LJ baseball: Reset

By Ed Piper

Surveying the Eastern League baseball scene with a week left in the regular season--COVID-adjusted, of course--we see La Jolla is not in a bad position to sail through to the conference title, if there is will.

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

High Tech High and San Diego, hard-working and striving, mean well but they don't seem to present viable factors in the league race.

High Tech fields a large number of freshmen and sophomores, and that's a tough way to fill out a roster when you're competing against a team like the Vikings, who have eight seniors and a whole crop who have grown up in the system and been fostered by Head Coach Gary Frank, pitching coach Jake Grosz, and always-steady first base coach Bob Allen. That program has attempted to be destabilized, but it's holding steady under current market forces.

San Diego High sent a coach to scout Monday's game between La Jolla and Mission Bay. Good for him. I was told SDHS just doesn't have the pitching to make a challenge for the league title.

Beside High Tech and San Diego, that leaves Christian, Mission Bay, and La Jolla to struggle it out with the towel clenched between their respective teeth to see who can tear it away from the other two. Could we have a co-championship? A tri-championship? I don't know.

Christian has the pitching and offense. Their scores against High Tech this week are horrible or fantastic, depending on your point of view: The Patriots beat the Storm 21-2 Monday at home, 17-2 Wednesday at High Tech's South Clairemont Recreation field, and 21-0 Thursday back home. Ouch.

Mission Bay seems to be in the middle: The Bucs started out 6-0, but had only played High Tech and SDHS. Against La Jolla this week in the two teams' three-game series, they lost all three and fall to 6-3. La Jolla, on the other hand, having lost three games right out of the gate to Christian two weeks ago, rise from 3-3 to 6-3, tied with the local rivals but holding the edge, obviously, in the case of a tiebreaker.

The Vikings seem to have the horses, even with senior standout Gavin Graff saying sayonara to his high school career with a sliding injury last Tues., May 18, his right thumb sore but only identified as a fracture this Tues., May 25 and casted for the next three months.

LJHS pitching coach Jake Grosz was talking with Gavin during Wednesday's game at Mission Bay on whether Graff wanted to do arm-strengthening exercises and other work later in his rehab in pointing toward next year at Adelphi University, Garden City, New Jersey. That's a long way to drive in a Buick, as Dick Howser used to say.

In the Vikings' lineup, leadoff hitter Connor Hobbs sits at .367, with 13 walks, tied with Cole Duffy and four behind Graff, still the team leader in that category. Hobbs has 10 stolen bases, tied with Luke Roberts, Ryan Lancaster, and Graff for the team lead.

"Our Man" Roberts, the second-slot hitter, is pounding the ball at a clip of .402, with 21 RBI's to tie Graff for the team lead. Luke has 10 doubles, again to pace the squad along with Graff. He has also touched home plate the most times, 24. The lefty who bats right also has three triples to pace the team, along with Lancaster.

Jake Klimkiewicz, at second base, is rattling along at a healthy .308. "Klim", the fourth hitter until Graff went down, is fourth in ribbies with 17. He leads the team in sacrifice flies with 3.

Cole Duffy, the catcher, hits the ball hard and is batting .267. He has been hit by a pitch 5 times, tied with Roberts for the team lead.

Willy Barton, at third, is no slouch at the plate (.308), and neither is the quiet Ryan Lancaster, hitting .295. The hot corner man has 4 sacrifices, tops in that category. He also has 13 RBI's.

I asked the lefty Ryan when he got to be so fast on the basepaths, and he said, "Always."

Simon Baker, despite struggling to hit (.171), is third on the team in RBI's with 18 behind Graff and Roberts.

Graff, of course, was MVP of tourneys and had all-league stats when he broke his thumb (then pitched a complete-game victory over Mission Bay six days later). It will be interesting to see how the powers that be recognize him at the end of the season--probably all-league, even with the partial season.