HONOLULU — Against the odds, the rains relented and the 2023 college baseball season began on schedule at Les Murakami Stadium.
Host Hawaii and visiting Wright State both claimed to be ready Friday, rain or shine, but only one proved it on the field. The Raiders of the Horizon League jumped out fast and didn’t allow the Rainbow Warriors time to get settled in an 8-3 decision on Opening Night.
Sophomore left-hander Harry Gustin got the nod as part of a completely built starting rotation, but lasted only 3 2/3 innings. The second batter of the game, Julian Greenwell, put one over the centerfield fence.
In a moment that seemed to epitomize his team’s jitters, sophomore left fielder Ben Zeigler-Namoa, a Maui native and transfer from Yavapai College making his Rainbows debut, had his aluminum bat slip from his hands twice on swings in his first Division I at-bat in the bottom of the second.
Second-year UH coach Rich Hill would not put any of the slow start — Wright State tallied two runs in each of the first two innings, then four more in the eighth for an 8-0 lead — on the dreary weather forecast that called the opener into doubt for much of the day. Spectrum Sports even switched the night’s broadcast from baseball to men’s volleyball.
“I don’t care how bad it’s raining, how bad the fog is, the snow. You’re going to play, play, play,” Hill said afterward. “You can always take your foot off the accelerator… You just can’t do it the other way (around). So, our guys, they were ready to go. You just gotta give Wright State a lot of credit.”
Wright State was picked to win the Horizon League, coming off a 30-27 season in which it won the Horizon regular season and tournament titles.
WSU is a program used to advancing to NCAA subregionals — the Raiders have been to that stage five of the last seven years — and it showed Friday.
“Last year we didn’t have as much in-game experience with our guys, and we return quite a few guys on our roster,” Raiders coach Alex Sogard told Spectrum News. “So there’s a little more experience, and we had a successful year at the end of the day. We won our league. But there were a lot of bumps in the road, so I think guys came back wanting a little more, a higher standard for those veteran guys.”
Junior right-hander Jake Shirk was the star for the team from Fairborn, Ohio, tossing six scoreless innings with just two hits and one walk allowed while striking out six.
Hill said senior lefty Randy Abshier will get the start for the 1:05 p.m., seven-inning first game of a planned doubleheader Saturday. The weather could again play havoc on what’s expected to be a wet weekend.
A crowd of 1,453 (2,975 tickets issued) turned out Friday night.
UH, coming off a 28-24 campaign and its best finish to date in the Big West Conference, third, lost its starting pitching in the offseason and was picked to finish sixth by the league’s coaches in the BWC preseason poll.
As in 2022, Hill’s debut season in Manoa, eight of nine starting position players were homegrown products. UH players resolved coming into the season to play their same chaos-inducing brand of smallball.
One of the biggest question marks was the starting rotation. Gustin, a reliever last season, was pulled after throwing 68 pitches, including 44 for strikes. He gave up four earned runs on five hits and two walks, striking out one.
“He’s working through some jitters a little bit,” Hill said. “You know, for him to really take the jump to the next level, he’s gotta be a consistent strike-thrower and kind of eliminate those three-ball counts. But what I love about him is the way he battled back. Gave up a bomb and he very easily could’ve folded. Same thing with the second inning. Gives up a couple runs and could’ve went in the tank, but he showed some mental toughness and really persevered.”
Trevor Ichimura threw 3 1/3 innings of scoreless relief, but Ball State transfer Zach Losey got hammered for four runs in the eighth.
Leadoff man Jordan Donahue went 3-for-4, all singles.
UH didn’t do much damage until late; five of its seven hits came in the last two innings, around the time some Manoa mist arrived. In the bottom of the eighth, freshman pinch hitter Tobey Jackson got on with an infield single and advanced on a throwing error. Donahue reached on a chopper and Jackson advanced to third. Dallas Duarte flied out to shallow right, but Jackson scored on a wild pitch for UH’s first run of the season.
“They have a really good, dynamic offense,” Sogard said of Hawaii. “You can tell when they start getting runners on, they can create a little chaos. So I thought (Shirk) did a really good job minimizing for us.”
UH scored twice on fielder’s choices in the bottom of the ninth.
It was Wright State’s first win against UH in six all-time meetings.
Brian McInnis covers the state’s sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.