San Pedro receives No. 1 seed for City Section Open Division baseball playoffs
The City Section baseball seeding meeting delivered lots of surprises on Monday, starting with making San Pedro the No. 1 seed for the Open Division playoffs. El Camino Real is No. 2, Palisades No. 3 and Sun Valley Poly No. 4.
San Pedro is 27-4 and once had 18-game win streak, but El Camino Real (22-8-1), with an eight-game win streak, played the tougher schedule and won the West Valley League.
A bigger surprise was Palisades, the Western League champion, jumping over West Valley League No. 2 and No. 3 teams Cleveland and Granada Hills, respectively. The seeding committee apparently gave more weight to head to head matchups against City competition. Palisades had a win over Granada Hills but losses to Kennedy and Banning. Poly, the East Valley League champion, became the No. 4 seed by virtual of its 1-0 win over No. 5 Cleveland in a nonleague game.
The top four seeds will have a first-round bye. Seeds No. 5 through No. 12 will play first-round games on Wednesday. The quarterfinals are Friday. The semifinals will be May 22 at USC. The final is May 25 at Dodger Stadium.
San Fernando Valley teams have won every upper-division championship since 1973 except for 1992, when San Pedro won. The Pirates might be happy with the No. 1 seed, but their first game will not be easy. They will have to face the winner of the game between No. 8 Birmingham and No. 9 San Fernando on Friday.
El Camino Real will take on the winner of No. 7 Kennedy and No. 10 Roosevelt.
Palisades will play the winner of No. 6 Granada Hills and No. 11 Carson.
Poly will play the winner of No. 5 Cleveland and No. 12 Chatsworth.
El Camino Real has won the most City titles at nine, and the Conquistadores’ success in recent yearscan be directly related to having three quality pitchers. That’s happened again this season with Cole Kitchen, Adam Christopher and Jack Whisnant, who has emerged as a key player in relief.
Narbonne is seeded No. 1 in Division I. South Gate is seeded No. 1 in Division II. Maywood is No. 1 in Division III.
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