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Sullivan Spivey got the victory on the mound for Irvine Wednesday. (Photos: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Irvine High School’s baseball team got solid pitching from Sullivan Spivey and Ethan Kim and some key hitting to defeat Northwood 4-1 in a Pacific Coast League game Wednesday at Irvine.
League-leading Northwood (6-3-1, 5-2-1) won Tuesday series opener over Irvine 1-0 in eight innings.
So it was important for third place Irvine (6-4-1, 5-3) to respond with a victory.
“Yesterday, we faced a guy on the bump (Casey Euper) and he was really good and we just got beat, we tried to compete,” said Irvine Coach Gabriel Cota. “The whole discussion was ‘yesterday was yesterday and today is a whole new day so let’s compete like we know how,’ so I was proud of the way they bounced back.”
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Spivey, a senior, allowed one run and three hits and struck out four to earn the win. Kim, who started the game at first base, then pitched three shutout innings, allowing no hits and striking out three.
“Spivey is bouncing back from an injury, it was only his third time pitching, this is what we expected and we’re hoping for the whole year so it was nice to see and Ethan is a freshman, we weren’t sure what we were going to get but he’s been pretty consistent this year,” Cota said.
“It was a good team victory all-around, we stayed hots with our bats, that was key for this game,” added Spivey. “We knew we had to attack at the plate in order to get ahead, that was a key for this game.”
Spivey said he’s happy to be back pitching more after battling a minor arm injury.
“It’s been rough not being able to go full 100 percent on the mound, but I’m slowly getting back into it, a lot of rehab and a lot of therapy going into it,” he said. “We just got to stay consistent with our at bats, pitching, we definitely have that, our defense is solid, our at bats we got to stay solid.”
Irvine moved ahead with two runs in the second inning. Adam Valencia singled, Josh Gutierrez walked and catcher Ryan Sellards followed with a two-run double to put the Vaqueros ahead 2-0.
“You can’t say enough about that kid,” Cota said. “Yesterday he got hit in both knees, he got a knee to the head as he was picking up a ball, he told me ‘I’m going to give you as much as I can, he told me coach, I got one more inning and I’m done,’ and he gets a double, that’s the way to go out.”
Northwood cut the lead to 2-1 with a run in the fifth inning. Paul Grossman singled, Colin Carlson walked and Rylan Littlejohn singled to drive in a run.
But Irvine got two insurance runs in the bottom of the inning. Owen Featherston reached on an error, stole second and scored on a single by Nate Valencia. Zach Rodriguez doubled and Evan Tamoyo delivered an RBI single to make it 4-1.
Northwood has jumped out to a fast start under first year coach Josh Keithly. But the Timberwolves couldn’t cash in scoring opportunities Wednesday, stranding six runners.
Carter Liu pitched the first four innings for Northwood before being relieved by Spencer Collins-Williams in the fifth.
“We just kind of came out cold with the sticks,” Keithly said. “Carter was throwing pretty good for the first three or four innings but kind of fell behind some counts and they took advantage of that, and they were just on time. We had a few chances and we had some timely hitting, we just didn’t get the big one. It was a good job pitching on their part.
“We’ve been playing pretty good, our pitching staff has been holding us together, they’ve been unbelievable. Our sticks have kind of been up and down but we’re playing pretty good baseball and it’s kind of contagious and our guys feel good, there is a lot of positivity moving on to the next series of games.”
Irvine plays at Northwood Friday to wrap up the league series.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
