Pirates finish off Warriors to advance in Southern California Regionals
| Final | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Orange Coast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 12 | 3 |
|
El Camino | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 0 |
COSTA MESA -- No late-inning heroics were necessary on Saturday for the Orange Coast College baseball team as the Pirates topped El Camino, 8-2, to advance to the second round of the 2014 Southern California Regional playoffs.
The top-seeded Pirates (29-9) will now wait and see how the rest of the day unfolds to see who their next opponent will be. The lowest remaining seed will make the trek to Wendell Pickens Field to begin another best-of-three series on Friday, beginning at 2 p.m. Game 2 will be on Saturday at 12 p.m. with Game 3 (if necessary) on Sunday also at 12 p.m.
As for Saturday's win, the Pirates got what they wanted -- a much-less stressful form of victory against a battling Warrior ballclub.
El Camino (23-15) took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second on a bases-loaded walk by Mason Landis, but after that, OCC starter Art Vidro (5-3) kept the Warriors in check, holding them to two runs (both unearned) on six hits with two walks and four strikeouts over 6 2/3 innings. Relievers Spencer Moran did their jobs and retired the final seven batters of the afternoon.
Tommy Bell led the Pirate offense by going 4-for-4 with two runs and two RBI, while Justin Broussard added three hits and an RBI.
In the top of the fourth, L. Grant Davis led off with a double to right-center, advanced to third on a fly out by Cody Nulph and scored on Bell's RBI-single to right, tying the game at 1.
Robert Longtree put the Pirates ahead with an RBI-ground out, scoring Daniel Delaney, who led off the top of the fifth with a single to left.
Coast blew the game open in the top of the sixth. Chris Iriart doubled down the right-field line and scored on Bell's third hit of the afternoon -- a single to center. Walks by Delaney and Jake Thumm loaded the bases and Coast used a wild pitch by Warrior starter Chris Alcala (4-5) to make it 4-1. Two batters later, Cody Bruder lined a single to left, scoring Thumm and Delaney, putting Coast ahead, 6-1.
Broussard added an RBI-single in the top of the seventh and Nulph chipped in an RBI-double in the top of the eighth to close out the scoring and eliminate the 17th-seeded Warriors from the playoffs.
