Baseball: Chatsworth doesn’t need to prove itself

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Even though they blew past eighth-seeded Palisades, 10-2, on Friday afternoon in the quarterfinals of the City Section championship division playoffs, the Chatsworth coaches and players said they weren’t out to prove anything. After all, you don’t become the top-seeded team in the playoffs by waiting until the end of the season to illustrate what you can do on the field.

Still, coming off their 1-0 victory over 16th-seeded Sun Valley Poly on Wednesday, you could tell the Chancellors were very pleased to get their bats cracking again.

Long-ball specialist Matt Moreno hit a second-inning grand slam, James Wharton hit a solo shot and Michael Renner went three for three with an RBI and a run scored from the No. 8 spot to spearhead Chatsworth’s offensive barrage. And even though we shouldn’t have forgotten, it reminded us that this team is once again a bona fide contender for the section title.

‘It’s good that we got things going again, but we’re always confident,’ Moreno said. ‘We wanted to do better in this game, and we did. We weren’t worried about it.’

However, let’s not overlook how great Chatsworth’s pitching has been this week. Wharton shut out Poly on Wednesday and Trevor Takeyama followed-up with a five-hit gem against the Dolphins. After giving up a homer to Jon Moscot to lead-off a shaky second inning, Takeyama settled down and retired 15 of the next 17 batters.

We’ll see if the Chancellors can continue their dominant ways when they play host to fourth-seeded Granada Hills Kennedy in a semifinal at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Here are Chatsworth Coach Tom Meusborn’s thoughts on the game:

And this is what Palisades Coach Mike Voelkel had to say about the season:

-- Austin Knoblauch