San Pedro's Jesse Ferreira throws complete game shutout in 1-0 win over Palisades
SAN PEDRO, Calif. -- First year head coach Nick Lusic trusted his gut.
In the seventh inning of San Pedro's non-league game against Palisades on Saturday, Pirates starter Jesse Ferreira ran into his first jam of the day.
With San Pedro clinging to a 1-0 lead, Ferreira gave up a lead off single to Palisades' senior Vincent Langdon. He then walked junior Nate Sterling. But that didn't faze Lusic (or Ferreira for that matter) because after the walk, Lusic chose to keep Ferreira in the game.
"I told him before the inning that he was my guy," Lusic said. "We were going to ride him. He's a competitive person and I knew he was going to get the job done. I just had that feeling."
'That feeling' ended up paying off. Ferreira worked his way out of the two runners on and no outs situation to earn a shutout victory. He induced a ground out and then struck out two Dolphins hitters to win the game.
"I just tried to keep my cool and find the zone," Ferreira said about the nerve-racking seventh inning. "I tried not to give anything over the middle. I tried to get a ground ball. I knew I was one pitch away the whole time."
Saturday's game was a pitchers' duel. Palisades starter Mason Edwards pitched all six innings for the Dolphins striking out seven and allowing only three hits. In the fourth inning, Richard Loy scored the game-winning run for San Pedro off of a double from Gil Solis. Loy was pinch-running for Gio Crow who had hit a double earlier in the inning.
"This was a great team win," Lusic said.
San Pedro improved to 8-6 with the victory and Palisades fell to 9-3-1.
GOOD LUCK TO THE CITY SEEDING COMMITTEE
Determining the Open Division playoff baseball seeds in the LA City Section is always a challenge, but this year is shaping up to be particularly tough.
It's still relatively early in the season, but after the first two or three top teams, the fourth through twelfth seeds are wide open as of April 2nd.
The West Valley League winner will most likely come down to Birmingham and Granada Hills, although Chatsworth may be in that mix too. The league winner will be the top seed and the second place finisher will most likely be No. 2.
The challenge facing the seeding committee comes down to how much non-league one-off games matter. For example, Cleveland beat a really good Roosevelt team 10-0 this season, but the Cavs went 0-3 this week losing two games to Granada Hills and a third to Poly. If Cleveland keeps dropping games in the West Valley League, could Roosevelt earn a higher seed despite the head-to-head loss? The answer is yes, but how many Cleveland losses will it take for Roosevelt to potentially make up the ground? The committee will decide.
Here's another tricky part of the equation: San Pedro beat Palisades on Saturday, but lost 12-2 to Roosevelt earlier this season, a team Palisades beat 2-0.
There's still over a month of regular season baseball left. The playoff picture should get at least a little clearer in the next few weeks, but anything can happen...
