Overworked San Fernando No Match for Granada Hills : Prep baseball: Tired Tiger pitching staff gives up 11 hits and 10 walks in Highlanders’ 18-7 win in Holt-Willis tournament game.

Five games in five days can do strange and wondrous things to a high school pitching staff, even a good one.

In a second-round game of the Holt-Willis tournament at San Fernando High on Saturday, so many unidentified objects were sighted flying out of the hands of Tiger pitchers that it could have meant only two things: Either aliens were wearing pinstripes or everybody with an out’s worth of pitching in his arm was trying his luck against Granada Hills.

“The pitching’s getting thin,” Granada Hills Coach Darryl Stroh said. “They played three (league) games this week and another this morning. That can make for some ugly baseball.”

Homely or otherwise, Granada Hills pounded six San Fernando pitchers and won, 18-7, to advance to Monday’s semifinal round. Granada Hills (8-5-1) will face host Kennedy at 11 a.m.

San Fernando pitchers--all but one of whom normally play somewhere else--surrendered runs in all but the fifth inning, yielding 11 hits and 10 bases on balls.

San Fernando (8-7) jumped to a 4-0 lead in the top of the first, but Granada Hills banged around Tiger left-hander Canto Franco (2-4) through the first 1 2/3 innings to take an 8-4 lead. Reserve infielder Scoody Woods relieved Franco with two out in the second inning, and after Woods’ initial offering bounced five feet in front of the plate for a wild pitch, San Fernando Coach Steve Marden quipped, “Was that the curve?”

He would need a sense of humor.

In the fourth, with catcher-first baseman Jose Nunez on the mound and Granada Hills leading, 8-7, Nunez heaved another unidentifiable orb in the general direction of the plate, prompting Marden to ask aloud, “Was that the knuckler?”

By the time reserve outfielder Lenny Avalos tried his hand at pitching in the sixth, Granada Hills led, 16-7. Marden, who under normal circumstances religiously calls pitches from the bench, told Avalos to “call his own game.”

It didn’t make much difference. Avalos walked three, gave up two runs and was yanked in favor of shortstop David Rojas, who in the fifth had somehow retired the Highlanders in order.

Leading, 8-7, Granada Hills scored three runs in the third inning and five in the fourth to take a 16-7 lead. By then, levity had reared its head on numerous occasions.

In the fourth, contact-hitting second baseman Darryl Stroh--the son of the coach and the Highlanders’ No. 9 batter--lined a triple into left.

As the 5-foot-6, 130-pound senior cruised into third, the bench immediately dubbed him “Darryl Strohberry.”

When Stroh took a called third strike in the fifth, catcher Sam Voita patted him on the head and told him it was OK, because “all power hitters strike out.”

Sometimes, pretty good pitching staffs do, too.