PASADENA — The Occidental College baseball team's offense exploded for 29 runs as the surging Tigers extended their winning streak to six games and moved into first place in the SCIAC Standings with two blowout wins over Caltech on Saturday.
Oxy (13-2, 7-2 SCIAC) beat the Beavers (1-16, 0-12 SCIAC) 10-0 in seven innings in Game 1 and 19-6 in eight innings in game two. It's the second consecutive series sweep for the Tigers — Oxy swept Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 3-0 last weekend.
"We're happy to be in first, but we still have lots of work to do as the conference schedule gets tougher," Occidental baseball coach Luke Wetmore said.
Logan Allen (Atascadero) led the charge by going 4 for 6 with a pair of doubles, three runs and four RBIs on the day.
Mitch Margolis (Calabasas) threw six scoreless innings for his second win of the season in Game 1 andC.J. Maruyama (Danville) improved to 3-0, giving up just one earned run in four innings of work for the victory in Game 2.
Oxy now sits two games ahead of Pomona-Pitzer (12-4, 8-4 SCIAC) and Chapman (9-8, 8-4) in the loss column for the conference lead. Chapman dealt Oxy its only two losses — each by one run — in Oxy's first conference series of the season.
A total of 17 different players combined for 34 hits.
Oxy blew Game 1 open with four runs in the sixth and six more in the seventh. Chris Caldwell (Santa Clarita), Victor Munoz (La Verne) and Alec Strain (Sacramento) each had two hits. Harry Keyte (New York) pitched a 1-2-3 seventh to seal the deal.
Chris Strain (Bellevue, Wash.) hit a two-run home run in the top of the fourth in Game 2 and finished 3 for 5 with four RBIs and three runs scored.
Van Fudge (Corvallis, Ore.) went 2 for 3, Kenneth Nishimura (Sacramento) was 2 for 5 and Ian Fehlauer (Sandy, Utah) went 2 for 6 with three RBIs.
Caltech managed just two hits in Game 1, but Albie Lavin, Mason Freedman and Daniel Chou each had two in Game 2.
Oxy plays three non-conference games next week during its spring break, starting with Bridgewater College (Va.) on Monday at 2 p.m.