HUNTINGTON BEACH – The beauty of the new format for the CIF Southern Section’s Division 1 baseball playoffs was revealed when the Harvard-Westlake and Huntington Beach game was over Friday evening.
Whoever lost the dramatic game did not deserve to have its season end there.
Harvard-Westlake beat Huntington Beach, 6-5, in the second round of pool play at Huntington Beach High.
Division 1 for the first time in the 112-year history of CIF-SS has a double-elimination format for the baseball playoffs. Huntington Beach is 1-1 in its two games. The Oilers beat Temecula Valley, 11-0, in their first Pool B game on Tuesday.
Harvard-Westlake is 2-0 in Pool B. The Wolverines defeated La Mirada, 3-0, on Tuesday.
Huntington Beach will play at La Mirada, also 1-1 in Pool B, on Tuesday. The winner of that game advances to play again on Friday, May 22. The loser is eliminated.
Harvard-Westlake (2-0 in Pool B) advances to the quarterfinals that will be played Friday, May 22, against a team to be determined by Tuesday’s third-round results.
The Harvard-Westlake ((25-5) and Huntington Beach (22-7-1) game was a dramatic one.
Huntington Beach had a 2-1 lead at the end of the first inning. Harvard-Westlake tied it with a run in the top of the third inning and took a 4-2 lead with two runs in the fifth.
The Oilers scored a run in their half of the fifth to make it 4-3.
The Wolverines tacked on two more runs in the sixth inning for a 6-3 lead, and Huntington Beach responded with two runs in its half of the sixth to make it 6-5.
Such a battle had Huntington Beach coach Benji Medure praising the double-elimination format for the 16-team, Division 1 bracket.
“This was a heavyweight fight, for sure,” said Medure, in his 26th season as the Oilers’ coach. “It was a gut-wrencher, and it would be worse if our season ended today, but it doesn’t. We get to practice tomorrow, we get to play Tuesday against La Mirada and we’ve earned that right.”
The three-hour game featured several big plays from Harvard-Westlake senior shortstop James Tronstein.
Tronstein was 3 for 3, hit a solo home run, drove in another run with a sacrifice fly, hit a double, scored three runs and started the game-ending double play in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Tronstein, who has a compact and powerful swing and exceptional range in the field, committed to Vanderbilt and is projected as an early-round selection in July’s MLB Draft.
Harvard-Westlake coach Jared Halpert, in his 11th season, has worked with many fine players the school and through his work for USA Baseball, including Harvard-Westlake product Bryce Rainer, a shortstop in the Detroit Tigers system who was the No. 11 overall pick in the 2024 draft.
As for Tronstein …
“I’ve had some special young people,” Halpert said. “James Tronstein is having the best year of anyone I’ve ever seen.”
Tronstein (6-0, 185) went into the game batting .533 with nine home runs and 26 RBIs in 29 games.
“I am floored and inspired by this young man,” Halpert said. “He’s turned himself into arguably the best position player in California, in the nation, whatever.”
Tronstein started the game with a single and scored on a passed ball for the Wolverines’ first-inning 1-0 lead.
In the bottom of the first, Huntington Beach’s Ely Mason, who had seven RBIs in an 11-0 win over Temecula Valley on Tuesday, drove in a run with an opposite-field triple to left field and scored on Dane Cunningham’s sacrifice fly for a 2-1 Oilers lead.
Tronstein’s solo home run, a no-doubt shot to left-center field in the third inning, tied it, 2-2. The Wolverines took a 4-2 lead in the fifth on a two-run homer by Jake Kim.
The Oilers’ Jason Dunham singled to left field to drive in Eddie Lucerto to trim the Harvard-Westlake lead to 4-3.
The Wolverines scored twice in the sixth inning on a Max Hong RBI single and Tronstein’s sacrifice fly for a 6-3 lead.
Huntington Beach scored two runs in its half of the sixth on Tanner Brown’s bases-loaded walk and another Dunham RBI single to make it 6-5.
Cunningham walked with one out in the seventh, but the game’s only double play ended that opportunity.