WHITTIER — Mitch Margolis threw a shutout and the Occidental baseball team jumped back into the driver's seat for the No. 4 seed in the SCIAC Playoffs with a dominating 7-0 win at third-place Whittier on Sunday.
Now the recipe for Oxy to make the postseason is simple. A win in the season finale at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps on Tuesday and they clinch the final playoff bid for the SCIAC double-elimination tournament that starts on May 2. If they lose, La Verne or Redlands can punch its ticket with a win. The Tigers are tied with the Leopards and the Bulldogs at 14-13, but own the tiebreaker with both after winning each series 2-1.
"It's great to see our guys fight to stay alive in the postseason race," Oxy head coach Luke Wetmore said. "But it was even better to see them play solid baseball for an entire weekend."
Margolis made sure Oxy had one more chance with the season on the line. The senior clearly wanted to get the ball again, striking out four batters, without a walk, for his second complete game of the season. It is his seventh win this year.
"Mitch was fresh, coming off a short start last weekend and he was sharp from the first pitch," Wetmore said. "He's a phenomenal competitor and he did a great job of pitching through a couple of defensive miscues."
Whittier didn't get a hit until the fourth inning and by then, Oxy had already opened up a 5-0 lead with a pair of runs in the top of the second and three more in the fourth.
After a pair of Whittier errors prolonged Oxy's half of the second inning, Riley Smith and Alec Strainboth hit RBI-singles.
In the fourth, Strain drove in another run on a sacrifice bunt, Charlie Caccamo brought in another with an RBI-double and Van Fudge added a third with an RBI-single.
Johnathan Brooks extended Oxy's cushion to 7-0 with a single that scored Smith and Chris Strain in the eighth.
Caccamo went 3 for 4, Fudge was 2 for 3, Devon DeRaad went 2 for 5 with a run scored and A.J. Libunao was 2 for 3 with a run.
Nick Garcia was charged with the loss for the Poets. Cody Martinez and Stephen Zavala were the only Whittier players to record multi-hit games.
Oxy takes on the Stags at 3 p.m. at Bill Arce Field on Tuesday.
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