High School Baseball: Larsen strikes again

The night before the Corona del Mar High baseball team tried to wrap up its own tournament undefeated, Coach John Emme made a couple of calls. He talked with Hesperia Oak Hills Coach Jason Story, asking him if his team could play CdM on Wednesday.

A scheduling conflict prevented the Sea Kings from going up against Villa Park in the Beach Pit Classic final. Unlike CdM, Villa Park isn’t on spring break this week and it couldn’t get out of school early to play at 11 a.m.

Oak Hills isn’t on spring break either, but Story couldn’t pass up the chance to play at CdM, even if it meant leaving the High Desert at 7:30. The Bulldogs made the 80-mile drive, fighting the morning traffic for almost two hours.

When they arrived at CdM, Oak Hills learned it had another daunting task. The Bulldogs were facing pitcher Evan Larsen, who has the likes of Cal State Fullerton, San Diego State, UCLA and UC Irvine interested in his services.

Larsen was the other person Emme called the night before, telling him he was pitching at least two innings. The junior phenom wound up pitching twice that amount and improved to 6-1 after the Sea Kings won, 5-2, to finish perfect in the 16-team tournament.

Larsen’s lone appearance on the mound during the four-game tournament lasted four innings, throwing 37 pitches, only nine for balls, while striking out three and allowing four hits. The right-hander did give up his first earned run of the season. In the fourth inning, USC-bound senior Solomon Bates belted a solo home run to left-center field to the tie the game at 1-1.

Larsen, who has thrown 41 innings, saw his earned run average jump to 0.17.

“If I’m going to give up a home run, it’s going to be against him,” Larsen said of Bates, a Major League Baseball prospect who has six homers and 19 runs batted in during the season.

“I hung a little slider in, but other than that I felt pretty good.”

Larsen, who was on a pitch count of 40, became the first pitcher in Orange County to notch his sixth win. Preston Hartsell made sure Larsen had the lead before he exited.

With one out in the bottom of the fourth, the freshman singled and then stole second base. He got to third base on a wild pitch by Nate Mendoza. Brenden Hueston’s groundout brought Hartsell in, helping CdM regain the lead.

Oak Hills (11-5), which has won two CIF Southern Section Division 5 titles in the last four seasons, was in position to even things up in the fifth.

After Claudio Mestas led off with an infield single and Kade McIntosh moved him over on a sacrifice bunt, the Bulldogs gambled. With two outs, Jeremiah Lorick produced his second hit, singling to right field. Mestas rounded third and headed home, but right fielder Chazz Martinez hit the cutoff man. After a run down, the Sea Kings got Mestas out at third.

“Those are the little things that make championship teams,” Emme said. “That’s what we keep stressing and that’s what the kids are doing.”

The Sea Kings (11-5), ranked No. 4 in the CIF Southern Section Division 3 poll, executed in the bottom half of the fifth, scoring three times to take a 5-1 lead.

Robby Hurst started things with a single, marking the third straight time the leadoff hitter reached first. JT Schwartz drew a walk, the fourth by Mendoza, who almost got out of a precarious situation. Nick Premer hit a grounder to Bates at shortstop, and it appeared Oaks Hills would turn the double play, but McIntosh dropped the ball at second base.

The bases were loaded for clean-up hitter Connor Buchanan, who walked his previous two times up. He didn’t even have to swing the bat for CdM to go ahead by two. Hurst, who went two for three with a walk and a stolen base, scored his second run, this one on a wild pitch. The other two runners moved up for Buchanan. His sacrifice fly to center gave the Sea Kings a 4-1 lead. Then Teddy Stuka’s two-out single drove in a run, breaking the game open against Mendoza (0-1).

“The weather down here is nice and he’s progressed as far as his pitch count goes,” Story said was the reason why he left Mendoza in with the bases loaded in the fifth. “He’s a sophomore, so we wanted to see him kind of fight and battle through that. We weren’t going to let him go past that last batter. He was right around 100 pitches, but we wanted to see how he handled that adversity.

“This is my favorite tournament. We’re from the High Desert, so it’s a little trip. We’re in school, so that makes it tough. But the competition is great and the facilities are phenomenal, and it gets us prepared for [play in the Mojave River League, which opens next week].”

The Sea Kings have done well after their 11-5 setback at defending Pacific Coast League champion Beckman on March 31. Since then, they have won five in a row, giving up only 10 runs during the streak.

Emme is giving CdM the rest of the week off, before it returns to league action at home against Irvine on Tuesday. The Sea Kings, who share second place with Northwood and Woodbridge at 3-2 in league, are one game back of first-place Beckman.

“We’re playing our best baseball of the year,” said Emme, who can easily say the same thing for the last two years in which CdM failed to make the postseason. “We’re doing all the little things right. We’re getting two-out hits now, [hits] with two strikes. Buchanan’s at-bat was fantastic, getting that sacrifice fly. We’re making the plays. We’re hitting our stride. This is what we expected all year. Hopefully we can carry that into league next week.”

—

Beach Pit Classic

Corona del Mar 5, Oak Hills 2

SCORE BY INNINGS

Oak Hills 000 101 0 – 2 7 1

CdM 100 130 x – 5 6 0

Mendoza, Hilliard (6) and Martinez; Larsen, Mathuny (5), Shadid (6) and Chan. W – Larsen, 6-1. L – Mendoza, 0-1. HR – Bates (OH).