Maranatha, St. Monica, Pasadena Poly baseball host first-round home games

Maranatha High, St. Monica Academy and Pasadena Poly all earned league titles this baseball season and, therefore, earned first-round playoff home games, as the CIF Southern Section released playoff pairings on Monday.

As for the remaining four locals who punched playoff tickets, only San Marino will open up at home, while Marshall Fundamental, Pasadena and Southwestern Academy have lengthy road trips.

Maranatha, which rallied from an 0-3 Olympic League start to claim the crown, will host Duarte (13-12), which took third in the Montview League, on Thursday. The winner will advance to the second round on May 21, where it will face fourth-seeded Citrus Valley (19-5) or a wild-card entrant.

Down in Division VI, Pasadena Poly (15-7), which shared the Prep League title with Flintridge Prep and Webb, will enter as the No. 2 team out of its league. It will host Bloomington Christian (16-9), the No. 2 team out of the Victory League, at 4 p.m. on Friday. The winner will play St. Margaret’s (17-4) or Hamilton (13-7) in the second round.

Further down in Division VII, St. Monica (11-5) is fresh off an undefeated run to an International League title and will host Marywood-Palm Valley (15-5), a second-place finisher out of the Majestic League, on Thursday. A second-round matchup would be played against the No. 1 seed, Nuview Bridge (19-2), or a wild-card winner.

Elsewhere in the division, International League runner-up Southwestern (5-6) has a long, if not scenic, journey to play Avalon of Catalina. Avalon (14-5) won the Express League and hopes to move on to the second round to face Dunn (10-4) or Valley Christian (10-9).

San Marino, Pasadena and Marshall will all open in the wild-card round.

Pasadena (12-12) got an at-large bid from the Pacific League and will face Channel League second-place entrant Santa Barbara (15-9-1). The winner will move into Friday’s first round to play Redlands (19-5), the No. 2 team from the Citrus Belt League.

San Marino, having finished third in the Rio Hondo League and posted a 14-10-1 record, earned a home game in the Division IV wild-card round and will host Fullerton (13-14), the Freeway League’s No. 3 team. The winner gets the daunting task of traveling to face top-seeded Oaks Christian (24-3-1) in Friday’s first round.

Finally in Division VI, Marshall (12-9), having earned an at-large bid out of the Delphic League, will make a long trek to Santa Paula (13-10) to face the third-place Frontier League squad. The winner moves on to Friday’s first round for a showdown with fourth-seeded Flintridge Prep (15-8), a Prep League tri-champion.

All games are set for 3:15 p.m. starts unless a change is mutually agreed upon.