Baseball takes on champs

By DARRELL COPELAND / The Collegian

With a 1-5 record, the Fresno State baseball team is headed to southern California for a three-game series against defending national champion Cal State-Fullerton.

The Titans (2-1) come into the series having opened up their season with a series win over Stanford, a team that swept Fresno State when the Bulldogs opened their own season in Palo Alto.

But that doesn’t mean the Fresno State-Fullerton series is over before it starts.

Last season, the Titans came to Fresno, losing the opener before winning the final two games of the series.

In those three games, the six returning Fresno State starting position players: DeAndre Miller, David Gomez, Christian Vitters, Nick Moresi, Kent Sakamoto and Chase Moore, combined for a .309 average and two home runs to go with seven runs and 10 RBIs. The 17 hits they tallied were nearly half (35) of the hits the Bulldogs totaled during the weekend.

Moore accounted for both of the home runs and four of the RBIs, but has yet to see significant playing time so far this season.

This season, Vitters has two total hits, four fewer than the six he had in last season’s series with the Titans.

With the pitching staff having a few struggles of its own, the Bulldogs might make some shake-ups in the pitching rotation.

The rotation for this weekend’s series in Fullerton — which through two series’ has been Ryan Penn, Brandon Miller and Matt Garza — had not yet been announced as of mid-week.