Pitching Trouble Hurts SDSU, 10-4

As his team took the field for its college baseball season opener Friday against UC Irvine, San Diego State Coach Jim Dietz knew he had an inexperienced pitching staff. But he certainly wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen.

Eight walks, two wild pitches, a hit batsman and four errors later, the host Aztecs had lost, 10-4.

Starting pitcher John Hemmerly was chased by the time the sixth Irvine batter came to the plate in the first inning, after a single, a walk, a hit batter, a strikeout and another walk.

By the third, Dietz had inserted his third pitcher, Rusty Filter. And as the seventh inning opened, Irvine’s John Seeburger ripped John Lawrence’s first college pitch for a home run.

In all, the Aztecs used six pitchers. Irvine (3-2) scored its 10 runs on just 6 hits.

“I was disappointed,” Dietz said. “Hemmerly was a wreck. He’s got to get tougher mentally. In the opening game of the year, you can’t go into the bullpen as fast as we had to.”

And the concentration will have to be better, too. By Dietz’s count, his club missed five signs and made five baserunning mistakes in addition to the poor defensive play.

“The sad thing is, these are things we’ve been working on in practice,” Dietz said. “It looked like we didn’t even have any spring training. The nice thing is, we can take care of what we saw out there.”

SDSU might have been able to get something going had it been able to take advantage of Kasey McKeon’s leadoff single in the fifth.

The Aztecs trailed, 4-3, when McKeon reached base with no out, stole second and advanced to third on catcher Don Nicholson’s throwing error. But Brian Dunn grounded out, and Steve Montejano and Nikco Riesgo both flied out to center field, stranding McKeon at third.

“That was the turning point,” Dietz said.

One of the few bright spots was Filter, who held the Anteaters hitless for three innings. But his role is to be short relief, and he was lifted in the sixth when he began tiring.