<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
It was a long battle in the Moore League this year, but after a win over Wilson and a sweep of Lakewood, the Poly Jackrabbits found themselves in second place, with what would generally be considered a favorable seeding into the Division 1 CIF Baseball playoffs. <\/span>Instead, thanks to a coin flip, the Jackrabbits are on the road south to Tesoro, to take on the 19-7 Titans, the second place representative from the South Coast League, and MaxPreps’ number four team in California. <\/span>Welcome to the talent-stacked Southern Section.<\/p>\n “There was a moment when we were worried about even being in the playoffs after the 0-2 start,” says Poly coach Toby Hess, “So believe me, nobody is complaining about having to go on the road.”<\/p>\n Hess’ Jackrabbits will find themselves in a familiar position, as a young group of spotty hitters will lean heavily on ace pitcher Mario Gordon to pull them through the tough first round tussle. <\/span>“I know, I probably sound like a broken record,” says Hess, “But if Mario pitches well, we’ll compete.” <\/span>If not…well, it’s unlikely the ‘Rabbits can hang with the Titans in a slugfest.<\/p>\n Tesoro, who have won four of their last five, hits .395 as a team, with seven players hitting over .400, and 13 team home runs. <\/span>They have a team OBP of .458. <\/span>By contrast, Poly hits .282 as a team with a grand total of two home runs, both by Kevin Nanbara. <\/span>The two best sluggers for the Titans are Anthony Hutting, who’s played every game and is hitting .451 with 4 HRs and 28 RBIs; and Conner Spencer is the team’s best situation hitter, and is batting .489. <\/span>If Hutting, Spencer, and the rest of the Titans get going, it’s unlikely that Poly’s young bats will keep up.<\/p>\n “Yeah, a 2-1 game would be the best case,” says Hess. <\/span>If there’s more than five runs scored in the game, it’s hard to imagine Poly coming back north with a win. <\/span>Still, if you’ve seen Mario Gordon when he’s on<\/i>, you know that Hess is a broken record for good reason. <\/span>If he brings his best stuff, and stays focused, Poly absolutely does have a chance to hang with anybody.<\/span><\/p>\n “Their lineup one through nine probably has a lot more depth than ours,” says Hess. <\/span>“Luckily we play in a sport where they don’t line up at the line of scrimmage and knock each other down, or we wouldn’t stand a chance. <\/span>One player can kind of undermine a whole offense.” <\/span>They’ll need Gordon to undermine in a big way, as well as Nanbara and a few other bats to get going if they want to make their way into the second round.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Jackrabbits and Titans clash again–hopefully the baseball playoff opener lives up to the thrilling football championship.<\/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-3821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3821","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=3821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3821"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3821"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}