Red-hot Marysville prepares for Sac's Sutter Health Park: Indians baseball takes on Bradshaw Christian at home of River Cats Monday
Apr. 21—It's the final leg of the regular season for most prep baseball and softball squads in Northern California.
For the Marysville High baseball team, it could not be playing better with wins in nine of its last 11 games, capped by a 4-0 shutout at home over Pioneer Valley League foe Twelve Bridges, out of Lincoln on Wednesday at Weldon Field.
Marysville head coach Bill Rollins attributes the team's recent success to getting healthy on the mound, led by a pair of quality starters in Thomas Hinojosa and Stevie Cherry, followed by a slew of lockdown relievers.
Hinojosa was the man on Wednesday, firing a complete-game 3-hit shutout littered with seven strikeouts to three walks.
Rollins said Hinojosa gets ahead often and locates appropriately to give his team the best opportunity to win ballgames. The 6-foot, righty is 4-2 with an under two ERA and a team-high 56 strikeouts.
Alongside Hinojosa is senior Stevie Cherry, who Rollins said is healthy now following an elbow injury earlier this year. Together, alongside a number of returning players, Marysville will tackle perhaps its biggest challenge on Monday night at 6:30 p.m. when it heads to Sutter Health Park in Sacramento to take on Sac-Joaquin Section's No. 16 Bradshaw Christian in a nonleague contest. It's the nightcap of a doubleheader at Sutter Health Park, home of the Sacramento River Cats. The other game features perennial Northern Section power Colusa (17-3) against Mount Shasta at 3 p.m. Monday.
Rollins said the opportunity for Marysville and other prep teams to play at Sutter Health Park comes each year with an informational meeting set in August.
It's a tradeoff, Rollins said, where prep teams sell two-person River Cats vouchers good for any game, in exchange for the chance to play on a Triple-A ballfield.
Marysville (11-9, 4-4 PVL) will take on a Bradshaw Christian team that is 14-4 following a Northern California state D-IV title a year ago.
In terms of where it is ranked, Marysville remains essentially where it was earlier this week at No. 78 in the SJS computerized rankings published by MaxPreps.com twice a week.
In its rankings system, MaxPreps does not poll coaches, sportswriters or fans, nor does it make any judgments on any individual teams. Prior season history, school size and comments on message boards are not considered in the MaxPreps computer rankings.
MaxPreps stated in a release that the system utilizes the huge number of games stored in the MaxPreps database. Generally, the more a team wins the higher the ranking, MaxPreps stated.
However, the system takes into account quality wins (against other highly-ranked opponents) and strength of schedule, MaxPreps stated.
Other factors that will affect the rankings are times when MaxPreps has incomplete or inaccurate information. MaxPreps will correct errors when they are reported.
To report a score, visit the team's MaxPreps page.
Other notable moves in the rankings include Yuba City (14-8) jumping from 27 to 23 in the section after winning the series over Bella Vista and Sutter (13-4) jumping inside the top-40 in its first-year in the Sac-Joaquin Section.
The Huskies are tied atop the PVL at 7-1 with Colfax.
