April 11, 2017 Box Score
RIVERSIDE, Calif. â€" The No. 25 Torero baseball team (22-9) cruised to a 14-1 victory at UC Riverside (12-16) Tuesday evening. The Toreros jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning and never looked back. CJ Burdick had his best outing of the year, tossing five shutout innings of one-hit ball.
The Toreros tallied 16 hits, with 10 players collecting at least one on their way to 14 runs, which tied a season-high.
The Toreros' four first inning runs came on four hits. Hunter Mercado-Hood extended his hitting streak to 14 with a leadoff single through the right side. The next batter, Jay Schuyler, belted a two-run home run to left. The next two Torero runs would come on RBI singles; the first from Colton Waltner and the second from Aidan Stinnett.
Jay Schuyler added another RBI in the second inning, driving in Paul Kunst, who led off the inning with a walk, on an RBI groundout.
The Toreros tacked on two more in the fourth inning. With runners on second and third, Riley Adams had an RBI groundout to second and then Roman Garcia notched an RBI on an infield single, giving USD a 7-0 lead.
Schuyler led off the sixth with a single to left and then scored on a Riley Adams double down the left field line.
Jeff Houghtby led off the seventh with a double down the left field line and came around to score two batters later on a Mercado-Hood RBI groudout, putting USD up 9-0.
In the ninth, Paul Kunst and Mercado-Hood hit back-to-back RBI doubles and then Chris Colarossi and Aaron Simpson had a pair of RBI singles, their RBI as a Torero for both players.
Burdick (1-1) picked up his first win of the year. He didn't allow a hit until the fifth inning and needed just 68 pitches to get through five shutout innings. Louis Crow pitched the final four innings and he allowed just one run on two hits.
Riverside had a staff day, tossing eight pitchers in the game with six of them giving up at least one run. The Toreros return to conference play on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. when they kick off a three game series with the Pacific Tigers.
