Agoura, Westlake look to baseball playoffs

Talk about parity.

After last Friday’s baseball games, Moorpark’s record was 7-4 and four other teams in the seven-team Marmonte League had five losses.

Westlake High finished its league season with a 7-5 record and Agoura, Newbury Park and Simi Valley had 6-5 records. Thousand Oaks was 5-6 and Royal was in the cellar at 2-9.

All but Royal hoped yesterday’s games would put them into the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section playoffs.

Agoura, which played at Moorpark yesterday and Westlake had something to say last week about deciding the final won-loss record of defending league champion Westlake.

On Friday, Agoura was the winner 3-0 over the Warriors, and on Wednesday, Newbury Park beat Westlake, 12-4.

In Agoura’s victory, J.T. Trelatsky pitched six innings and allowed one hit, a double by Kyle Griffin, and struck out six Westlake batters. At the plate, Trelatsky was 4 for 4, including two doubles. Teammate Jason Lefkowitz went 2 for 4 with a double.

Two days earlier the Warriors’ leading hitter was Cody Cipriano, who had a 2 for 4 afternoon with an RBI.

The Panthers exploded at the plate against Westlake as Matt Eisenstein was 4 for 4 with an RBI, Steven Hartman, was 3 for 5 with three RBI and Nick Dziem was 3 for 4 with four RBI. Kenny Hubina pitched a complete game while giving up seven hits and one walk, striking out five and allowing three earned runs.

"Right now we have to sit around and see if we’re in the playoffs," said Westlake head coach Chuck Berrington after the Friday and Wednesday losses.

"We don’t play (this) week, other teams do," he said. "It looks like we are (out of it), but we’ll know. It’s not a good feeling. We are not playing well. Last week we played great baseball. But it’s the sign of a young team. There’s ups and downs.

"Justin Blaine has pitched better than anybody around all year. He’s done that all year long. We need to swing the bats and we’re not swinging the bats consistently. We’re pitching the ball very well at times. Sometimes we’re not fielding and we’re definitely not hitting well."

Agoura head coach Zach Miller was pleased with his team’s win. "These guys (Westlake) have come back all year. They’re competitors and they’re playing for something—and we’re playing for something.

"Last time they played well. They executed and did what they had to do. Today things fell our way. The box score lists the hits, but our guy threw tough today and Blaine threw well."

The Westlake game with his four hits and strong mound effort was memorable for Trelatsky.

"It’s a pretty good feeling," he said, "but it was a team effort. I kind of felt lucky up there. He’s (Blaine) a great pitcher, tough to hit off of. It was a good game. I haven’t pitched in a while, but there was a good defense behind me and good pitch calling by the catcher (Adam Schneider)."

There was no score until Agoura’s visiting half of the fourth inning. "I knew we were going to come through. It was just (a matter of) time before we started scoring runs," Trelatsky said.

Regarding the performance by Trelatsky, Miller said, "You can say he’s a 10th grader, but that’s not it… He’s going to give his best offensively, defensively."

Lefkowitz, speaking about Trelatsky’s performance said that "J.T. was unbelievable," adding, "There was no other performance we could ask from him. Blaine was hitting his spots. He was so amazing. We just got very lucky to get the hits on the pitches that we did."

But Westlake aside, the focus this week for Agoura is the Moorpark High Musketeers.

"We’ve got to beat Moorpark, Trelatsky said. "We just have to play strong like we did against Westlake."

Miller echoed the thought.

"The key is Moorpark," he said. "They’re playing for a championship, too. They’re in the driver’s seat. Our biggest thing is to see how it plays out. We’re just looking at playing tough baseball, go to their (Moorpark) yard again.

"It’s going to be tough, but we’re just excited that we came in today and we played well offensively, defensively and we got great pitching and we just happened to get some breaks."