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.
