Moorpark’s Ditto Allows No Hits, Ditto His Reliever, 1-0

Ken Ditto seemed destined not to finish a job well done in Moorpark High’s Tri-Valley League baseball game against visiting Oak Park on Friday. The 6-foot-2 junior right-hander struggled with his control throughout and needed some snappy defensive plays to escape from a few jams.

But Ditto had held Oak Park hitless. And when he took the mound in the seventh inning clinging to a 1-0 lead, he was three outs shy of the memory of a lifetime.

He never got the outs.

The good news is that reliever Richard Hernandez did. The combined no-hitter extended the Musketeers’ season-opening winning streak to seven games and left them 2-0 in league play.

Ditto (3-0), who walked five and struck out four, started the seventh by walking leadoff batter Mike Garrido on four pitches. Moorpark Coach David Rhoades went directly to the mound and asked for the ball.

“He’d thrown a lot of pitches and I felt it was time,” Rhoades said. “I didn’t know anything about a no-hitter. He knew that with a 1-0 game he had to keep them off the bags or he was coming out.”

Ditto traded places with Hernandez, who started at shortstop. Hernandez struck out Mike Michaud, then Garrido was caught attempting to steal. Fittingly, Marc Correll grounded to Ditto for the final out. The save was Hernandez’s first.

“I’ve been walking too many batters,” Ditto said. “I wasn’t hitting my spots, but my defense was helping me out.”

Moorpark’s infield, the same starting quartet from last season, made two impressive plays.

After Oak Park’s Jeff Gibbons walked to lead off the game, Ditto bobbled Kevin Pryor’s sacrifice bunt to give the Eagles (5-2, 2-1 in league play) runners at first and second with none out.

But Damon Sterling’s sharp grounder to second resulted in a double play, with Doyle Ritchie flipping to Hernandez, who relayed to first.

In the fifth, center fielder Sean Barry made a sliding catch of Gibbons’ sinking liner for the third out. Earlier in the inning, left fielder Brandon Garretson tracked down Correll’s long fly ball that likely would have cleared the deepest of left-field fences. Moorpark’s home field, however, has no outfield fence.

Ditto scored the game’s only run in the second on a sacrifice fly by Hernandez. The Musketeers managed only six singles, five off starter Eric Kane (1-1).