<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Friday afternoon, the Millikan Rams will try to advance to the CIF Division 1 Baseball semifinals in a 3:15pm at LBCC. <\/span>If they want to do it, they’re going to need to dance with who they came to the dance with: defense.<\/p>\n \n Riverside Poly isn’t a great hitting team, but they are a power hitting team, with six players who’ve smacked at least one home run this season (they hit two in their upset win over JSerra earlier this week). <\/span>The game is being held at LBCC’s Joe Hicks Memorial Field, where the fences aren’t too much shorter than at Blair, but with the hard-swinging Bears the left field fence could definitely come into play. <\/span>What the Rams definitely need to do is make sure it’s a low-scoring affair—if it turns into a back and forth, high-scoring affair, it’s likely to go the Bears’ way. <\/span>“It’s power hitting versus the anti-power hitters,” chuckles Millikan coach Scott Glasser.<\/p>\n After all, Riverside Poly averages over 7 runs a game, and Millikan just over 5 and a half. <\/span>The Bears average two more hits a game than the Rams, and hits .374 as a team, to Millikan’s .305. <\/span>The Rams’ best path to victory lies in the way they beat Villa Park on Tuesday, scoring an early run and playing good defense—surely Glasser and his staff would prefer the margin to be a little wider, of course. <\/span>“It’ll be tough to keep them down,” says Glasser of the hit-happy Bears. <\/span>“But we’ll try.”<\/p>\n The opportunities for a quick Rams run should be there—the Bears have only posted one shutout in their 30 games (they’re 19-10-1), while Millikan has put up 10 in their 32. <\/span>A huge part of Millikan’s defensive success will rely on the surprisingly fresh arm of Josh Frye, the Rams’ ace who threw 3.1 innings on Tuesday. <\/span>Frye tells Glasser he’s still feeling fresh, at about 90-95% (he had plenty of zip on Tuesday). <\/span>“If he’s not complaining, I’m going to give him the ball,” says Glasser.<\/p>\n Those of you with a handle on CIF rules know that Frye now has 6 innings and two outs of availability for Friday’s game—in other words, he can pitch a complete game minus one out. <\/span>Who gets to pitch that out, and when, could be a major storyline of the game, and is definitely something to watch for in Friday’s quarterfinal matchup, at LBCC at 3:15pm.<\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Rams will have their hands full against the Riverside Poly Bears on Friday.<\/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-3764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764","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=3764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3764"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3764"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}