Los Angeles, CA— The Occidental baseball team celebrated senior student athletes Declan Sklut, AJ Naha, Patrick Connolly, Sancho Llamas, and Garrett Palme ahead of Sunday's season finale against the Redlands Bulldogs. 

Declan Sklut started the game on the mound for the Tigers and struck out 2 Bulldogs over 2.1 innings. Patrick Connolly followed in relief and struck out 3 batters over 2 innings pitched while allowing no hits and no runs. 

The Tigers were trailing 9-1 in the 4th inning after Alex Henderson hit a solo homer in the 1st inning to put the Tigers on the board. In the bottom of the 4th innings, the Tigers cut into the lead after Sancho Llamas led the inning off with a walk and Miles Capobianco moved him over with a single. Nick Gonzales would walk to load the bases and Jackson Short doubled to center field to drive in a pair of runs. 

Alex Henderson would follow with an RBI groundout and Garrett Palme would cap the rally with an RBI single to center field. Palme would steal second base but be stranded there to end the inning. 

The game would remain with a score of 9-6 Bulldogs until the 7th inning when Thomas Munch led off with a single for the Tigers and Jeffery Cambra moved him to second base by working a walk. Sancho Llamas loaded the bases with a single to right field and Miles Capobianco followed with an RBI hit by pitch and another run was brought in on a fielder's choice to make the score 9-8. 

AJ Naha would get the Tigers a shutdown inning by not allowing a hit in the top of the 8th to allow the Tigers to come up to bat only down a run. With one out, Garrett Palme singled again to get a runner on base. Mason Olson drew a walk before a wild pitch forced the Bulldogs to intentionally walk Thomas Munch to load the bases to create a force at any base. 

Jeffery Cambra would deliver the big hit with a single over the 3rd baseman to bring in two runs and give the Tigers a 10-9 lead. To add to the excitement, Sancho Llamas would step up to the plate and blast a 3-run home run over the left-center field wall to send the Tiger crowd into a frenzy and extend the lead to 13-8. 

Two more Tiger runs would come in to score before the inning was over on an Alex Henderson 2 RBI double. The Bulldogs would strike for 3 runs in the top of the 9th, but AJ Naha struck out the last batter of the game to secure a 16-12 senior day win for the Tigers. 

Naha earned the win on the day, and totaled 4 wins over his career at Oxy, as well as 33 strikeouts over 66.2 innings on the mound. Over 3 years at Oxy Declan Sklut totaled 80 strikeouts over 93.0 innings pitched for the Tigers, throwing a complete game in a win over Caltech earlier this year. Patrick Connolly struck out 37 batters in 51.1 innings pitched while at Oxy, limiting batters to a .114 batting average in 2024.

Garrett Palme hit 8 home runs, drove in 26 runs and scored 29 runs in his Oxy career and Sancho Llamas had 5 career home runs while also driving in 33 runs and scoring 37 runs while also totaling 66 career hits. 

The Oxy baseball program thanks its 5 graduating seniors for their contributions to the program over there 3 years of Oxy baseball and wishes them the best of luck in their future endeavors!