Baseball: Orange Lutheran wins National Classic behind its pitching
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After playing four games in four days, the one thing that can be said about Orange Lutheran is the Lancers (12-4) have lots of quality pitchers.
In Thursday night’s championship game of the National Classic, starter Michael Simonis threw 4 1/3 shutout innings, then Lance Simpson, Toby Dunlap and Leo Hernandez finished up to lead Orange Lutheran past Cypress, 4-2, at Cal State Fullerton.
Cypress (12-4), down 4-0 going into its final turn at the plate, rallied in the seventh, getting an RBI single from David Fletcher and putting the tying runs on base. With two outs, Hernandez got a fly out to end the game.
Jason Martin had two of the Lancers’ four hits off Cypress’ Trevor Hall.
Simpson came through with the play of the game, striking out Fletcher with the bases loaded in the fifth.
In the third-place game, Gahr outlasted Esperanza, 12-11, in eight innings on a walk-off home run by Kevin Franklin, his second of the day.
-- Eric Sondheimer