CLAREMONT, CA. – The Pomona-Pitzer Baseball team took the opening game of their non-conference series with Whitman 6-0 on Friday afternoon at Alumni Field.
 
Season Impact: with the win, the Sagehens improve to 6-2 overall to start the season.
 
The Sagehens were led by Matthew Nishimura who went 2-4 with two RBI in the win. JC Ng and Nate Jakobs each had two hits for the Sagehens along with a run scored while Greg Pierantoni, Andrew An, and Kade Morihara each had a hit as well.
 
Jake Hilton got the start to open the series and picked up his third win in his third start of the year with six innings of shutout baseball, four hits and five strikeouts. Eric Prough and Jack Wiessinger both came in relief of Hilton with Prough throwing two innings of shutout work and Wiessinger with a scoreless ninth.
 
Pomona-Pitzer got ahead of a good arm early in the game as Morihara drove in the first run of the game with a sacrifice fly to make it 1-0 in the second inning. The Sagehens went on to give Hilton some insurance in the fourth and fifth with two runs in each inning off of a two-out rally by Morihara and Nishimura and then took advantage of the Blues' defense with a run off a wild pitch and an error to build a 5-0 lead heading into the sixth.
 
Nishimura came back with his second RBI of the game in the bottom of the eighth to bring in Jakobs while the Sagehens combined for their first shutout of 2024 with the win over Whitman at home.
 
Up Next: The Sagehens will next host Whitman for a doubleheader on Saturday, February 24^th beginning at 11:00 a.m.