<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Behind a monster day from Steve Tinoco, the Dirtbags avoided the sweep in South Carolina, as they won 10-7. <\/span>Tinoco went—seriously—five-for-five with three <\/i>home runs. Andrew Gagnon collected his first win of the year, striking out seven in five innings of work.<\/span><\/p>\n Tinoco’s three home runs tied him for the Long Beach State record with Rob Townley and Jaeme Leal. <\/span>Long Beach State got to work early, getting the damage done against South Carolina starter Blake Cooper. Cooper, who entered the game without having allowed a run, gave up one in the first on a groundout from Lohman.<\/p>\n The Dirtbags continued to pound Cooper in the second inning. Tinoco started out the second with his first home run, a solo shot off the batter’s eye in center field, and the inning continued with a two-out rally. With Matt Avery on first base, singles from Jordan Casas and Derek Legg brought home a run, a double from TJ Mittelstaedt brought in two more, and another double from Devin Lohman scored Mittlesteadt as Long Beach State took a 6-0 lead.<\/p>\n Tinoco’s second home run put Long Beach State ahead 7-0 at the end of the third, but South Carolina would climb back into the contest, as three Gamecock home runs would cut the lead back to two at 7-5. <\/span>Long Beach State added a pair of insurance runs in the seventh, as Jonathan Jones and Tinoco hit a pair of one out singles, and both would come home to score on a two-run single by Rylan Sandoval.<\/p>\n The Gamecocks would threaten once more, loading the bases in the eighth inning, but closer Charlie Ruiz finished the inning with a groundout and closed out the ninth inning to seal the win.<\/p>\n Long Beach State returns home for a Tuesday contest with San Diego prior to hosting Washington State over the weekend. The Dirtbags start with the Toreros at Blair Field with the first pitch scheduled for 6:30pm.<\/p>\n From LBSU reports<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve Tinoco is a bad, bad man, smashing South Carolina with three homers to tie the school record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4479"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4479"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}