Del Rey Adopts Plan to Select Playoff Teams

Del Rey League athletic directors emerged from a meeting Thursday with a plan to unravel the league’s tangle of playoff possibilities as the baseball regular season enters its final day of play today.

Five teams are fighting for three playoff berths and only one game separates the teams in the standings. Possibilities include a four-way tie for first in which one of the league’s co-champions would be excluded from the playoffs. There are no at-large berths in the Southern Section 5-A Division.

Crespi and Notre Dame are tied for first with 7-4 records and can control their fate. If Notre Dame beats St. John Bosco and Crespi defeats Alemany today, they will share the league championship and advance to the playoffs. A coin flip would determine the league’s first-place representative.

Alemany (6-5) is tied for third with Bosco Tech and Loyola, which play each other today. The loser of that game will miss the playoffs. But if Alemany defeats Crespi and Notre Dame loses, four teams, including the Loyola-Bosco Tech winner, would finish 7-5.

“That’s the sticky question,” league secretary Marty Dusserre said. “We’d flip a coin and one team would be left out.”

Two-way ties would be decided by head-to-head competition or a coin flip, and a three-way tie for second would prompt a Saturday game. A coin flip would determine one playoff team and the two others would play Saturday to decide the last berth.

League officials stopped counting at eight possibilities.

Said Dusserre: “We didn’t want to think about ties.”