Merced College baseball, softball face possible make-or-break week

Chris Pedretti has been here before.

Two years ago, his Merced College baseball team entered the final week of the regular season needing to win two of its final three games to secure a playoff berth. The Blue Devils won the first game but dropped the last two, ending a decade-long playoff run.

While the 2016 season isn’t likely to come down to the final game, four games in six days are always a daunting task.

“We’ve put ourselves in this position by not having a better nonconference showing,” Pedretti said. “Our RPI wouldn’t be high enough to get us in the playoffs, so we’ve got to finish in the top two and get an automatic seed.

“This week will definitely give our guys a taste of the playoffs. It tests your depth and ability to take games one game at a time. We’re not in a position where we can get too high or too low. We could win the first two games and stumble on the weekend. We have to have a strong showing in the last round of league, and if we can’t, we’ll be staying home for the playoffs.”

The week starts with a bang against the two teams Merced is battling for the playoffs. On Tuesday, the Blue Devils (17-13, 13-5 Central Valley Conference) host first-place Fresno City (21-9, 16-2), and Thursday, they travel to Reedley (20-10, 13-5), which shares second place with Merced. Both games start at 6 p.m. Adding to the drama, the Blue Devils will squeeze in two games this weekend, heading to Taft on Saturday and hosting Porterville on Sunday.

Games against West Hills and Sequoias next week close the regular season.

The good thing for Merced entering this week is the pitching staff is well rested. The Blue Devils had only one game last week, with no one throwing more than two innings. Zach Wichman will make just his second start of the season Tuesday against Fresno City. The left-hander has been pretty effective out of the bullpen.

“He pitched for us in the Santa Maria Tournament and did a nice job,” Pedretti said. “It’s a all-hands-on-deck kind of week. Hopefully, Wichman gets a good start and the rest of the week sets up for us. If not, everybody is available to go and we’ll approach the situations that come up.”

The Merced College softball team, meanwhile, has positioned itself for its first playoff appearance since 2009.

The She-Devils are 23-11 with an RPI rating of 11. They enter the last week of the regular season in third place in the CVC, two games behind second-place Reedley (23-14, 13-2), which visits Merced on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Merced ends the regular season with a home doubleheader against Sequoias on Thursday.

Reedley visits first-place Fresno City (32-3, 16-0) for a doubleheader Thursday, meaning an undefeated week will give the She-Devils a good opportunity to jump the Tigers in the standings and improve their playoff seeding.

With a roster almost composed entirely of freshmen, coach Suzanne McGhee is taking nothing for granted, however.

“This is a big week for us,” McGhee said. “We have to be focused the whole time. We could beat Reedley and then get swept by COS and find ourselves out of the playoffs because of how much it hurts our RPI. The girls have come a long way in the last month and a half, but there are still maturity things that pop up every once in a while.

“(Monday) we came out a little loose in practice. We’ll see if we can pull it back together and finish off the season like we’re capable of.”

Merced split a doubleheader at Reedley on March 17. The She-Devils won the opener 4-0 but dropped the nightcap 6-5 in extra innings. Merced gave up leads in the seventh and ninth innings in the loss.

“We should have won both of those games,” McGhee said. “We just made some mistakes and didn’t execute when we had the opportunities. I think that’s the one thing that separates us from being a really good team and an elite team. We do the little things well here and there, but we don’t do them consistently enough.

“Hopefully, that changes this week.”

Weekend surprise – Sometimes, coaches just ride hunches.

Merced College track and field coach Louis Foy studied the numbers. He knew Taylor Brown, his sophomore sprinter, was on pace to qualify for the 100- and 200-meter races at the NorCal Trials and perhaps make a run at the state championship.

But despite her success and NorCal ranking in the 100, Foy suspected Brown was better suited for longer sprints. With that in mind, he entered Brown in the 400 at the Cal State East Bay Pioneer Invitational at Chabot College on Saturday. Running the race for just the second time this year, Brown turned in the fastest time in Blue Devils history and the fourth-fastest NorCal mark this season, 58.65 seconds.

Brown broke the school record set by Tiffanie White in 2002 by a full second. Even more encouraging for Foy, the performance came on the track that will host the NorCal Trials and Finals on May 6 and 14.

This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Merced College baseball, softball face possible make-or-break week."