Nick Pratto drives in two runs in 11th inning, lifts Huntington Beach to Sunset League title with 2-0 win at Marina

For 10 innings against Huntington Beach High, Marina’s Blake Partis threw the game of his life. He blanked one of the top baseball programs in the nation, using only 98 pitches to do so.

In 10 shutout innings, five hits are all the junior allowed. He struck out four, walked one and picked off one.

At Partis’ pace, he had enough to throw another inning on Wednesday. But the left-hander’s time was up on the mound.

He couldn’t come back out for the 11th inning of a scoreless game. CIF Southern Section rules limit a pitcher to record 30 outs during a week. His 30th out came in the 10th, his seventh 1-2-3 inning during his remarkable start.

With Partis gone, the Oilers faced another lefty. This one couldn’t stop Huntington Beach from scoring.

Nick Pratto drove in two runs with a one-out triple to left-center field in the top of the 11th inning. Pratto’s bat proved to be the difference in the Oilers’ 2-0 win in extra innings at Marina, and it clinched them the outright Sunset League title.

Huntington Beach claimed first by knocking off the defending league champion, coupled with second-place Los Alamitos losing to Edison, 9-1, on Wednesday. The Oilers improved to 11-1 in league, and with three games to go in league, Los Alamitos, which dropped to 7-5 in league, cannot catch them, and neither can third-place Marina.

The Vikings lost a close one in league for the second time in three days, eliminating their chances of repeating as league champions. On Monday, last-place Newport Harbor beat Marina, 3-2, in walk-off fashion at Angel Stadium.

Two days later, three Huntington Beach left-handers Nate Madole, Dylan Ramirez and Josh Hahn combined to throw a nine-hit shutout against Marina. Madole started, allowing three hits and striking out five in six innings, while Ramirez earned the win with 4 2/3 innings in relief, and Hahn closed it out by getting the final out, striking out the batter looking with two runners on and the go-ahead run at the plate.

The Vikings find themselves hanging on to third place. They are 6-6 in league, one game ahead of fourth-place Fountain Valley. The top three teams in league advance to the playoffs, and the Oilers have been in postseason form for quite sometime.

Huntington Beach (23-3), ranked No. 1 in the country by PerfectGame.org, has won 12 in a row.

“I’m proud of our guys for showing that kind of grit today, and that was the message on our lineup card,” Huntington Beach Coach Benji Medure said. “I challenged the guys a couple of weeks ago, after we won five games in five days, I said, ‘I don’t want to lose another game this year.’ They’re competitive enough and tough enough to do that.”

The Oilers saw a tough pitcher in Partis. They couldn’t figure him out or his curveball, especially from the first to sixth inning, when he retired 17 batters in a row.

Partis kept the Oilers off-balance. He kept the ball away. He didn’t elevate anything. And when he made a mistake, like when Pratto led off the ninth by going the other way to left field, Chris Reynolds made a diving catch to his right, robbing the USC signee of an extra-base hit.

Partis accomplished something no one pitcher had done this season, and that’s hold the Oilers scoreless for 10 innings. This is a team that’s loaded offensively, with Pratto and Hagen Danner, both future Major League Baseball players, and Trevor Windisch, Hahn, Cory Moore and Ben McConnell. Windisch and McConnell both went two for four against Partis.

There has been one stretch where Huntington Beach failed to score in 11 straight innings, from the third to ninth inning of a 3-2 loss at Los Alamitos on April 5, and a day later, the Oilers didn’t score in the first four innings of a 5-2 win at home against Marina. The Oilers have turned it on offensively ever since, and they look to sweep the three-game series with Marina at home on Thursday at 3:15 p.m.

A year ago, the Vikings finished one game ahead of Huntington Beach, winning their first league crown since 2005. First belongs to Huntington Beach for the third time in four years.

“Any time that you get a league championship is a huge deal,” Medure said.

The next title the Oilers will be playing for is in the Boras Classic.

They won the South tournament on April 21, beating Manhattan Beach Mira Costa, 9-4, at JSerra. The Oilers now get to play San Jose Bellarmine Prep, the North tournament champion, at UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium on Saturday at noon.

“It’s awesome, but that’s not our ultimate goal,” Pratto said. “We’re here to win a [CIF Southern Section Division 1] championship. We got our eyes on the prize.”

Sunset League

Huntington Beach 2, Marina 0, 11 innings

Huntington 000 000 000 02 – 2 7 2

Marina 000 000 000 00 – 0 9 0

Madole, Ramirez (7), Hahn (11) and Ortiz; Partis, Marks (11) and Roeder. W – Ramirez. L – Marks. 2B – Reynolds (M). 3B – Pratto (HB).

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Twitter: @ByDCP