<\/p>\n
Poly vs. Corona, CIF Wild Card Baseball Tuesday @ Blair, 6:30pm<\/span><\/p>\n There are some high school sports fans who complain (vociferously) about the number of automatic bids certain leagues get in the CIF. <\/span>We’ve addressed people directing those complaints at the Moore League in a number of sports, and we’re very happy to not <\/em>have to do that with baseball\u2014after all, Poly, the four-seed and the only league team in a Wild Card game, was playing for a share of the league title on the final day of the season. <\/span>They aren’t what you’d think of as a “traditional” four-seed from a league.<\/span><\/p>\n Corona, on the other hand, is. <\/span>The Panthers were 11-15 overall this year, and 8-6 in the Big VIII, just good enough for fourth place and their league’s final playoff spot. <\/span>They finished behind Riverside Poly, Corona Santiago, and Corona Centennial, going 3-3 against those teams. <\/span>They’re a relatively good hitting team, averaging five runs a game, but their weakness matches up well with Poly’s strength, since the Panthers do not have a deep bullpen at all, having given up 6.5 runs per-game. <\/span><\/p>\n We’ve been told that tonight they’ll pitch either sophomore Daniel Pena, or junior Jared Currie (we normally include roster numbers in previews but couldn’t find a Panthers roster with the numbers included). <\/span>Currie’s ERA on the year is 3.86, and Pena’s is 5.94. <\/span>Both have been hit well by the Panthers’ quality offensive opponents, and the hope for Toby Hess’ Jackrabbits will be that they can continue that trend\u2014the Rabbits are on a bit of a streak, having scored 45 runs in their last four games, including 15 against Lakewood and Wilson. Poly also gains a significant advantage by playing the game at Blair, where their hitters are used to the gaps and space the long fences offer, and where opponents occasionally waste at-bats swinging for the nearly unattainable fences (the Panthers have homered in slightly less than half their games this year). <\/span>The junior Tyler Maxwell will get the nod for the Jackrabbits\u2014if he can hold the Panthers off for a few innings, his team should be able to get a jump on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n Of course, Poly isn’t exactly riding off into the sunset should they manage a win on the home turf\u2014if they get by Corona, they will play on the road against the bracket’s two-seed, Royal High, the champs of the Marmonte League.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A quick look at who Poly will be facing when they take the field tonight at Blair, at 6:30pm.<\/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-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","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=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}