IRVINE – Beckman’s baseball team used some solid pitching by Adam Lamar and a big third inning to defeat Woodbridge, 6-0, in a Pacific Coast League game Thursday afternoon at Beckman.
Lamar (5-1) pitched a complete game to help the Patriots (8-4, 4-1) move into undisputed first place in the league. Beckman came into the game tied for the top spot with Woodbridge and Northwood, which lost to Corona del Mar, 5-0, on Thursday.
“He was really good today,” Beckman coach Kevin Lavalle said of Lamar, who scattered five hits and struck out six. “That’s his fourth complete game.”
Lamar, a senior, pitched just four innings in an 11-4 win Friday against Irvine.
“That kind of prepared him for today,” Lavalle said. “He was capable of going out and pitching like he did today. He had a lot of gas in the tank.”
Beckman scored the deciding run in the second inning. Austin Schell led off with a double and eventually scored on a wild pitch.
Then the Patriots broke the game open with four runs in the third inning.
Matt McLain and Schell had RBI singles, Tyler Geurts had an RBI double and Chase Ellett drove in another with a sacrifice fly.
“We’ve been kind of doing that,” Lavalle said. “This team has a real personality for kind of smelling the blood in the water with big innings. We bunt and it turns into a big inning. It’s just the style of baseball we play. You can sense it starting to click with a lot of these guys at the plate now.
“I know we’re young, we only started two seniors on the offense and it takes a while for these guys to get their confidence back.”
McLain was 2 for 2 with two RBI, one coming on a single in the fourth, while Schell was 2 for 3 with an RBI.
Woodbridge (5-7, 3-2) issued five walks with two of the runners scoring.
“I don’t think we played very well,” said Woodbridge coach Tim Murray. “We made some mistakes; it just wasn’t our day. I thought they played well and they got hits when they needed to and I thought we struggled.”
Woodbridge’s best scoring opportunity came in the first inning when Aharon Modlin was hit by a pitch leading off. He got to third with one out but was stranded there.
Contact the writer: tburt@ocregister.com
