Shane Stafford capped the Oilers victory with a grand slam in the sixth inning. (Photos: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Huntington Beach’s baseball team continued its fast start hitting three home runs, including a grand slam to capture a 12-1 non-league victory over Riverside Poly Wednesday afternoon at Huntington Beach.
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The Oilers (5-1) banged out 11 hits and got solid starting pitching from Dylan Ramirez, who pitched the first four innings to notch the victory.
The pitchers had plenty of offensive support.
Second baseman Brett Barrera had a lead-off home run in the third inning, first baseman Josh Hahn belted a two-run homer in the fourth and Shane Stafford blasted a grand slam in the sixth inning to lift the Oilers, who were ranked second in this week’s county poll by the Orange County Register. The Oilers were ranked sixth in the latest CIF Division 1 poll.
Stafford also pitched two scoreless innings, allowing no hits and striking out three while not allowing a base runner. He struck out the side in the sixth. Nate Gollay and Cole Tague pitched the seventh.
Huntington Beach Coach Benjamin Medure has been scheduling Riverside Poly, his alma mater, for the last six years.
“It’s a sense of pride that I still have in my old school and I coached there for eight years before I got the job here,” said Medure, who was a middle infielder when he played in high school. “My nephews go to Poly and it’s still very much a family thing and whenever we got to Riverside and play them my family gets to come and watch. It’s always special to see them.
“Of course, we want to beat them when they’re on the field but when we are not playing them I’m a big supporter of their program and Coach (Billy) Ermert because I know he does a great job.”
Medure was pleased with his team’s effort Wednesday.
“When the top of the line-up can drive the ball like that we’re a tough team to beat,” Medure said. “Barrera, that ball he hit to left center was just a missile. We’ve been barreling the ball up a lot lately, we just haven’t had much to show for it. So it’s good to see we got some production from the balls that were barreled today.”
Huntington Beach put an exclamation mark on the victory with Stafford’s slam to right field.
“That felt really good,” Stafford said. “It was a fastball low and in and I just squared it up.”
Stafford was also pleased with his pitching effort.
“My fastball was working really good today,” he said. “I threw mostly two seams. My put away pitch today was mostly my change-up and it was making kids off-balanced a lot. I threw a couple curve balls. I just started throwing curve balls about four or five months ago. Today, it felt pretty good.”
Barrera also had an RBI double in the first inning. Ken Takada drove in a run when he reached on an error in the second inning and Cole DiMarco had an RBI single in the fifth inning.
Riverside Poly (4-4) scored its only run in the first inning when Connor Timko hit a home run.
-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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