Cody Schrier Walks It Off, Helps UCLA Baseball Sweep Washington State

The Bruins had to complete a comeback after blowing an early lead, and it was their freshman shortstop who came through in the biggest moment of the weekend.

Kenny Oyama stepped up to the plate with two down, a man on second and a chance to walk things off in the Bruins’ home finale.

But before he could even bring the bat up past his shoulder, the Cougars intentionally walked the graduate outfielder.

Instead, it was freshman shortstop Cody Schrier who came up to the dish, boasting a .345 batting average since April 2 coming into Sunday. After going down in the count 0-2, the young infielder slapped a base hit through the right side that brought the winning run home.

"When they intentionally walked Kenny, I was kinda shocked," Schrier said. "I wanted to get up there really bad, I was hitting balls good all weekend, nothing was really falling. So I thought it was about time that something squeezed through."

That walk-off single lifted No. 23 UCLA baseball (33-18, 17-10 Pac-12) to an 8-7 victory over Washington State (23-26, 9-18), completing the series sweep in the process. It marked the Bruins' fourth sweep of the season and improved the team's home record to 13-3 since March 20, in addition to serving as a major turnaround from the five-game losing streak they were on heading into the weekend.

The end result came despite all the late-game dramatics, which seemed to be far-fetched in the early parts of the contest. UCLA put up a four-spot to open the game, which is exactly what they did en route to 4-0 and 10-1 wins on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

Schrier slapped a leadoff double down the left field line, scoring a few at-bats later on a single by junior right fielder Michael Curialle. Sophomore third baseman Kyle Karros launched a three-run home run to left with one down, making it 4-0 UCLA after one inning.

Washington State designated hitter Jacob McKeon answered with a homer of his own in the second, but no one was aboard, so it did the minimum amount of damage. The Bruins got that run right back in the bottom of the second anyways, stringing together a few hits in a row before graduate first baseman Jake Palmer got an RBI single.

The offense stalled for a few frames until another few singles and walks led to sophomore designated hitter Daylen Reyes' own RBI single in the fifth.

All the while, redshirt sophomore right-hander Kelly Austin was making quick work of Washington State's batters. Austin made it through 5.0 innings having allowed just the one run that came off McKeon's homer, retiring 15 of the other 17 men he faced.

The Bruins' Sunday starter had thrown just 63 pitches through five frames, but coach John Savage decided to pull the plug on him heading into what turned out to be a pivotal sixth inning.

"It's the third time through, and we have a lot of numbers in front of us and so forth," Savage said. "We felt it was the right move. I think we'd probably make that move 99% of the time – It clearly backfired."

Savage handed things off to junior right-hander Charles Harrison, and the long reliever immediately found himself in trouble. A leadoff single, followed by a Harrison throwing error, led to an RBI single by first baseman Jack Smith.

Savage yanked Harrison after he walked the bases loaded the very next batter, but senior left-hander Daniel Colwell gave up another RBI single to the first batter he faced. After finally getting the first out of the inning, Colwell hit a batter to juice the bases yet again, leading Savage to bring in freshman right-hander Luke Jewett.

Jewett induced a grounder to get the second out, but another run came around to score on the play. The tying run scored just a few pitches later, when junior catcher Darius Perry let one get away from him and the runner on third sprinted home.

A check swing helped the Cougars draw another walk, and Savage was forced to turn to his fourth pitcher of the sixth inning. Junior left-hander Josh Hahn allowed a go-ahead RBI single to right, but Curialle got the Bruins out of the frame by gunning down the second man trying to score.

It didn’t take long for UCLA to erase that deficit, as Curialle knocked a two-out, RBI single to right to tie it back up again. Freshman second baseman Ethan Gourson had a chance to give his team the lead again, but he struck out and stranded two runners to keep it knotted at 7-7 headed into the seventh.

The Bruins got their first two men on in the eighth and wound up loading the bases, but again stranded them all and went into the ninth still tied up.

Schrier was able to walk things off in the ninth thanks to freshman right-hander Alonzo Tredwell, who pitched three scoreless innings to close the door on the Cougars. Washington State went down 1-2-3 in both the seventh and ninth innings thanks to Tredwell's late-game heroics that helped him improve his season ERA to 1.89.

Tredwell allowed a leadoff double in the eighth, but struck out the next two men up before escaping the inning on a ground ball.

"Obviously, a leadoff double isn't ideal, but we'd like to leave people where they are," Tredwell said. "So leadoff double, my mindset was just to keep him on second base, don't let him score."

UCLA will wrap up its regular season on the road against Oregon State, with the series set to get underway on Thursday. The first-ever Pac-12 tournament will commence the following week, and the Bruins could lock up the top seed in the bracket by sweeping the Beavers in Corvallis.

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