Community College Baseball: Pirates pack punch

SANTA BARBARA — In 23 seasons as the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, John Altobelli has distinguished himself as a master tactician with the ability to motivate and develop his players.

But apparently, his exit strategy needs a little work.

The Pirates, however, appear intent on giving their coach a little more practice. For the third time in the postseason, No. 10-seeded OCC won when facing elimination. This time, it was a 5-2 victory Saturday at No. 3-seeded Santa Barbara City College that forced a third and deciding game Sunday in the Sectional round of the Southern California Regional Playoffs.

After managing just two hits in a 3-1 series-opening loss Friday, Altobelli told his players to pack their bags and leave their hotel rooms empty. The thought was, in the event the Pirates (26-17) were eliminated Saturday, they would begin the commute home directly from the ballpark.

Altobelli said he thought better of it an hour before the team bus was leaving for the game on Saturday, and sent a group text that read: “Leave your stuff in the hotel, because we’re not losing.”

The only problem with this electronic pep talk was that the players had already beaten him to it.

“I told my pitching coach at bed check on Friday night that I wasn’t packing,” said freshman left-fielder Stefan Panayiotou, who went two for four with a two-run home run to pace the Pirates’ nine-hit attack. “The coaches said, ‘OK, but we’re going to leave your stuff [at the hotel].’ I said ‘Fine, because I’m not packing.’”

On Saturday, before receiving the faith-based text from Altobelli, Panayiotou said he and freshman third baseman Nick Grimes began visiting their teammates’ rooms, telling everyone to unpack and put clothes back in their dressers.

“I felt like packing was giving up,” Panayiotou said. “We said we weren’t leaving. We’re not leaving until we get what we want and we’re going where we’re going [to the Final Four in Fresno, where they won the state title last season].”

Sophomore starting pitcher Dominic Purpura, who was arguably the most heroic of the Pirates on Saturday, said he was in no need of the unpacking orders.

“I’m a fighter and I don’t lose fights,” said Purpura, a former reliever who allowed one run on six hits in a career-long 7 2/3 innings. “When I come out here, there is nothing in my mind that doesn’t have a ‘W’ behind it. I’m going to win. I’m not going to lose. If we lost, we were going home right from here. I didn’t even pack my bags today.”

OCC sophomore right fielder Tommy Bell did some extra unloading, crushing a solo home run in the sixth inning to extend the lead. Bell’s blast expanded Purpura’s cushion, after sophomore second baseman Chaneng Varela broke a 1-1 deadlock with a squeeze bunt single that plated sophomore center fielder Robert Longtree in the bottom of the third for the designated home team.

The two OCC dingers followed a round-tripper by sophomore Stephen Corona on Friday, giving the Pirates three taters in two days against a Santa Barbara pitching staff that allowed just four the previous 41 games this season.

Vaqueros’ starter Justin Bruce was coming off back-to-back complete-game shutouts in his previous postseason starts, but absorbed the loss to fall to 8-2. Bruce, a sophomore right-hander, had allowed just five hits in 18 postseason innings before Saturday.

The five earned runs were the third-most this season against Vaqueros pitching, which entered the game with the state’s second-best team earned-run average (1.98).

Santa Barbara (33-10), attempting to reach the state championship tournament for the first time in its 104-year history, had allowed just one earned run in its previous five postseason games this season. It had surrendered only two earned runs in its previous eight games before Saturday and has 11 shutouts in 2015.

When Varela’s squeeze put OCC ahead, it was the first time in 30 innings that Santa Barbara had trailed. And Saturday marked the first time all season that the Vaqs had lost in 25 games in which they scored first.

Purpura, worked out of two jams, including recording two of his six strikeouts to end a threat after Santa Barbara put men on second and third with one out in the sixth. The confident left-hander, whose seven saves this season are tied for No. 4 in the state, picked one runner off first and helped quash a first-and-third double-steal attempt that resulted in the runner at third being tagged out in a rundown.

“[Purpura, who improved to 4-1 and is now 6-1 with nine saves in his OCC career] is a great guy to have out on the mound,” Panayiotou said. “We want Dom on the mound. He goes out there with an attitude that he is the best pitcher in the nation and we back him up like he is.”

In the eighth, Purpura hit three batters to load the bases, before freshman reliever Jack Pabich fanned the first hitter he faced to end the inning.

“That was a huge strikeout,” Purpura said of the first of two inning-ending strikeouts for Pabich, who notched his third save. “Jack did great for us today.”

Freshman designated hitter J.T. McLellan was two for three for OCC, for which Jack Kruger, Longtree, Grimes and Mondesi Gutierrez added hits.

Sunday’s rubber game is at noon.

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Sectional

Orange Coast 5, Santa Barbara 2

SCORE BY INNINGS

SBCC 100 000 001 – 2 6 0

OCC 101 001 02x – 5 9 1

Bruce, Kelly (8) and Hill; Purpura, Pabich (8) and Kruger. W – Purpura, 4-1. L – Bruce, 8-2. Sv – Pabich (3). HR – Bell (OCC), Panayiotou (OCC).