Kyle Harrison is the junior ace for No. 3 De La Salle of Concord, which will play this week at a tournament in Las Vegas. Photo: Chace Bryson / SportStars.
It’s still time for some schools and teams to be on Spring Break (especially with Easter Sunday so late on the calendar this year) and this week we’ll have several noteworthy tournaments, including the Boras Classic for Northern California, the Fresno Easter Classic and the Mike Morrow Lions tourney in San Diego. The top nine teams from last week’s rankings all won in all of their games so there’s no changes in that pecking order. Yucaipa joins the top 10, West Ranch and Clovis North both go up five spots to No. 17 and No. 18, while this week’s top newcomer is No. 20 Vacaville. The first 20 teams are broken down by writeups and highlights for the best state baseball rankings package that can be found anywhere.
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(Previous ranking listed in parentheses)
(Through reported results of Saturday, April 13)
(Results from any games played on Monday, April 15 or later not included)
(Thanks to correspondents Chuck Nan for Orange County, Daniel Poulter for Northern California & Bill Hutton for CIF Central Coast Section for providing writeups & information)
1. (1) Lutheran (Orange) 20-3
After their tremendous showing at the National High School Invitational in North Carolina — a tournament the Lancers have won three times in succession — they went back to Trinity League play against surprising JSerra Catholic (San Juan Capistrano). In game one, OLu was able to shake-off any possible jet-lag and cool the hot Lions, 2-1. Junior Max Rajcic pitched six innings in which he allowed only one earned run on three hits with eight strikeouts and two walks. Rajcic is now 4-0 with a 0.45 ERA. That’s now thirteen-straight Trinity League wins (including 2018) for OLu. In game two of the series, OLu’s pitching depth was on display as Jonathan Guzman was spectacular. The young man led his team to a 4-0 victory with 5 2/3 innings of scoreless baseball. Guzman allowed only four hits while striking out seven. The offense was omnipresent as eight batters garnered at least one hit. It was the 10th shutout for OLu in 21 games played thus far in 2019. The third game saw the fate of the baseball gods on the side of the Lancers. Down to their last strike, OLu fought back from a 2-1 deficit to prevail, 4-2. Elijah Buries, Carl Lawson, James Espalin and Chad Born all had hands in the comeback. But it was Caden Connor’s hit that gave the Lancers the lead. Evan Adolphus shut the door in the seventh inning and earned the win by pitching the final two innings without allowing a run. Orange Lutheran plays next on Wednesday vs. Servite of Anaheim.
