| July 1, 2025
With the completion of the fourth week of CCL play and calendars waiting to be turned over to July, the season has reached its halfway point.
The Santa Barbara Foresters weathered a tumultuous week to remain the No. 1 team in the league at the halfway mark. With the seemingly once again red-hot Walnut Creek Crawdads right on their tail, they won’t want to risk a similar week in week five.
Elsewhere in the league, the Conejo Oaks got back into a rhythm, while the San Luis Obispo Blues went on a skid. The two teams jostled for positions in the middle of the pack with three other teams.
To see exactly where they all slot in, check out the latest CCL power rankings.
The Foresters continued their winning ways, albeit not at their usual rate. They went 3-2 on the week, doubling their loss total for the season -- which really says more about how good they’ve been this season. Still, they have the most impressive record in the CCL, and the winning week did just enough to keep them in the No. 1 slot.
The Foresters faced the Blues four times during the week, and after dropping the first game on the road, they didn’t lose again. They outscored the Blues 25-18 across their meetings. The only other team the Foresters played was the Oaks for a one-off game. The Conejo team was able to beat the Foresters at home, 4-1. The loss hurt the Foresters, but their wins over the Blues are enough to warrant them staying first in the power rankings. They’ll want to be careful next week, though, with the Walnut Creek Crawdads playing good baseball.
Part of the reason that Santa Barbara struggled slightly was because of some pitching regression. The staff came into the week proudly owning a 2.78 ERA, but could only manage a 3.40 ERA on the week. The team also only scored 5.2 runs per game on average after coming into the week averaging 8.9.
The team is still great -- 2.96 ERA and 7.8 runs per game on average for the season -- but will need fewer hiccups to stay in first.
The Crawdads bounced back from a 2-4 week, going 5-1 to end the month of June. Another week like this one could see them jump back into the No.1 spot, the place they were in the first power ranking of the season.
Walnut Creek started the week off strong with two bounce-back victories over the Sonoma Stompers, the team that they lost to finish off their 2-4 week. Walnut Creek’s staff held the Stompers didn’t allow an earned run across those 18 innings, and extended the streak by shutting out the San Francisco Seagulls. The Crawdads would get two more wins against the Seagulls later in the week, but picked up their lone loss -- a 10-5 payback smattering from the Stompers -- in between.
While the pitching staff was still inconsistent at times, they got the job done, and then some, more often than not. The team now owns a respectable -- for the CCL -- 4.44 ERA that’s trending in the right direction. The offense also experienced some inconsistency, but overall bounced back, scoring 10 runs on two occasions.
The Crawdads still need to prove that they can be a consistent team, but another week like this one most likely sees them jump back to the No. 1 spot.
The Oaks were another team that bounced back strong after a disappointing week three of CCL play, and they did so, in part, by beating the No. 1 Foresters. While that was just one win, they recorded three other victories. The reigning CCL champions beat the Arroyo Seco Saints twice and split a series with the Orange County Riptide for their final win of the week and their lone loss.
The offense remained strong and consistent throughout the week, faltering only slightly in the team's 11-3 loss to the Riptide. Conejo’s 4.55 ERA is probably higher than what the coaching staff would want, but with their strong offense, they’re able to stay in almost any game. The team will need to try to improve its pitching and consistency as the second month gets underway, but this team is a real threat to repeat.
The Stompers finished the week strong, no one can take that away from them and they’ll try to ride the momentum into the fifth week of CCL play, but their bad start, combined with Conejo’s great week, drops them one spot.
As previously mentioned, the Stompers fell to the Crawdads on back-to-back days to start the week. They were bad losses, but the team quickly flushed them. The Stompers got back in the win column against the Menlo Park Legends with a 5-1 win before beating the Crawdads and the Legends again.
Ultimately, Sonoma went 3-2 on the week, but their stumble, combined with the Oaks' great week, drops them a spot. The team is still a threat as the season enters its second month, but, like many of the other teams at the top of the rankings, it needs to distinguish itself by being more consistent.
