Baseball: OCC Dom-inates No. 1 Delta

FRESNO — Orange Coast College pitcher Dominic Purpura has started and closed this season. But, until Saturday, he had never opened.

But the sophomore left-hander, who had flourished as the team’s closer (seven saves) and late-season starter, showed in the opening game of the four-team California Community College Athletic Assn. state championship baseball tournament, that he may have finally found his most impressive role.

Purpura, who made his first start on March 28 and had just five starts before facing nationally top-ranked San Joaquin Delta, threw a complete-game shutout to key a 5-0 triumph.

Purpura allowed seven hits, walked one and struck out two to blank the Mustangs (39-6) for the first time this season. Only two Delta runners got as far as second base.

The Pirates finally broke through in the seventh inning against Delta freshman standout Cameron Leeper, who entered the game leading the state in wins (14) and strikeouts (120).

Leeper, who won his first 14 starts before falling in the Sectional playoff series last week, lived up to the hype through six shutout innings. But he was charged with five runs (three earned) and five hits, while walking five and striking out 10. His record fell to 14-2.

But it was Purpura who finished what he started, fanning the final two hitters he faced to close out the victory and propel the Pirates into Sunday’s 2 p.m. championship semifinal against Palomar.

Should OCC (28-17) win that game Sunday, it would roll into Monday’s championship opportunity needing just one win in two games to claim the program’s second straight state crown and its third in seven seasons. A loss would force OCC to play again right away in an elimination game Sunday evening, then win twice on Monday to add the program’s sixth state title.

Delta, which opened the season 27-0, but has not lost four straight to OCC in state tournament play (and five out of their last six meetings at the final four), committed three errors that led to two unearned runs.

The Pirates, who had just five hits, one more than their combined total in opening losses at the best-of-three Super Regional and Sectional playoff series the previous two weeks, were credited with just two runs batted in Saturday.

A walk, a hit batter, a sacrifice bunt, a run-producing fly ball by freshman left fielder Stefan Panayiotou, and an error to allow the second runner to score from third in a first-and-third situation, allowed the visitors to break a scoreless tie in the seventh inning.

An RBI single by sophomore catcher Jack Kruger and a wild pitch produced two more runs in the eighth for OCC, which tacked on its final run with the benefit of a two-out error in the ninth.

Kruger was two for two with two walks and the aforementioned RBI to pace an OCC offense that struggled to square up Leeper’s repertoire of pitches.

“You can tell their guy is really good,” Altobelli said of Leeper, who has not allowed more than six hits or four earned runs in any of his starts. “But our guys just tried to grind out at-bats and keep the pressure on them.”

OCC’s aggressiveness on the base paths resulted in two runners being tagged out at second base, another who was nailed after breaking prematurely from first, and yet another thrown out at the plate.

Meanwhile, Purpura, who has now allowed three earned runs in 22 postseason innings (a 1.23 earned-run average) to earn a pair of wins and a no-decision in a third game that OCC won, helped keep the Mustangs from straying far when they did manage to reach base.

Delta, which lost to OCC in the title-clinching game in 2009 and last season, put a runner on third base in the second and the sixth innings. But Purpura, who did not surrender an extra-base hit, buckled down to leave them holding the bag each time.

“Dom did a great job by keeping the ball down,” said Altobelli, who elected to start Purpura in the opening game for the first time in the postseason, because he is more apt to bounce back to be available to pitch again if needed.

“It felt great,” Purpura said of his longest outing of his career, in which he threw 107 pitches, 74 for strikes. “I definitely had two different mind-sets. First, I had the mind-set of a starter to pace myself, because I knew it could be a long game. But in those last two innings, I came out of the dugout like I was the closer.”

Sophomore left fielder Robert Longtree tripled and scored in the eighth, while freshman first baseman J.T. McLellan doubled and scored in the ninth.

Freshman third baseman Nick Grimes added a single for OCC, for which the first three hitters in the lineup were a combined zero for 10 with eight strikeouts.

OCC is now 16-2 in the postseason the last two years.

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State Championship tournament

Opening round

Orange Coast 5, San Joaquin Delta 0

SCORE BY INNINGS

OCC 000 000 221 – 5 5 0

SJD 000 000 000 – 0 7 3

Purpura and Kruger; Leeper, Rosales (9) and Theroux. W – Purpura, 5-1. L – Leeper, 14-2. 2B – McLellan (OCC). 3B – Longtree (OCC).