Baseball team wins fourth in a row
Feb 14, 2009
The Irvine Valley baseball team is on a roll.
The Lasers won their fourth straight game and improved their record to 7-3 on the season with a 17-3 victory over Victor Valley at home on Saturday afternoon in their final game in the Casey Stengel Tournament.
Irvine Valley finished the tournament with a record of 3-0.
The 17 runs was the most Irvine Valley has scored in a game this season.
But it was Victor Valley that jumped out to an early lead, scoring two runs off IVC freshman starting pitcher Mike Sianez in the top of the first inning on a walk, two hit batters, two wild pitches and a double.
But Sianez settled down after that. He ended up going 6.0 innings to pick up his first win of the season. Sianez gave up four hits and two walks and hit two batters. He had seven strikeouts.
The Lasers didn't let Victor Valley have the lead for long. IVC chased Victor Valley starting pitcher Zane Ridings in the first inning, scoring eight runs.
The Lasers had just three hits in the inning. But had three batters get hit and another two earn walks.
Sophomore left fielder Paul Sandoval, who had a big day for IVC, had two of the hits in the inning. He knocked freshman third baseman Anthony Gutierrez with a single and later brought in sophomore shortstop Vince Hungerford and Gutierrez with a single.
Sandoval's second hit made it an 8-2 game.
Irvine Valley tacked on three runs in the third inning and four more in the fourth inning to go up, 15-2.
In the fourth, Hungerford had a two-run double, Gutierrez brough in a run with a groundout and Sandoval had an RBI single.
Irvine Valley added single runs in the bottom of the seventh and the eighth innings to cap its scoring.
Freshman second baseman Colton Hamill drove in Sandoval, who had doubled, with a hit in the seventh and the run scored in the eighth when sophomore first baseman Jon Saldana was hit by a pitch.
Sandoval finished the day going 5 for 5 with a double, triple, two runs scored and five RBI. He was already hitting .440 going into the game. Now he is at .533 with a .800 slugging percentage.
Hungerford went 2 for 4 with three runs and three RBI, Saldana was 1 for 4 with two runs and three RBI and Gutierrez went 0 for 2, but scored four runs and had one RBI.
In relief of Sianez, sophomore lefty John Lamp pitched two scoreless innings and Chase Smith finished out the ninth, giving up one run.
Irvine Valley doesn't play again until Wednesday when it opens a three-game series with El Camino. The Lasers play at home on Wednesday and Friday and are on the road on Thursday. All three games are slated to start at 2 p.m.