PCC Baseball Clinches 8th Straight Trip To Postseason

Alex Valencia is 3-0 in his last three appearances as he fires a pitch v. LA Pierce.
Alex Valencia is 3-0 in his last three appearances as he fires a pitch v. LA Pierce.

The Pasadena City College baseball team closed out the 2026 regular season on Saturday, knocking off LA Pierce, 11-5, and in the process the Lancers have clinched their eight consecutive trip to the Southern California Regional Playoffs. The game was also the home finale for PCC at its off-campus park--Brookside Park's Jackie Robinson Field.

The Lancers are 23-17 overall and finished in fourth place in the South Coast Conference at 15-9. PCC will learn its official seed this weekend and it will announced on our X site @PCCAthletics.

PCC raced out to a 6-0 lead after four innings and built it to 11-1 by the seventh. 

Catcher/designated hitter Joaquin Salcedo upped his PCC school record for RBI in a career, now with 81 as he batted a perfect 4-for-4 with a stolen base and three runs knocked in. In the month of April, the sophomore saw an 8-game RBI streak stopped in Thursday's SCC finale loss at El Camino, 7-0. He started up again today as he drove in 25 ribbies in the team's last 11 contests. 

Salcedo has played 76 career games averaging a remarkable 1.07 RBI. He is now one hit short of reaching the 100-hit milestone in his Lancers career. 

Sophomore shortstop Omar Cisneros went 2-for-4 with three RBI and assumed the team's batting lead with a .342 average to go with 34 RBI. Second baseman Logan Parker batted 2-for-5 while first baseman Joey Ramos was 1-for-3 with two RBI. 

The beneficiary of the offense was lefty Alex Valencia, who once again was outstanding on the hill. The freshman allowed just three hits in seven innings, losing a shutout on a home run in the seventh. He walked one, struck out five and has team-best, 5-1 record. In his last three appearances, all victories, he has pitched 17.2 innings, giving up a stingy seven hits, three walks and collecting 10 Ks. He had a stretch of 16.2 consecutive shutout frames. 

Sergio Robles pitched a scoreless ninth and in his last six games or all of April thus far, he has thrown 9.2 innings, allowing just two runs v. Rio Hondo, walking three and striking out five. 

"We won eight of our last 10 games, and beat a great El Camino team this week," McGee said. "Pitchers like Alex and Sergio have been so huge for us down the stretch. Joaquin has been really swinging a hot stick and he's been a RBI machine in both seasons here. Omar continues to be a team leader on both defense and offense. To be able to make it again into the postseason is a testament to our brand of PCC baseball. The teams before them set standards of winning and this '26 squad wanted to show that they could continue the success. And they have."

Besides the streak of playoff berths, PCC also has eight 20-plus win seasons in a row. 

In the SCC loss at state #5-ranked El Camino, the unranked Lancers were nearly no-hit by Warriors' lefty Anthony Camarena, who had the no-no broken up on an infield single by Parker in the eighth. Parker did a head-first slide into first after hitting a ball that deflected off Camarena's glove to ECC shortstop Slater Nunez. Nunez fired the ball over to first base but Parker was ruled safe by the first base umpire. 

PCC finished with that one hit and were blanked for the third time this season. Jonathan Bracamonte kept PCC in the game with six strong innings before getting touched for five runs in the seventh. 

El Camino shared the SCC championship with Mt. San Antonio in each finishing at 19-5 in conference play.