BASEBALL

Newark Memorial should only have 19 wins. They have a win against Washington listed twice.

Don’t mean to come off as an EBAL basher but the bottom three EBAL teams have absolutely no business in your ranking system. If you aren’t at least .500 in your league, how can you be ranked? Hopefully the reporters EBAL bias doesn’t influence any of the committees on Sunday. That would be a political shame. To be fair to everyone, why not wait until Sunday and come up with a coaches poll or updated ranking after Friday’s games? Just a thought. I agree with Groundskeeper about Arroyo but not Castro Valley. Castro Valley has one win against BO and thats it for the year. College Park does have a good coach but a horrible team. Berean Christian exposed that when they played. Don’t get me started with Foothill or San Ramon!!! Come on start voting with your heads and not the league that DLS is in! I would like to see Mr. Bryson come up with a revised ranking after everything is said and done on Friday. Peace my fellow high school baseball fans!

I hope the East Bay teams (Alameda, Clayton Valley, Arroyo, Northgate, Concord ) play against the North Bay teams before facing each other.

Most likely two teams from the East Bay and two from the North Bay to get #1 seeds. Scenario that I hope for -

Alameda & Clayton Valley get #1s in the East Bay and Arroyo, Northgate or Concord get #2s in the North Bay.

East Bay and North Bay teams would not face each other hopefully until semi finals or finals if eveything works out….

Alameda and Clayton both can’t get 1 seeds.

Kyle B—
DLS beat MV twice, therefore, dont they only need to win one game this week to win the EBAL? Isnt head to head the tiebreaker?

It was great. Thanks a lot. You make a mean tri-tip, that’s for sure. Great games last week. Looking forward to some good playoff games this week. You going to be out there?

Softball Fan

I meant #1 seeds (4 of them) in the NCS DII level for both Alameda and Clayton Valley. Not #1 in the polls as there could only be one #1 in the BANG or Chron polls. I think NCS Softball is going to follow the same format as baseball…

Think I mentioned #1 too many times.

Root for the East Bay Teams!!!!!

Steve I was very nice when I broght you your Tri-Tip sandwich and Cream Soda, the guy that asked where his was because he was your assistant I almost said ” Good then here’s a napkin for you to wipe Steve’s face with”

All MVAL playoff game are at Newark……….First game is Logan vs Newark at 1:30 this afertnoon with Mission vs Newark after not sure of the start time for that game

What’s interesting will be the strategy today regarding the pitching. I felt that Irvington made a huge mistake by throwing Rogers for SEVEN innings against Logan when they were up by eight runs. With all due respect to the coaching staff the only legitimate argument to pitch Rogers was that they felt Logan could beat them and wanted the MVAL co-championship (and rightfully so). I understand that they couldn’t bring him back in the game, but I’ll roll the dice with an 8-0 lead.

The equation however changed after posting an 8-0 lead and they should have pulled the plug and saved him for the playoff Saturday. Now they have to beat Newark Memorial twice at their place , instead of hosting the MVAL playoffs. I would take my chances with the third string pitcher against Logan today and save Rogers/Tella for two potential games against Newark.

Granted, they still only lost by one on Saturday and I’m just a Monday Morning QB, but given the scenarios it’s hard to picture what the coaching staff was thinking (and these are basically volunteer coaches, so don’t take this as someone who is angry; i’m just curious since I was rooting for the Vikings to have the #1 seed) . Mr. Meyer perhaps you can enlighten us, since I wasn’t there.

I think I know what you mean LuvHSBaseball. Still, there aren’t 4 #1 seeds for D2 NCS. Teams will be seeded 1-12 with seeds 1-4 getting a first round bye.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the discussion. But it’s easy to look back in hindsight at various coaching decisions. Coach Harrington at Irvington is as good a coach as there is in the east bay. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him receive some Coach of the Year votes at the end of the season.

Who pitched for Irv today, just wondering if goforit”s comment happened and it backfired

Mark, I totally agree with your comments and think Harrington is doing a fantastic job. Irvington has come a long ways in a short amount of time.

Last week when I saw the schedule, I was saying the same thing as someone who knows the shaughnessy schedule for baseball/softball and who knows from hearsay that Irvington has two stud pitchers and needed to win 3 games in one week to get the #1 seed. I’m assuming the emphasis was the MVAL co-championship and NOT the #1 seed in the playoffs. I was just curious the thought process was (not that a coach has to explain his decisions).

