NOTEBOOK : El Camino Real Pair Twice as Dangerous

Double-duty ballplayers better known for one phase of their game sometimes excel in the other.

El Camino Real High (18-2-1) has two such players. Talk about a double dose of double trouble.

Ryan McGuire, a UCLA-bound senior, was recruited as a position player but has had a superior season on the mound. The left-hander is 6-1 with 83 strikeouts in 50 innings and has an earned-run average of 2.10. McGuire is batting .329, with 23 runs batted in and a team-high five home runs.

Pat Treend, recruited as a pitcher, also has been slamming out his share of hits. He leads the team in RBIs with 24 and is batting .365 with eight extra-base hits.

Treend belted a three-run homer and a grand slam last week while pitching the Conquistadores to a 10-5 win over Taft. It marked El Camino Real’s first two-homer day since catcher Bobby Kim, then a junior, hit two in one inning last season.

Treend, a right-hander bound for UC Santa Barbara, is 10-0 with an ERA of 1.29.

Laying it on the line: Granada Hills Coach Darryl Stroh first became famous for using the bunt as an offensive weapon in 1975, when the Highlanders won the first of five City titles under Stroh.

Stroh used three consecutive bunts in the bottom of the eighth to beat Westchester, 4-3, in the ’75 title game.

The bunt was reborn at Granada Hills last week--and in a big way. With the Highlanders needing to beat Cleveland to earn a wild-card berth in the playoffs, Stroh ordered three bunts in succession in the fifth inning--and all three batters reached base to spark a three-run rally en route to a 7-5 victory.

Stroh said he had not forsaken his friend. “When you’re down four or five runs all the time, it’s hard to use it,” he said.

Granada Hills is 5-10-2.

Tough loss: Hector De La Cruz, a senior left-hander at San Fernando, will miss the remainder of the season because of a muscle pull in his pitching shoulder.

De La Cruz, who was 6-1 last season, aggravated an off-season injury that hampered him all year.

“I laid off for a long time, then came back and did too much too fast,” said De La Cruz, who is 2-4 with a 4.74 ERA.

Junior left-hander Canto Franco has picked up the slack. Franco, who is 7-0, beat Kennedy to give San Fernando the North Valley League title last week.

Those numbing numbers: Cleveland sophomore David Cipolla stood at the plate with the game and a playoff berth on the line last week at Granada Hills. With a runner at first and Cleveland trailing, 7-5, in the seventh, Cipolla could have produced a tie with a home run and kept alive the team’s wild-card playoff hopes. There was, however, more than that at stake.

Cipolla sent a high fly to left, but the ball was caught at the fence for the final out.

Cipolla, zero for three against Granada Hills, finished the season with a batting average of .296 (16 for 54). A hit in his final at-bat would have lifted his batting average above .300.

Hey, don’t I know you?: If Taft wins its wild-card playoff game against Reseda today, the Toreadors will play El Camino Real on Friday in the first round. The teams played twice last week and have met three times this season.

If San Fernando and Kennedy win in the first round Friday, they will meet in the second round. The teams met twice last week in league play and have squared off three times this season.

“I didn’t go to the (seeding) meeting,” Granada Hills Coach Darryl Stroh said. “But there’s something wrong with (the pairings).”

A matter of principle: Tom Moran, who resigned as St. Francis baseball coach to take over as Chaminade’s principal next school year, will have to do some clothes shopping before he begins his new job.

“Half my wardrobe is obsolete--it’s (St. Francis colors) brown and gold,” quipped Moran, 37, who served for 13 years as vice principal at St. Francis.

Moran said he will not seek a coaching position at Chaminade. In two seasons as a baseball coach, he posted a 19-19-1 record.

“There’s a lot to be done as principal,” he said. “It’s obvious they didn’t evaluate me as a coach in making their decision.”

Staff writers Steve Elling and Sam Farmer contributed to this notebook.

REGIONAL BASEBALL TOP 10

Selected by sportswriters of The Times

Last Rk Wk Team League Record 1 1 Westlake Marmonte 25-1 2 2 Hart Foothill 22-1-2 3 3 El Camino Real West Valley 18-2-1 4 4 Poly East Valley 22-3 5 5 San Fernando North Valley 16-6-2 6 6 Chatsworth West Valley 20-5-1 7 7 Birmingham Mid-Valley 18-6-1 8 8 Rio Mesa Channel 18-5-2 9 9 Saugus Golden 18-5-1 10 10 Crespi Del Rey 18-9-1

NR--Not ranked.

Through Tuesday’s games.