PORTLAND, Ore. – Portland collected 14 hits and allowed just four in a claiming an 8-2 West Coast Conference baseball victory over the Loyola Marymount Lions on Sunday afternoon at Joe Etzel Field. The Pilots earned the series win and move into second place in the WCC standings with a 10-5 league record.
Right-hander Brett Gillis took the win and was magnificent in 6-plus innings of work. Gillis (2-3) allowed just two runs on four hits and struck out six batters, while Caleb Franzen retired all nine batters he faced in relief with six K's to earn his first save.
The lineup provided plenty of firepower throughout the afternoon with junior shortstop Chad Stevens, junior catcher Hunter Montgomery and freshman first baseman Sam Brown doing most of the damage.
Stevens and Brown hit back-to-back RBI doubles in the first to make it an early 2-0 lead for the Pilots.
Montgomery doubled and scored on a Sean Mulcare sacrifice fly in the second before drilling a deep home run over the center field fence in the fourth to make it 4-0. It was his fourth homer of the season.
LMU got on the board in the fifth with a one-out triple by Dylan Hirsch scoring Will Grimm, but Gillis followed with a strikeout and groundout to limit the damage to one run.
Stevens got the run back in the bottom of the frame by belting his fifth home run of the season with a frozen rope over the center field wall. He finished 3-for-5 with three runs scored and two driven in and raised his season batting average to .348.
The Lions (12-21, 5-10) had the makings of a big inning in the works with the bases loaded and nobody out in the seventh. Franzen came on in relief of Gillis and sandwiched a sacrifice fly around a strikeout and groundout to get out of the jam.
Christian Cooney had a pinch-hit RBI single in the sixth and then Jake Tsukada plated two more runs with a single in the seventh make it an 8-2 final.
Brown finished 4-for-4 with a pair of doubles and a run batted in. He is now second the team with a .344 batting average and 10 doubles.
Overall the Pilots outhit the Lions by a 14-4 margin and committed no errors. Portland left seven runners on base compared to five for LMU.
Portland will visit Pac-12 power Oregon State for a midweek game Tuesday at 5:35 p.m. The Pilots then return to WCC play with a three-game road series at San Francisco starting on Friday at 3 p.m. Visit PortlandPilots.com for live video and live stat links.
