LA VERNE, Calif. — Christopher Arcos fired a seven-inning no-hitter as the La Verne baseball team routed Claremont-Mudd-Scripps for a 10-0 win in the second game of a doubleheader at Ben Hines Field on Saturday afternoon. The Leopards beat the Stags 5-3 in the first game.
The Chino Hills native struck out five batters and was perfect in the last five innings of the game after issuing two walks in the first two innings. And he was economical with his pitches, throwing a total of 88 pitches, 51 of them for strikes.
Arcos converted to full-time starting pitcher after pitching 3.1 relief innings last season and has proved more than capable of taking on a bigger load. He's started four games so far this season and has a 2.01 ERA through 22.1 innings of work.
The Leopards offense more than backed him up today. The Leopards opened the scoring on a CMS wild pitch in the bottom of the second and posted three multi-run innings. The Leopards added three runs in the third as Christopher Peres and Isaiah Cruz hit RBI singles and sealed the game with a four-run sixth inning keyed by a three-run homer by Jakob Thomas.
Peres, Cruz and Andrew Douglas each notched two hits. Douglas added three RBI.
Peres started on the mound in the game and was excellent, leading La Verne to a 5-3 win.
He collected his second win of the season after striking out seven while allowing just one run in six innings.
La Verne's offense got going immediately as it loaded the bases in the first inning. Peres and Douglas then drew back-to-back walks to push in two runs.
The Stags got one back in the in the third inning off an RBI single by Henri Levenson to make it a one-run game. But the Leopards loaded the bases again in the fifth inning and tacked on two more runs on a base hit by Cruz and an RBI groundout by Peres to take a 4-1 lead.
CMS added two more runs immediately after Peres exited the game but La Verne's Mark Abbate drove in an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth to make it 5-3 and Cody Norman pitched two scoreless innings to shut the door.
The Leopards are back in action tomorrow at home against Kean.