Dutton the stopper as Texas Dirt Divas top O.C. Batbusters Campbell in PGF 14U Premier final

IRVINE – Regardless of the sport, it would come as no surprise to hear a coach drop the line, “It’s a game of adjustments.”

In a Saturday evening Premier Girls Fastpitch Nationals final, the Texas Dirt Divas were the first team to make an adjustment. The O.C. Batbusters Campbell never did.

A third-inning pitching change came just in the nick of time for the Dirt Divas, who rallied for a 4-3 victory in the 14U Premier title game at Bill Barber Park’s Deanna Manning Stadium.

The Batbusters were getting good looks at Kaci West in the early innings. Three consecutive singles by Alyssa Brito, Zaida Puni, and Morgan Smith gave them a 1-0 lead in the first.

In the third, Brito sent a low line drive over the wall in left field. Hanna Delgado was aboard the home run, putting the Batbusters in front, 3-0. Following a Puni double, her second of three hits on the day, West was pulled in favor of Kaitlyn Dutton.

Dutton shut the door, getting out of the third-inning jam. The Batbusters would have just three more base runners the rest of the way, none of which reached second base.

“They got on us quick, 3-0,” Dirt Divas coach JD Chandler said. “I went to Kaitlyn Dutton. She’s got three different offspeed pitches. She can spot it up good, and she kept them completely off balance for four-and-a-half innings.”

Batbusters coach Mark Campbell echoed the sentiments of Chandler, saying that his team had difficulty dealing with the change of pace once the pitching move was made.

“We just didn’t adjust when the second pitcher came in,” he said. “She was a little slower, changed speeds a bit, and you could see that we were out on our front foot a lot. We just didn’t make adjustments when we needed to.”

The Dirt Divas offense would soon join the party. Angelina Devoe was working a no-hitter going into the fourth. A leadoff walk to West put traffic on the bases. Devoe would pay the price. The first hit she allowed, a single to Crissy Bird, brought in a run.

One hit turned into a rally with a miscue on a comebacker. Instead of taking a sure second out at first, Devoe attempted to throw out the lead runner at third. No out was recorded on the fielder’s choice, and Caleigh Millican poked a single into right for a second run.

“In that one inning, we should have gotten the out at first,” Campbell said. “When you get into this environment, little mistakes costs you, and they did.”

The next inning, West continued to do what she could to bail herself out. Chalk flew up on her line drive down the right-field line. Her hustle turned the play into an RBI-triple.

“I saw my coach going crazy yelling, “Go,” West, a Baylor commit recalled. “I said, ‘All right.’”

After tying the game with her hit, West scored the go-ahead run on a hard-hit ground ball that found its way into center field off the bat of Jaylyn Davis.

Only one batter had a hit against Dutton entering the seventh. That was Puni, who was a perfect three for three at that point. The Batbusters needed someone to reach base to bring their clean-up hitter to the plate, and they got it when Delgado singled to right with one out.

Dutton got Brito to fly out to right. Then she got Puni to groundout softly to shortstop to begin the Dirt Divas’ party. The Texas A&M Corpus Christi commit was short and sweet in describing the feeling of recording the final out in the pitching circle, calling it “awesome.”

Andrew.Turner@latimes.com

Twitter: @ProfessorTurner