Last week, I called the Saints a team that arguably could’ve been higher than the No. 6 ranking I gave them. This week, they did just enough to actually make the jump.
Arroyo Seco went 3-2 on the week after putting an ugly start behind itself. As previously mentioned, the team lost two games to a charging Oaks squad. Arroyo Seco lost both games by three runs. The losses could’ve started a downward spiral, but the team showed its quality with three straight wins to end the week.
The Saints beat the Academy Barons twice and the CCL-affiliated San Diego Waves once. While those two teams represent some of the weaker competition that the Saints will play, the players don’t determine who they’re facing, and wins are still wins and the Saints won enough to jump them above falling competition.
The Riptide, quite frankly, didn’t have a great week. The team went 2-3 and fell to .500, yet the Riptide are the beneficiaries of another team's misfortunes in the power rankings.
Orange County’s two wins this week came in dominant fashion. First, on Thursday, the team beat the Blues 8-1 and finished their week by beating the Oaks 11-3 after dropping one to them the day before. If you’re keeping track of what teams are yet to appear in the rankings, you’ll realize that the win over the Blues had significant implications.
While the Riptide’s wins were good, the losses were bad. A blowout at the hands of the Waves, followed by a loss to the Barons, ruined the Riptide’s chances of having an ultra-productive week. You need to beat the teams you’re supposed to beat, and the Riptide couldn’t this time around.
The Blues had a week to forget, or at least one that they’ll try to forget as soon as possible. They went 1-4 on the week, dropping below .500 and two places in the power rankings.
To be fair to the Blues, they faced a gauntlet to end the month of June. The team from San Luis Obispo faced the Foresters, the best team in the league, four times. That’s enough to make any team sweat. Still, you need to win in sports, even if your opposition is challenging. Unfortunately for the Blues, they couldn’t overcome the obstacle, losing three of the four games and getting blown out by the Riptide for good measure.
The biggest issue for the Blues was that they didn’t give themselves much breathing room heading into the week, and it cost them.
The Legends looked like they were going on a run at the start of the week after winning three straight games. Back-to-back six-run performances handed them wins against the Seagulls before blowing out the CCL-affiliated Alameda Merchants 13-0, which is no easy task. That’s where the good news for the Legends ends, though.
The Legends ended the week in the inverse of how it started: three straight losses. The team fell to Sonoma twice, getting outscored 18-7 across the two games. In between those two losses, they fell to the Seagulls 5-3.
Menlo Park has proven that it can string together wins, but it's also prone to blowouts and bad stretches. The team will need to go on a good, consistent run to move up the power rankings.
The Barons had a pretty nice week, all things considered. They shut out the Ripide, a solid team, and took advantage of two games against the CCL-affiliated Philippines Baseball Group, winning both. If the Barons continue to have winning weeks, they could have a good chance of moving up the power rankings.
The two losses that the Barons collected were against the Saints. They were rather ugly defeats -- 12-3 and 10-6 -- but they came at the hands of a very solid team.
The Barons have struggled mightily this summer, but this week was a step in the right direction.
Bringing up the rear is the Seagulls, who had a rough week once again. Their lone victory came against the Legends after already falling to them twice. Aside from those losses, they fell to the Crawdads three times, and the combined score across the three games was gut-wrenching, 22-5.
San Francisco has shown little to no improvement throughout the summer, and it seems unlikely that something will change. However, July is a new month, and in sports, anything can happen.
Affiliate teams aren’t included in the power rankings, but still impact the CCL.
It wasn’t a great week for the affiliate teams. The Alameda Merchants -- the affiliate team that has had the most productive season -- only played one CCL game this week, that being their blowout loss to the Legends. While the loss only drops them to 10-5, the other affiliates' escapades made their seasons go from bad to worse.
The San Diego Waves are now 2-4 after splitting their two games this week. They beat the Riptide and lost to the Saints. Still, they’re in a better spot than the 1-10 Philippines Baseball Group, which lost two games to the Barons. The San Diego Bombers didn’t have any CCL matchups this week, therefore staying at 2-7.
Tune in next week to see how our Power Rankings change after Week 5!
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