Glenn Connelly, Staff Photographer

It all started innocently enough.

One hit batter shouldn’t be the end of the world.

Especially when you have a lead at home against a team you’ve dominated all weekend long.

But three weeks later, the San Diego State baseball team can’t seem to shake the lingering effects of that one loss.

SDSU, which opens Mountain West Conference play at 7 tonight at Tony Gwynn Stadium against New Mexico, hasn’t been able to end a 13-game losing streak, leading to a 6-23 start, the worst in team history.

And every time the Aztecs try to run away, they keep on tripping over their own feet.

“(This is starting to become) frustration throughout the whole club,” junior centerfielder Quintin Berry said. “One day our offense is on and our pitching isn’t. The next day our pitching is on and our defense isn’t.

“One thing falls apart and it tends to be a domino effect.”

Whenever the Aztecs seem to line up opportunities to take advantage of the opposition, they trip over their own feet, knocking down those opportunities with their fall.

All of SDSU’s struggles were on display in the seventh inning of an 11-5 loss against Pepperdine on March 5 at Tony Gwynn Stadium, the loss that started the losing streak.

With a runner on third base, senior relief pitcher Ben Coon loaded the bases by hitting two consecutive Wave batters with pitches. Coon’s inability to record an out that day has been the problem shared by nearly everyone in the Aztecs’ bullpen this season.

Over the course of the team’s horrendous start, the relief pitchers have become head coach Tony Gywnn’s own personal game of Jenga.

Any number he pulls is capable of causing a collapse.

However, on that day, it looked like the bullpen might come through against Pepperdine. SDSU could’ve broken away before that clingy losing streak attached itself to the team’s psyche.

Gwynn replaced Coon with sophomore Jared Suwyn, who got the Waves Nick Kliebert to hit a groundball toward third base. What should have been a double play was instead an error on sophomore third baseman Mike Willeford – brought in as a defensive replacement at the start of the seventh inning – allowing the first run of the inning to score unearned.

Willeford’s misplay in the field perfectly summarizes how terrible timing magnifies nearly every blunder SDSU commits.

Of all the problems that follow the team around on a daily basis, errors in the field are by far the most troublesome (the Aztecs have an MWC-high 59 errors). They nearly always come at the most inopportune times, such as with the bases loaded in a one-run game against Pepperdine, and almost as often lead to additional runs.

“Every game – especially in this losing streak – it seems like every time we make a mistake, instead of limiting the damage where it costs us a run or two, it turns into four or five,” head coach Tony Gwynn said.

Suwyn got out of the inning, but not before the Waves scored twice more, forcing SDSU’s hitters to come through in the bottom of the seventh if they wanted to regain the lead.

Pepperdine’s Brett Hunter struck out three of the five batters he faced in the bottom of the seventh inning, providing a familiar fate for the Aztec batters – SDSU has struck out a league-high 232 times. Hunter effectively ended the Aztecs’ best chance to tie the game – and began SDSU’s slide into the 13-game losing streak.

But it hasn’t just been the defense. Throughout the streak, the Aztec bats have gone into hiding during the game’s crucial spots, though.

Unfortunately for SDSU, disappearing is the one way it can’t get rid of the monkey on its back.

“We fell out of a bit of a rhythm and it’s been an ongoing downward slope,” Berry said. “A lot of us on the team know we haven’t been pulling our weight like we should of.”

Essentially, that’s the only way out for the Aztecs.

They must tread the ground gingerly and avoid falling on their faces in crucial situations.

Only when they start executing in all three facets of the game will they be free – and stop the domino effect of losing.