If any league takes seriously the notion that league games are more important than other regular-season games, it’s the Pacific Coast League.
Fifteen of Northwood’s 19 games going into Thursday have been Pacific Coast League games. Beckman’s first 22 games included 16 Pacific Coast League games.
The standings through Tuesday’s games had Beckman and Northwood tied for first place with 12-3-1 league records. Woodbridge is third at 10-6 and Irvine fourth at 8-8. The top four finishers in an eight-team league like the Pacific Coast League automatically qualify for the CIF Southern Section playoffs.
The schools could have divided the eight members into two four-team leagues, as is done elsewhere, like the eight-team Century Conference, which is divided into Crestview and North Hills leagues of four teams each.
“We didn’t want to split into two four-team leagues,” said Beckman coach Kevin Lavalle. “And we didn’t want to play each other only twice in league.”
Pacific Coast League teams, like teams in some other leagues, play each other three times. That creates an easy-to-use tiebreaker criteria: If teams are tied in the standings with equal league records, then which team won the three-game league series gets the nod.
The Pacific Coast League has teams from three different school districts. Most of them are Irvine Unified School District teams. Beckman is a Tustin Unified school, Laguna Hills is a Saddleback Valley Unified school, and Sage Hills is a private school.
“We have four different spring breaks in our league,” Lavalle said.
Northwood beat Beckman twice in their three league games.
Northwood junior Paul Grossman is hitting .357 with a team-high 11 runs batted in. Timberwolves senior Luke Hansen is batting .354 with 10 RBIs. Senior Kai Mo has 20 hits.
Timberwolves senior pitcher Casey Euper has not allowed an earned run in 45 innings. Euper is 5-1 with 70 strikeouts.
Beckman senior right-hander Zach Ireland is 5-2 with a 0.71 ERA and 58 strikeouts in 49⅔ innings including a win over Woodbridge on Tuesday. Ireland is a four-year varsity starter and has committed to UC Davis. He is second to James Kaprelian, who went on to pitch at UCLA and for four years in Major League Baseball, in Beckman baseball history in career starts, wins, innings pitched and strikeouts.
Northwood is playing Sage Hill in three league games this week. Next week, the final week of the regular season, the Timberwolves play Portola in three league games.
Beckman is playing Woodbridge in three league games this week. Next week, the final week of the regular season, the Patriots play Irvine in three league games.
NOTES
• Orange Lutheran advanced to the championship game of last week’s National High School Invitational at the USA Baseball Complex in Cary, N.C. The Lancers, who have won four NHSI championships, lost to Corona 3-0 in the championship game. Orange Lutheran had defeated Corona 4-2 on March 8 at Hart Park. Orange Lutheran senior Derek Curiel was named to the all-tournament team. …
• Huntington Beach went 2-2 in the NHSI. Oilers senior pitcher Nathan Aceves gave up one earned run in 6⅓ innings with seven strikeouts in his tournament start. Sophomore second baseman CJ Weinstein drove in four runs, junior outfielder Trevor Goldenetz batted .500 with two RBIs, junior outfielder Ethan Porter batted .455 with two RBIs, and junior pitcher Tyler Bellerose allowed two earned runs with seven strikeouts in his 6⅔ innings. …
• Santa Margarita pitcher Cade Townsend’s past two outings: a two-hitter with 14 strikeouts in a 6-0 win over JSerra last week; 10 strikeouts, one earned run in 5⅓ innings in a 5-2 win over Servite on Tuesday.
• Costa Mesa and Century are 1-2 in the CIF Southern Section Division 6 rankings. Buena Park is No. 1 in Division 7. …
• CIF-SS baseball playoff brackets will be released April 29. The playoffs begin with wild card-round games April 30 (Divisions 2, 4, 6 and 8) and May 1 (Divisions 1, 3, 5 and 7) in brackets that need those games to reduce their brackets to 32 teams for the first round.
