Baseball: Intriguing City Section matchups

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Head-to-head matchups during the regular season had great influence on the City Section seeding committee that produced the Division I playoff pairings on Wednesday.

The best first-round game has East Valley League champion Arleta playing at West Valley League representative Woodland Hills Taft. The winner will likely play Chatsworth in the quarterfinals. Birmingham at San Pedro and possibly Granada Hills at Banning also should be top matchups.

The intrigue comes in potential quarterfinal matchups. Marine League powers San Pedro and Banning could face off if they make it past likely West Valley opponents. And Valley Mission League rivals Kennedy and San Fernando are likely to play in the quarterfinals, which would be a rematch of last week’s finale that San Fernando won, 4-2.

San Fernando Coach Armando Gomez isn’t happy that his team dropped to a No. 6 seed after sharing the league title with Kennedy and owning a win over No. 2-seeded El Camino Real.

There’s lots of top pitchers ready to go, so every game is going to be quite interesting. There’s balance, though Chatsworth is the clear favorite to make it to Dodger Stadium on June 4.

I’m picking Kennedy to win it all. In Division 2, whoever wins the Maywood-Gardena semifinal should triumph. In Division 3, SOCES gets the nod.

-- Eric Sondheimer