CdM starter comes through with strong effort in tourney win over Yorba Linda

Jake Garcia threw a complete game for CdM Tuesday at the Orange County Great Park. (Photos: OC Sports Zone, Tim Burt).

Corona del Mar junior Jake Garcia did exactly what Coach Kevin McCaffrey hoped he would do and then some Tuesday in the Ryan Lemmon Invitational at the Great Park Baseball Stadium.

With three consecutive games in three days taking a toll on the Sea Kings pitching staff, McCaffrey was hoping for a strong and long outing from Garcia.

He got both. Garcia threw a complete game, scattered six hits and struck out four to help the Sea Kings defeat Yorba Linda 12-5. CdM (14-7) was able to bounce back from Monday’s loss to Villa Park that snapped the Sea Kings eight game winning streak.

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Garcia (3-0) allowed just a run through four innings but Yorba Linda (6-15) got going offensively in the fifth inning with four runs. Garcia retired the last six hitters to end the game.

“We scored every inning and we were pretty good offensively,” McCaffrey said. “I’m really excited about how the boys played. Jake was phenomenal today. We were short on pitching and he really saved us today. He did an absolutely great job for us.

“It was kind of a staff day and he saved us, and we have a few arms for tomorrow (Wednesday).”

Garcia was happy he could contribute.

“That was satisfying,” Garcia said. “It’s always nice going out there feeling your stuff and getting your pitches down and getting the rhythm and it’s always nice to go back out there and keep going and getting your outs.

“We just took yesterday and kind of flushed it, we’ve been on quite a streak lately, we’ve been feeling it as a team with a lot of chemistry and we played a very good team yesterday so we thought we better bring that same attitude here today and win it again.”

Corona del Mar banged out 15 hits off five Yorba Linda pitchers and the Sea Kings had great success on the basepaths, stealing bases on six of seven attempts in the first four innings.

In the first inning, leadoff hitter Ethan Watson singled and stole second and then came home on a double steal.

CdM broke the game open with four runs in the second inning, Jack Salmon and Jack Bolt had RBI singles and Van Sidebotham drove home two runs with a single.

Yorba Linda pushed across a run in the third inning. JJ Conrad tripled and scored on a groundout by Christian Tapia.

But CdM countered with two runs in the bottom of the third inning. Salmon had an RBI single and Watson a sacrifice fly.

The Sea Kings added three more runs in the bottom of the fourth to move ahead 10-1. In the top of the fifth, Yorba Linda scored four runs. Tapia was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, Jacob Talbot had a sacrifice fly and Nathan Estrada doubled to drive in a run.

Watson wound up going 2 for 3 with two runs scored and an RBI, shortstop Dennis Fitzpatrick was 2 for 2 with three runs scored an an RBI double in the fourth inning, Salmon was 2 for 3 with two runs scored and two RBI and Bolt was 2 for 2 with a walk and a run scored.

Both teams wrap up the tournament on Wednesday.

—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com