Pickler’s Big Challenge Lies Ahead

Cypress Coach Scott Pickler’s greatest challenge of the baseball season won’t come until next week.

Then he’ll have to make a case for getting Cypress into the playoffs with an at-large berth. Pickler got some help Thursday from freshman left-hander Steve Smyth, who struck out a season-high 14 and gave up two hits in 7 2/3 innings to get the victory as the Chargers beat visiting Fullerton, 11-4, in an Orange Empire Conference game.

Cypress (21-20, 11-12) concludes the regular season Saturday at OCC. Then Pickler will represent the conference at the Southern California seeding meeting Monday.

He won’t have any trouble getting the first three teams--Riverside, Saddleback and Santa Ana--into the 16-team field.

His struggle will be getting the other coaches to vote for fourth-place Cypress over third-place teams from other conferences.

The conference’s winning tradition will be what Pickler will call on most. The Orange Empire Conference teams have won the last five state titles and six of the last seven. Twice conference teams have played each other in the state title game.

Cypress has three state titles, including last year.

This season, Riverside, Saddleback and Santa Ana have been camped among the top five of the state poll all season.

“I don’t see how they can’t take four teams out of this conference,” Pickler said. “Strength of schedule is a big thing and ours is up there because we play Riverside, Santa Ana and Saddleback four times each.”

But Pickler knows he will have an uphill fight because other coaches are getting tired of hearing about the Orange Empire’s dominance in baseball and because Cypress will be no better than two games over .500 overall.

One of Cypress’ problems this season is lack of experienced players, because 14 members of the state championship team last season were sophomores.

Smyth, a redshirt last season, has been one of the few steady performers. He improved to 8-2 and took a one-hitter into the eighth Thursday.

Eight of the first nine outs Smyth got were on strikeouts, including five in a row from the second out of the game to the end of the second inning. Smyth gave up two hits, three runs (two earned) and walked five.

Fullerton starter Bobby Cramer was up to the challenge early, striking out six in the first two innings. But Cramer didn’t get past the third, when Cypress scored seven times on eight hits, seven of which were singles.

But it wasn’t a series of hard-hit balls. One single was lost in the sun, another fell between three fielders and another was a check-swing by Brandon Smith that drove in two runs.

Shaun Larkin had three hits, including a double, and scored once and Smith, Rich Pohle, Gabe Gerhardt, and Ed Marquez each drove in two runs for Cypress.

Tim Hunt hit a three-run home run on reliever Brian Snapp’s first pitch in the eighth for Fullerton (18-21-1, 7-16).