Irvine baseball squad strikes early and defeats Portola 3-0 in Pacific Coast League game

Irvine’s starting pitcher Miles Malohn fires a pitch to Portola’s Tyler Sylvester Tuesday afternoon (Photos: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).

Irvine High’s baseball team got some solid pitching and timely hitting to defeat Portola 3-0 in a Pacific Coast League game Tuesday afternoon at Irvine.

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Vaquero starter Miles Malohn pitched the first five innings, striking out seven and allowing three hits to get the win. J.C. Allen came on to pitch the sixth and Bubba Filia, who caught the first six innings, finished it off on the mound with a shutout inning in his first appearance on the mound.

Portola starter Jamison King, who pitched the first five innings, was also solid on the mound allowing three runs and striking out nine.

“It was a struggle a little bit,” said Irvine Coach Gabriel Cota. “Their guy did a great job. He definitely shut us down. They’re a good team and they go compete every single day and you can tell they’re coached really well. They’re young, obviously with no seniors so they’re going to be really good for a while.”

With the victory, Irvine (8-2, 3-1) moved into sole possession of second place in the PCL.

“I thought we did enough to win in league,” Cota said. “That’s one of the most important things, can you do enough to get the W and we did and I think the next couple of days we have to find ourselves a little bit in practice and see what we can do and we know we’re going to be in for a dogfight against Northwood.”

Cota was pleased with Malohn’s effort. He has come back after battling an illness, Cota said.

“He pitched well, he didn’t have his best stuff but he went out there and competed,” Cota said. “He was a little under the weather but I thought he did a great job putting up zeroes.”

Irvine got the only run it needed to win in the bottom of the first inning.

Leadoff hitter Patrick Hackworth led off with a single, stole second and scored on an RBI single by Grant Lockwood.

The Vaqueros added two insurance runs in the fifth inning. With one out, Hackworth was hit by a pitch and stole second. Then, Lockwood reached on an infield single to put runners on first and third. Filia followed with a sacrifice fly to make it 2-0. Lockwood later scored on a passed ball to give the Vaqueros a 3-0 edge.

Lockwood had two of the three Irvine hits and Hackworth, a sophomore, scored two of the Vaqueros’ runs.

Portola (4-6, 1-3) had plenty of chances to score, but the Bulldogs stranded nine runners.

In the fourth inning, Kaeden Foucart doubled to lead off but he was stranded at there. The Bulldogs also had runners in scoring position in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings but Irvine was able to work out of the jams.

“I think we had runners in scoring position most of the innings,” said Portola Coach Michael Nagamatsu. “The biggest story of the day is we just couldn’t get a big hit.

“If we get hits with runners in scoring position, that’s a competitive ball game if not on our side. In the fourth inning, Kaeden Foucart leads it off with a crushed double and we had no outs and a guy on second and we just couldn’t execute and that was the story of today. We played good defense, I don’t think we had any errors. We played good team ball but we just couldn’t get the big hit when we needed to.”

King, a junior, kept the Bulldogs close with his effort on the mound.

“Jamison King battles,” Nagamatsu said. “Every time he gets on the bump we know we’re going to get max effort out of him and he won’t be beat. He’s not going to give up free bags, he’s not going to give up walks. You have to really beat him to beat him, meaning hits and you got to do it the conventional way.”

Foucart came on to pitch in the sixth inning for Portola.

NEXT UP: On Friday, Irvine plays at Northwood and Portola hosts Woodbridge.

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