Today it sounds like he started Rogers and like the post mentioned it appears that it doesn’t matter who he started as they ran into a HOT pitcher. Had they won , they would have needed another pitcher against Newark not named Tella/Rogers win one of the games.

I think it’s good discussion, and like I mentioned before I’m just a Monday Morning QB and I value the time that Coach Harrington and all the other youth coaches in our area give. Nothing but love, but just a curious decision since if you have to win 3 games (both this week and last week) wouldn’t you want to line up your top two pitchers against the BEST team and save your third/4th for the weakest team.

Maybe, a current coach or future coach is reading this and will think about how they will line up their pitchers whether it’s HS, little league or Fantasy baseball. The bottom line is that if you win out you look like a a genius. I agree that the Irv coach should get serious consideratio for coach of the year.

Jimmy:

Nice article today on the Albany/St. Joe’s game and good job explaining the scenarios regarding possible league co- or tri-champions; however, it is still unclear which team under any of those scenarios gets the automatic bid to NCS. Interestingly, there is a possibility of three teams with identical league records, each of which will have beaten one of the other teams two times during league play. Sounds like it might come down to coin filp, but just curious if you or anyone knew for sure? Thanks.

DLSfan…

I was one of them. BUT, if you read MY comments (cant speak for anyone else) I said that they didn’t deserve to be in the top 15 UNTIL they won some games. That was 6 weeks ago. I also said that if they win the games on their schedule they are deserving. My point wasn’t that DLS wasn’t/isn’t a good team, my point was they should have to prove it just like everyone else. I think they are now a “no brainer” for a top 4 seed and a first round bye. Wouldn’t at all surprise me to see them win the whole damn thing.

Ballfan,
The reason it was unclear in the story is, as you can guess, unclear to all parties involved. I spoke to all three coaches last night that could be involved in the three-way tie (Albany, St. Mary’s, Salesian) and nobody quite knows how the three-way tie would work out if it happened. And it’s not that far-fetched. If Salesian and St. Mary’s both win tomorrow and St. Mary’s beats Salesian on Saturday, they’ll all be 12-4. They’ll also all be 2-2 against each other. I think after that it goes to the record against the next team in the standings and they were all 1-1 against St. Joe’s. Encinal is the next team in the standings and St. Mary’s and Albany were 2-0 against them, with Salesian going 1-1. I think that would eliminate Salesian and put it back to Albany and St. Mary’s. In that case, Albany would earn the NCS bid by beating St. Mary’s in the second half of the season. I’m not 100 percent positive that’s how the BSAL does its tie-breaker. That’s how many or most leagues do it, but I’m not sure with them. I’ll try to have that cleared up by tomorrow.

Oh and the only possible two-way tie scenario would be Albany and Salesian. That would happen if Salesian lost to Swett on Friday (not that far-fetched, Swett beat St. Mary’s last week) and then beat St. Mary’s. Since Salesian won the second half game against Albany, the Pride would earn the NCS berth in that scenario.

Dlsfan, my exact quote is below. Like PrepBBFan, I acknowledged they had a real good team and may even run the table and win NCS, but felt they needed to win some games in order to earn a high ranking. I’m not sure what all you remembered, but that was what many of us were saying. Had DLS continued to sputter about .500 over the 2nd half of league play, then they wouldn’t have earned anything. However, now that they have pretty much run the table since then, they have earned their current ranking. ———————–

Prep Fan Says:
April 7th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
DLS may very well run the table and win the rest of their games and take NCS. They have some great athletes and the team has been very good in the past. But, until they start winning and at least get above .500, they have no business being ranked in the top 10.

Here are my predictions

1. DLS
2. Freedom
3. Irvington
4. B O’Dowd
5. Monte Vista
6. Newark Memorial
7. Deer Valley
8. Cal High
9. Castro Valley
10. Amador Valley
11. Foothill
12. College Park

I placed Irvington over Newark based on strength of schedule. This would also appease the EBAL lovers because they wouldn’t run into each other in the first round (not that the committee takes that into consideration)

Any scores? DLS is losing to Cal. This could shake things up a bit.

Yes, Logan has to beat Newark twice.

DLS beats Claovis West on a walkoff basehit by Noah Perio. Clovis tied the game in the top of the 7th before the comeback. Monte Vista beats Berkeley 4-0.

Calhigh lost last 4 games