{"id":23670,"date":"2012-04-30T17:21:22","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T00:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=23670"},"modified":"2017-06-10T11:09:55","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T18:09:55","slug":"the-peterson-principle-43012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=23670","title":{"rendered":"The Peterson Principle 4\/30\/12"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Tim Peterson <\/p><\/div>\n

I first time I saw Corey Copping pitch was at Temple City American Little League for the Angels at Live Oak Park six years ago. I\u2019ve seen him numerous times over the past few years throwing for the Rams at Temple City High School. I saw him grow up. So for me it was special to see the University of Oklahoma offer him a full ride scholarship last week.<\/p>\n

Copping has another offer sitting on the table as well from Santa Barbara and there might be more to come. With pro scouts also monitoring him it won\u2019t come as a surprise if he
\nif he doesn\u2019t make a decision right away.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing is his twin brother Calvin might be just as good. How about a package deal? Corey and Calvin throwing on successive days for a major college would be something to see.<\/p>\n

Copping (Corey) gave up three runs early to Monrovia on Tuesday and the Rams couldn\u2019t find an answer for Joe Mata in an eventual 4-0 loss. \u201cIf there was an MVP picked for the Rio Hondo league right now Mata would be it,\u201d Temple City Coach Barry Bacon said Thursday night. \u201cHe\u2019s been terrific. But we haven\u2019t been hitting the ball well at all. We addressed that today in a three hour practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things didn\u2019t look good for Temple City at that point in the Rio as the Wildcats moved to 7-1, a full game up on the Rams. But the race changed quickly on Friday as Temple City rapped out eight hits in a 5-2 win over South Pasadena (apparently the three hour practice worked) and Monrovia fell to San Marino 3-1. M-Town has only two losses in league and both of them are to the Titans.<\/p>\n

And now TC and Monrovia aren\u2019t just worried about each other but are looking over their shoulders at San Marino. The Titans are 6-3 in league, (16-6 overall) and have three games to play – at home against South Pas, and road games with La Canada and Monrovia. Monrovia has home games vs. South Pas and LC and finish off the regular season at Temple City
\non May 10. The Rams finish the season with three straight home games. They host La Canada and San Marino before the finale with Monrovia. It should be interesting.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t had the chance to see Gabrielino\u2019s Angel Acosta pitch you have about two weeks to do so. The Eagles have all but locked up the title in the Mission Valley League but they still have four regular season games left. Acosta, who has been pitching for Gabrielino since his freshman year, has thrown three no hitters and has an ERA of 0.54 with 95 strikeouts and just 13 walks. He has a record of 6-1.<\/p>\n

His performances on the mound have been drawing raves from coaches around the area but he\u2019s not a bad hitter either. He has the highest average on the team at .382 and has seven doubles.<\/p>\n

At what point do we stop saying \u201cwell, it\u2019s early\u201d when it comes to Albert Pujols? A week or two is understandable but we\u2019ll be in May this week and the dude still hasn\u2019t hit a home run. And even more disturbing is he isn\u2019t driving in runs either. As of Sunday night had had four runs batted in and was hitting.216.<\/p>\n

Two years ago it would have been hard to find anyone who would not have traded Matt Kemp for Pujols straight up. Now it would be hard to find anybody who would. In fact, if I\u2019m Ned Colletti there\u2019s not a single player in baseball I would trade Kemp for.<\/p>\n

Kemp right now reminds me of Manny Ramirez in his first month with the Dodgers. Everything stops when he steps up to the plate. After his at bat is over then we resume whatever we were doing.<\/p>\n

Note to Colletti: Lock up Andre Ethier to a multi-year deal and you have three all-star players for the next ten years that you can build your team around – Kemp and Clayton Kershaw of course being the other two.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my principle.<\/p>\n

Tim can be reached at tim@midvalleysports.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first time I saw Corey Copping pitch was at Temple City American Little League for the Angels at Live Oak Park six years ago. I\u2019ve seen him numerous times over the past few years throwing for the Rams at Temple City High School. I saw him grow up. So for me it was special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12817],"tags":[6509,5042,2271,2258,2030,420,2553,3070,5310,80,282,15,2417,484,7462,7473,98,7472,7427],"class_list":["post-23670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fanview","category-petersonprince","tag-albert-pujols","tag-andre-ethier","tag-angel-acosta","tag-barry-bacon","tag-calvin-copping","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-corey-copping","tag-gabrielino-baseball","tag-joe-mata","tag-manny-ramirez","tag-matt-kemp","tag-monrovia-baseball","tag-mvl","tag-ned-colletti","tag-oklahoma-baseball","tag-san-marino-baseball","tag-south-pasadena","tag-temple-city-american-little-league","tag-temple-city-baseball"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59501,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670\/revisions\/59501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}