IRVINE — The bullpen has been the strength of UC Irvine’s baseball team in 2022, but the vagaries of baseball warn you how quickly that can change.

The Anteaters took a 3-0 lead into the ninth inning on Friday night at Cicerone Field with closer Troy Taylor on the mound. But a walk and four hits by Cal Poly upended the Anteaters for four runs and a 4-3 win.

The two teams, part of a four-pack at the top of the Big West Conference but with a lot of baseball left to play, will meet again Saturday at 1 p.m. in the rubber game of the three-game series.

Taylor walked the first batter he faced on a closer 3-and-2 pitch, and a few other pitches were declared wide by the home plate umpire, much to the chagrin of the UC Irvine fans.

Two singles got the Mustangs (21-13 overall, 8-3 Big West) within one at 3-2, then Cal Poly catcher Collin Villegas crushed a fastball to the left center wall to drive in two more and make it 4-3.

Luke Spillane made a diving attempt on the hit but only got a face full of fence.

Anteater head coach Ben Orloff didn’t have any issues with the umpire and only lamented the walk to start the inning.

“They strung together four good at-bats for four solid hits,” he said. “This season the bullpen has been our strength, not the hitting or even the starting pitcher. But games like this happen.

“We’re just trying to get better and improve as a team. I thought we showed some good things in the first two games of this series.”

The Anteaters (21-12, 9-5) used a flurry of hits in the third inning to take a 2-0 lead. Sophomore second baseman Woody Hadeen rolled a double into the right field corner and advanced to third on catcher Taishi Nakawaka’s sacrifice.

Senior Ben Fitzgerald laced a double into the right field gap to score Hadeen, and sophomore right fielder Nathan Church followed with a single up the middle for a 2-0 lead.

UCI made it 3-0 in the sixth on an unusual home run.

With two outs, sophomore Caden Kendle hit a sinking line drive to center field that Cal Poly’s Brett Borgogno dove for and missed, the ball bouncing past him and rolling all the way to the center field fence, 408 feet away from home plate.

Kendle was easily able to cover the bases for an inside-the-park home run. It was Kendle’s third home run of the season.

Starter Michael Frias (5-1/3) and relievers Gordo Ingebritson (1-1/3) and Tanner Brooks (1-1/3) combined to pitch eight shutout innings. The Mustangs had two rallies put down by the bullpen before the ninth. Pinto allowed four hits and four walks, Ingbritson a single and Brooks just a walk.

“It was a well-played game. It was kind of like last night to the extent that there were two really good starting pitching performances, a close game, and when you lose, everyone remembers the ninth inning,” Orloff said. “In games like that though, it’s an accumulation of everything, and we had chances for it to be 4-0 even 5-0 going into that last inning when we stranded some baserunners.”

With six weeks left in the regular season, UCI and Cal Poly trail first-place UC Santa Barbara (23-8, 12-2) in the standings, while Cal State Bakersfield (14-18, 7-4), Cal State Fullerton (12-20, 7-4) and Hawaii (15-16, 8-6) lurking behind.