The SF State baseball team has had its share of streaks this year, but the problem is they haven’t involved the type of consistent play the team wants.

After suffering through a nine-game losing streak earlier in the year, the Gators blew that skid out of the water and currently ride a 14-game losing streak after being swept in a four-game series on the road against Cal Poly Pomona.

“I couldn’t pinpoint one thing,” catcher Matt Kavanaugh said about the team’s streak. “It’s a different situation every time.”

The last time SF State (7-38-1, 1-27 California Collegiate Athletics Association) won a game was on March 29 against Hawai’i Pacific. The Gators haven’t won a conference game since March 7 and have dropped their last 19 CCAA match-ups.

“You get to the point where you try too hard,” said assistant coach Gerard Nyman. “Our hitters are trying too hard, doing more than they can do.”

In a year where the Gators have struggled with pitching and defense, hitting had remained stable throughout most of the season. But during SF State’s 14-game drought, the Gators have hit .227 as a team with an average of 3.6 runs per game.

“Consistency overall,” pitcher Zach Beal said about the team’s biggest factor in the losing streak. “Pitching, hitting, defense. When one is working, the others aren’t.”

But in the first game of the series on April 17, the Gators looked to change their fortunes and took a 4-0 lead after two and a half innings of play.

In the second inning, the Gators’ Matt Edgecombe hit his third home run of the season, a two run shot, to get SF State on the score board and Conor Buestad singled home Jake Moore later in the inning to give the Gators a 3-0 lead. In the next inning, Evan Romanchuk smashed a solo homer, his third of the year, to centerfield to give SF State a 4-0 lead.

But the Broncos struck for three runs in the bottom of the third and one more in the sixth against Beal. In the seventh, Beal faced two batters and gave up two hits and a run before Oscar Campos relieved him. Cal Poly Pomona scored three runs in the seventh and three more in the eighth as the Broncos went on to win 10-5.

Beal gave up six runs on 10 hits in six innings with three walks and three strikeouts to earn the loss. Beal is now 2-9 on the season with a 6.72 ERA.

During the season, the Gators have ranked near the bottom of the CCAA in just about every major pitching category. SF State is currently second-to-last in team ERA (8.44), opposing batting average (.343), strikeouts (187), hits allowed (468) and earned runs allowed (299).

“It feels like the pitchers have to be almost perfect, the offense has to score 100 runs and the defense has to be perfect” Beal said.

The five runs in the game would be the most the Gators scored in the series as SF State only produced four totals runs in the final three games. The Gators hit .181 as team in the series against the Broncos.

The next day, the Gators didn’t start strong in the first game of the doubleheader and went on to lose 11-0 as SF State made two crucial errors that resulted in six unearned runs. Beau Moorehead started on the mound for the Gators and gave up five earned runs on 14 hits in six innings to fall to 1-10 on the season.

In the second game, SF State fell behind 5-0 before Romanchuk gave the Gators their first run in 13 innings when he hit his fifth homer of the season, a solo shot, to cut the lead to 5-1. SF State scored one more run in the sixth on an RBI-single from Matt Memeo as the Gators lost 5-2. SF State lost the final game of the series 8-2 on April 20.

The challenge for SF State to break into the win column continues this week when the Gators return home for a four-game series against eighth-ranked UC San Diego. The first game of the series is on Friday at 2 p.m.

“Basically it comes down to the whole team trying too hard,” Nyman said. “When you play too tight it makes the game more difficult.”