PHOTOS: Irvine defeats Uni 4-1 for third consecutive Pacific Coast League victory

Irvine’s Drake Brito fires a pitch in Tuesday’s PCL game vs. University. (Photo courtesy Susan J. Emrich).

Irvine High School’s baseball team continued its solid play of late defeating University 4-1 in a Pacific Coast League game Tuesday afternoon at Irvine.

It was the third win in a row in league play for the Vaqueros (7-7, 3-2). The two teams meet again Thursday at Uni.

To see the slide show, click on the first photo:

Irvine starter Drake Brito (4-2) pitched the first six innings to earn the win. He allowed one run, scattered three hits, struck out six, hit one batter and walked one. Ethan Kim pitched a scoreless seventh to earn the save.

“Drake is pretty good up there, so he always give us a shot,” said Irvine Coach Gabriel Cota. “They were competitive, they went up there and had good at bats against us. Our boys had good at bats, we just have to figure out a way to get the runs when we have guys in scoring position. Coach (Jesse) Anderson does a really good job with them, I know he just took over this year.

“You can definitely see they’re doing a good job in coaching them up really well.”

Irvine had 11 hits but also stranded eight runners and had a runner thrown out at home on a close play.

The Vaqueros moved ahead 1-0 with a run in the second inning off University starter Brennan Collins, who pitched the first five innings before being relieved by Jason Lo Bianco in the sixth inning.

Nico Macalino drove in Rosha Patel, who had walked, with a double to put Irvine ahead 1-0.

The Vaqueros then moved out to a 3-0 lead in the third inning on a two run single by Alex Cho, which drove in Evan Tamayo and Adam Valencia, who both singled.

University (6-4, 2-2) got on the scoreboard in the fourth inning. Sean Maher led off with a single and Collins was hit by a pitch. Shawn Ho then drove in Maher on a groundout.

Irvine countered with a run in the bottom of the fifth. With two outs, Cho singled and scored on a double by Patel.

The first two Uni batters were hit by pitches in the seventh, but Kim got out of the jam with a double play and a fly out to end the game.

Cho led Irvine, going 3-for-3 with two RBI and a run scored. Smith Spivey also had two hits for Irvine.

“Cho has kind of been rotating a little bit and trying to earn himself a spot,” Cota said. “That’s how you do it, you go out there and have a game like that. I think we have a very unselfish team. It’s always nice that guys are always rooting for each other, it’s really fun to see.”

“My approach was really just sitting on a fast ball and just getting a good pitch to hit and I got that today, I just tried to do a job for my team,” Cho said. “We’ve been doing really well so far. I think we’ve really just scratched the surface on what we can do. I feel this is just the tip of the iceberg and we can do a lot better.”

Anderson, the Uni coach, was impressed with both teams.

“We knew what kind of game this was going to be,” he said. “It was going to be a low scoring game and we knew that we had to hold them to one or two runs to win the game because we knew we were facing Brito, we gave up four and he pitched an excellent game, he pitched like we expected him to pitch, we just couldn’t muscle a couple more runs to stay up with him. That’s just a good baseball game.”

The coach said he’s looking forward to Thursday’s game when his team will have its ace, junior Andrew Shean on the mound in the second game of the series vs. Irvine at Uni.

Shean pitched a no-hitter last week vs. Sage Hill, striking out nine and walking one.

“It was one of those performance in high school I haven’t seen in a long time,” Anderson said. “He’s just been getting better, he’s a junior and the ceiling is really high for him. He works really hard.”

“We’re real excited about Thursday to come back and beat them on Thursday, the team is pumped up about having another shot at it. Our league is now two games each so if you’re able to split with these teams along the way you have a shot at making CIF at the end as long as you can hang tough and win a couple series, you’re still in this thing.

“We’re going to give it our best and even the series out and move forward and rally the troops and hang in this thing until the very end.”

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