Four OC high school baseball players to compete for spot on USA 18-and-under squad

Milan Tolentino makes a play for Santa Margarita in the CIF finals. (File photo Fernando M. Donado, For OC Sports Zone)

Some of the top young baseball players in the country will be competing in a series of games next week as part of the 18-and-under trials at the Great Park Baseball Stadium in Irvine, according to Guy Lemmon of the Ryan Lemmon Foundation.

Among the players scheduled to compete for spots on the under-18 USA team are Milan Tolentino of Santa Margarita High, Max Rajcic of Orange Lutheran, Jag Burden of Huntington Beach, Cody Schrier from JSerra and Jared Jones from La Mirada, according to the roster released by Frank Jagoda of USA Baseball.

Tolentino was the CIF Division 2 player of the year, leading the Eagles to the CIF title.

Games will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 13; Wednesday, Aug. 14; Thursday, Aug. 15 and Wednesday, Aug. 21 at the Great Park Stadium.

Twenty of the players will be selected to the final 2019 18-and-under National Team team which will then travel to South Korea to compete in the World Baseball Softball Confederation Under 18 Baseball World Cup, according to Emily Fedewa, assistant director, media relations for USA Baseball.

There will also be games at Dodger Stadium Friday, Aug. 16 and Saturday, Aug. 17 and a game at JSerra on Tuesday, Aug. 20.

The 18-and-under team will be selected based on the first five games. Then the final two games at the Great Park and JSerra will be the first two games of training against the Brewers SoCal Scout team, according to USA Baseball.

The team will do most of its training at Fullerton College with one session at JSerra. The 18-and-under national team has won 19 games in a row. The last loss came to Mexico on Oct. 17, 2016 in the COPABE AAA Pan American championships. The team went on to win the gold medal that year.