By BART WRIGHT
Hawaii Tribune-Herald
The easy thing to do would have been to stick to the game plan coach Kallen Miyataki has laid out for his Hawaii Hilo baseball team, but sometimes unfamiliar circumstances can confuse the mind.
Something like that appeared to be the downfall of the Vulcans Friday afternoon when they opened a four-game weekend series against Point Loma Nazarene with a 5-0 Pacific West Conference loss, the first shoutout of the season for UHH.
The Sea Lions beat the Vuls 9-5 in the second game.
“We didn’t do the job,” said Miyataki after watching his team manage just three hits off a trio of Sea Lions pitchers. “We had a lot of opportunities to make things happen but we weren’t able to do it throughout the game.
“People know we’re going to bunt,” he said, “it’s no surprise to anyone, but for as much as we’ve worked on it, for as much as we stress it, we weren’t able to execute our game. Yeah, that’s upsetting, we should be better at it by now.”
Complicating issues for Hawaii Hilo (2-7 in PWC, 3-8 overall), was Point Loma’s (3-2, 14-5), starting pitcher Nathan Bennett who started his first game of the season with a variety of offside pitches that kept the Vulcans lunging at his offerings.
“You have to adjust to the soft (throwing) guys like him,” Miyataki said. “We didn’t do that, we just went up and seemed to be swinging for the fences, we wanted to see how far we could hit it.”
Not very far, with that approach. The Vulcans had 11 outs on fly balls to the outfield, the Sea Lions made just one out the whole game on a fly ball to the outfield.
“That’s because we went up there with our eyes wide open, trying to kill the ball,” Miyataki said. “If you understand the game, it’s pretty simple, but when you swing like that, when you can’t adjust, it’s going to be a long day.”
To his credit, Bennett came into the game having pitched 11 2/3 innings, all in relief, without allowing an earned run. He ended the game with 17 2/3 innings pitched, no earned runs and just one walk — the first he’s allowed this season — to Jonathan Segovia, in the first inning.
Eric Vega had another solid start for UHH, going 6 2/3 innings, scattering seven base hits while allowing three bases on balls and getting one strikeout, leaving his earned run average at 1.88.
Vega was shutting out the Sea Lion until the sixth when two walks created an issue and one of them scored on an inning-ending 3-6-3 double play. Leadoff batter A.J. Derr doubled in a run in the seventh.
The last three runs came in the ninth behind three walks, a single and a double allowed by reliever Cole Nakachi.
Point Loma got production out of its 3, 4 and 5 batters in the lineup as that trio combined to go 4-for-11 with 2 RBI and 1 run scored. By comparison, the 3, 4 and 5 batters for the Vulcans were 0-for-10.
“Vega pitched well,” Miyataki said, “but we need to do something at the plate. Give (Bennett) credit, he did the job for them, but our job is to manufacture runs and we didn’t do it. I called for about four bunts that never happened, the ball was never put in play.
“It’s about executing the fundamentals,” he said, “and until we can do those simple things, we are going to struggle, just like this.”
The Vulcans complete the Sea Lions series with another doubleheader Saturday, the nine-inning game first, prior to the seven-inning series finale in which Jordan Kurokawa will take the mound for Hawaii Hilo.
