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Woodbridge players celebrate the walk-off victory Monday at Ryan Lemmon Stadium. (PHOTOS: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Woodbridge High School’s baseball team pushed across two runs in the bottom of the seventh inning Monday afternoon to defeat Kennedy 3-2 in a non-league game on a walk-off sacrifice fly at Ryan Lemmon Stadium.
Kennedy starter Noah Arriola was solid through six innings allowing just four hits and throwing five consecutive scoreless innings.
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But the Warriors got going offensively in the seventh inning. Leadoff hitter Nevan Namgoong beat out an infield single and stole second and Vincent DeMarco was hit by a pitch, prompting Fighting Irish Coach Tom Monahan to bring in reliever Axel Rojas.
Nolan Stottlemeyer walked to load the bases, Caleb Camacho also walked to drive in the tying run and Henry Uhrik hit a sacrifice fly to right field to drive in the game-winning run.
Starter Dylan Mutuc pitched six strong innings for Woodbridge (7-2) allowing four hits and two runs. Caden Camacho came on to pitch a scoreless seventh to earn the win.
“Dylan Mutuc obviously gave us a good performance, we’ve been pitching the ball pretty well collectively as a staff and playing pretty good defense ,” said Woodbridge Coach Ryan Brucker. “You’re always in games when you can pitch and play defense.
“Their pitcher did a good job throwing strikes and keeping us off balance. I think we need to do a little better job having competitive at bats, we made a lot of early outs swinging at pitchers’ pitches in innings two threw six, but in one and seven, we were able to win those innings, that was two more innings than they were able to get on us so it turned out in our favor.
“Any time you can get a win, and a walk-off win at that, it shows the character of our team. They keep competing and getting after it, good teams take advantage of free bases and that’s what we were able to do.”
“I thought we did well but for the first couple of innings we were kind of popping up all the time but the last inning, we were able to get things together and put some balls on the ground and draw some walks,” added Namgoong, who was 2 for 4.
“We swung at most of the strikes on first pitch and the pop-ups were keeping us away from scoring runs so when we decided to take more and draw some more walks and hit groundballs, we were able to (get) the win in the end.”
Woodbridge moved ahead with a run in the bottom of the first inning. With two outs, Stottlemeyer doubled. Caleb Camacho was hit by a pitch and Uhrik singled to load the bases. Vaughn Tase then got the RBI with a walk.
Kennedy (5-3) countered with two runs in the second inning. Tyler Onofre and Alonzo Alvarez singled. Nolan Owens sacrificed the runners to second and third. James Rojas had an RBI single and Sean McCann drove in a run with a sacrifice fly.
The Fighting Irish had two runners on in both the sixth and seventh innings but Woodbridge was able to work out of trouble, turning an inning-ending double play in the seventh.
“We did well, our pitcher hung in there,” said Monahan. “He did a good job and got out of some jams, that’s the longest he’s pitched this year so we were kind of watching him. If he was doing well, he was going to stay in, we had a guy warming up there, but he through the second inning. So we were just going to ride him.”
Kennedy is scheduled to open league play Tuesday at home vs. Buena Park. Katella, Segerstrom, Costa Mesa are also in the five team Empire League.
“I think we’ll be OK, we will be good, we have our number one going tomorrow,” Monahan said.
Woodbridge is scheduled to open Pacific Coast League play Wednesday at Sage Hill and Friday at Ryan Lemmon Stadium. Laguna Beach, St. Margaret’s, Irvine, Northwood, Woodbridge, Sage Hill and University are in the seven team league.
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com