Launching Pad to Simi Valley’s Liking : Southern Section baseball: Pioneers blast three home runs over short fence en route to 8-1 win over Montebello in second round of Division I playoffs.

A short fence ensured a game of long ball Tuesday for the Simi Valley High baseball team at Montebello.

However, the Pioneers explained the long and the short of matters differently after polishing off Montebello, 8-1, in the second round of the Southern Section Division I playoffs.

Simi Valley (25-3) will play Diamond Bar, an 11-3 winner over Lakewood, in a quarterfinal game Friday at Simi Valley.

For the Pioneers, who this week were elevated to No. 1 in the nation in USA Today’s rankings, their own relatively small park will seem like wide-open spaces.

One look at Montebello’s cramped confines, a rectangular configuration reminiscent of the Dodgers’ days in the Coliseum, gave the Pioneers the urge to bust out.

Ryan Briggs, Kevin Nykoluk and Scott Miller all hit solo home runs to lead an eight-hit attack. Briggs, a left-handed leadoff hitter, confirmed the obvious by hammering the third pitch of the game over the right-field fence, a mere 244 feet from home plate.

Briggs, who noted that the home run was his first since Little League, burst a big smile when asked if he was swinging for the fence. “I said, ‘I’m not even gonna think about that,’ ” he said, most assuredly with tongue in cheek. “Hit on any other field, that’s a fly ball.”

Nykoluk’s more thunderous fourth-inning shot to right snapped a 1-1 tie. In the fifth, Miller launched a home run over the left-field fence, only 327 feet away.

Too good to pass up? “I wasn’t trying,” said Nykoluk, whose second home run of the playoffs raised his season total to eight. “He pitched me outside, I went with it and that’s where it went.”

Junior right-hander Bill Scheffels (10-1), who yielded six hits in as many innings, successfully guarded against the long ball.

“I knew their guys were going to try and pop it out of here,” Scheffels said. “But we tried not to look at (the fence).”

Simi Valley appeared to be off and running as Briggs circled the bases. But sophomore left-hander Jose Rodriguez (2-1) stifled the Pioneers, retiring eight of the next 11 batters without allowing a hit.

The Oilers (14-9-1), Almont League champions, tied the score in the first inning and had at least one hit in each of the first five innings.

But Scheffels, who struck out four with the use of a high fastball, ended each threat.

In the fourth, with two out and a runner at first, Scheffels retired Orlando Villegas on a slow roller to second after Villegas fouled off five two-strike fastballs.

“With their pitching staff, it looks like they only need a couple of runs,” Montebello Coach Bill Drulias said. “They seem to protect their leads really well.”

Miller’s home run, his second of the playoffs, triggered a three-run rally that included a run-scoring double by Britten Pond and a run-scoring single by Nykoluk. Simi Valley added three in the seventh, two on a single by Ryan Hankins.