner of the play-in game between UNLV and San Jose State.
"Good weekend," Fresno State head coach Mike Batesole said. "That was my biggest goal of the whole weekend. We wanted to win two of three. We wanted to be the No. 3 seed. We had all kinds of things that were on the list, but the No. 1 thing was that these seniors walk off this field for the last time with their chest out and feeling good about it and I think they all did."
Kevin Viers got the scoring started in the first with a run-scoring single. Two batters later, Manny Argomaniz came up with a huge two-out double. The senior laced a ball down the left field line to score Taylor Ward and Viers and give the Bulldogs an early 3-0 lead.
Fresno State extended the lead in the sixth thanks to a New Mexico error and the long ball. With Argomaniz on third and two outs in the inning, Jesse Medrano hit a groundball to short that Lobo shortstop Jared Holley fielded, but his throw was in the dirt and couldn't be picked at first. Argomaniz scored on the play to make it 4-0, and then senior Taylor Tempel really made the error hurt when he hit a monster two-run home run in the next at bat to push the lead to 6-0.
The Bulldogs would add a single run in the fifth before putting up four runs on five hits in the sixth inning to push the lead to 11-1.
With the Bulldogs offense humming along, redshirt freshman Anthony Arias was dealing on the mound.
He recorded a career-high eight strikeouts over six innings of work and allowed just one run. Arias' eight strikeouts were the most recorded by a Fresno State pitcher in any outing this season.
"To me what was beautiful was he was pitching early in the count to his defense and then emptying his tank with two strikes," Batesole said of Arias' outing. "A lot of times guys will be emptying their tank early in the count and by the time you get to two strikes the hitter has already seen your best pitch once or twice or more if it's the third or fourth at-bat, maybe he has seen it five or six times. What he did today was 87, 89, locate, was outstanding pitching to his defense and then when he got to two strikes then those 92s and 93s started coming out and it was like a whole new pitch. He really had them off balance and struck out a lot of guys with his fastball."
Now the Bulldogs turn their attention to next week's conference tournament at Nevada. The host Wolf Pack enter as the regular season conference champions and will be the No. 1 seed. San Diego State will be the No. 2 seed, followed by Fresno State, New Mexico, Air Force, UNLV and San Jose State.
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