Baseball: SoCal players make 18U national team cut
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
The 18U national team announced its 28-man roster Sunday that will report back for a second round of trials on Sept. 12-21 in Cary, N.C.
Making the cut were Max Fried from Van Nuys Montclair Prep, Chase DeJong from Long Beach Wilson, Lucas Giolito from Studio City Harvard-Westlake, Cole Irvin from Anaheim Servite, Jeremy Martinez from Santa Ana Mater Dei, Rio Ruiz from La Puente Bishop Amat, Hunter Virant from Camarillo and Cody Poteet from Christian in Bonita.
Fried, Giolito, Virant and Poteet are all pitchers committed to UCLA. Martinez and Ruiz are USC commits.
A final 20-man team will be picked for the COPABE Pan American AAU/1*U Championships in Cartagena, Columbia on Sept. 23-Oct. 2.
Ruiz, the quarterback for Bishop Amat’s football team, now has a big decision, since he’d have to miss several games this fall if he continued on the team.
-- Eric Sondheimer