SAN DIEGO — Friday's final score was not indicative of the pitchers' duel that ensued at Fowler Park Friday, with host San Diego's Diego Gutierrez squaring off against the Santa Clara baseball team's Max Bayles. The Toreros pulled away late after Bayles left the game, clinching a West Coast Conference series victory with a 6-1 win in game two.

HOW IT HAPPENED

• Bayles (3-1) was tagged with his first defeat of 2026 after striking out six across five innings and only allowing two runs. But Gutierrez one-upped him, allowing just one run on two hits in six innings. Gutierrez walked six and hit a batter, but he played escape artist all night long, forcing the Broncos (13-16, 3-5 WCC) to strand seven runners while he was on the mound, including leaving the bases loaded in the third while the game was still scoreless.
   
• Johnny Luetzow, who hails from the San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla, Calif., doubled for the second night in a row, missing a home run by mere inches off the top of the left field wall. He'd later score on Mateo Garcia's sacrifice fly for Santa Clara's only run of the game. The run made it 2-1 at the time, and SCU got the tying run on to leadoff the seventh, but three consecutive groundouts ended the threat. Tate Medicoff and Payton Lambert also had hits, as the Broncos were held to only three hits for the second consecutive night.
   
• San Diego (11-17, 4-4 WCC) didn't score until the fourth inning, breaking a scoreless tie with a leadoff home run from Andrew Gauna – his second long ball in as many games in the series – and a two-out RBI single from Cade Martinez to make it 2-0. Two more two-out RBI knocks in the seventh from Gauna and Jayden Lobliner made it 4-1. An error and an infield single gave the Toreros two more runs in the eighth after Diego Gonzalez had led off the inning with a double.
   
• Drake Frize earned his first save of the season with three shutout innings of relief to close out the game. He only allowed one hit and one walk while striking out two. Three Toreros logged multi-hit games, including Gauna, Gonzalez and Connor Meidroth, who each went 2 for 4.

NOTABLE NUMBERS

• 10: The Broncos have lost 10 consecutive road games since winning at California, 13-2, on Opening Day on Feb. 13. The streak is the team's longest since the 2016 and '17 seasons when it lost four straight on the road to end 2016 before starting 2017 with six consecutive road defeats.
• 21: Bayles is only 21 strikeouts away from tying for 10th all-time on the Santa Clara career records list. Joe Diefenderfer (2000-03) and Walt Kaczmarek (1971-74) both had 239 Ks in their career.

COMING UP

• The series finale is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday. Fans can find all live coverage links on SantaClaraBroncos.com.