{"id":1187,"date":"2010-05-20T05:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T05:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/cif-baseball-preview-millikan-oxnard-3-15pm\/"},"modified":"2010-05-20T05:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T05:11:00","slug":"cif-baseball-preview-millikan-oxnard-3-15pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/cif-baseball-preview-millikan-oxnard-3-15pm","title":{"rendered":"CIF Baseball Preview: Millikan @ Oxnard, 3:15pm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartFragment-->  <strong><br \/><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">CIF DIV. 1 BASEBALL PLAYOFFS<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; \"><br \/><\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Millikan @ Oxnard, 3:15pm<\/span><\/em><\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It&#8217;s a bit of a hike up the 101 to Oxnard, but the Rams are hoping they can take the sting out of the Yellowjackets once they get there.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>Out of the Pacific View, Oxnard is 18-7, and hasn&#8217;t played much local competition for comparison.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Statistically, they actually kind of resemble Millikan.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>They give up very few runs (just under four a game), and average a few more.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>When they&#8217;ve won against other quality teams, it&#8217;s usually by one run.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>Like Millikan, they lean very heavily on their pitching, though they&#8217;ve got two aces who could take the mound on Thursday\u2014senior Mikel Beltran and sophomore Jayson Balades have both thrown 50+ innings and are sitting under 2.5 ERA, and the Yellowjackets could throw either one of them against Millikan.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>Balades is a good fastball pitcher, while Beltran is craftier, and relies on getting ground outs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">At the plate, it&#8217;s really all about junior shortstop Austin Davidson, who is .465 with 9 homeruns this year (the team has 14 total), 29 RBI and 19 extra-base hits.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>The Rams will throw Josh Frye, and the story for them is the same it&#8217;s been every year\u2014if they can score a few runs, and Frye pitches the way they&#8217;re accustomed to him pitching, they&#8217;ll be fine.<span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\">&nbsp; <\/span>In fact, any time the Rams have scored three runs with Frye making an appearance in the game, they&#8217;ve won it\u2014the three losses he pitched in saw the Rams shut out twice, and score just two.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">If they can put up some runs (say, three), and play defense behind Frye, they could earn the unenviable task of facing bracket top-seed O. Lu next Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>  <!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A quick look at who the Rams will be facing at the end of a road trip up the 101.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}