BELLFLOWER — It's an odd thing, starting your season when so many teams are going to be ending theirs.

So far, it doesn't seem to be a problem for the Thousand Oaks Big League All-Stars.

The team of 16- to 18-year-olds — the reigning champion of Little League Baseball's Big League Division — is, through a quirky turn of events, opening its season at the Southern California State Tournament, normally the third level of All-Star competition.

To date, this has been something less than an insurmountable handicap.

With Tuesday evening's 5-0 win over East Anaheim, Thousand Oaks is 2-0 and has reached Friday's winner's bracket final at Ruth Caruthers Park in Bellflower. The team needs just two wins to claim the tournament.

Do that, and Thousand Oaks is off to the Western Regional in Ollala, Wash. Win there, and it's back to South Carolina to defend last year's championship.

Thousand Oaks is getting a late start on its season for the simple reason there were no other teams to play at either the district or section level, giving it an unexpected, and not particularly welcome, bye into the Southern California tournament, where the competition — as you might expect — is pretty good.

"We're putting our feet to the fire," said Thousand Oaks manager Ed Kitchen. "The Southern California representative, I would say, 95 percent of the time goes to the World Series on the Big League level.

"This is the tournament. Whoever gets through this one has a good shot to get to the World Series."

Thousand Oaks beat Bloomington 9-1 in its opening game Sunday, a score Kitchen said was somewhat deceptive.

"We were fortunate," he said. "The other team made seven errors, and they kind of gave us some runs. They had a good pitcher, but I don't care who you are — seven errors" is costly.

More to the point, he didn't feel the team played that well, and at a point when he'd normally know a lot more about lineups, hot bats, and the like, he and the team are still taking their first steps.

"We're going to find out game by game," he said. "We've got a lot of talent, but we've got to figure out what the lineup is going to be like. Maybe it's going to be a platoon system. We don't know.

"So we're going to be doing some back and forth with players. If somebody gets hot, they'll obviously stay in there."

Of course, for all those understandable concerns, it's still baseball. The guys on this team may not have played much together, but it's not like they haven't played. It's an experienced group, representing seven area high schools, with five players who spent the spring playing at the junior-college or college level. It also includes seven players who were on the team that beat Puerto Rico 10-0 to win the Big League World Series last year in South Carolina.

"We've got pretty good camaraderie," said catcher Stephen Notaro. "We all know each other from high school. Baseball-wise, we haven't played with each other, but growing up, we've all known each other. So it's a little easier to ease into it."

And at least some players have been teammates before.

"I played with a bunch of them in summer ball," said Camarillo shortstop Garrett Rau. "None of them were on my high school team. It's just a good bunch of guys that can come together really easy."

There's also a core group from last year's Big League experience that seems to have accelerated the team-building process, too.

"Having all this experience, and telling me all about how all this works, it feels like I am a veteran right now," said pitcher Zach Thornton. "I feel like no matter who they hit it to, they'll make the play for me, so I have no worries whatsoever."

As Thornton demonstrated Tuesday, it's still baseball in another respect: Good pitching can dominate. His 84-pitch one-hitter stifled an East Anaheim team that has been something of a traditional rival for Thousand Oaks.

"They've thrown us into the loser's bracket three times," said Kitchen. "Two times, we fought through, and once we lost in the final game. It's always a good rivalry."

It didn't happen this time, thanks to a five-run sixth and Thornton's strong performance.

"This is the first time I've really caught him," said Notaro, in another illustration of how new all this is. "I caught him in bullpens and stuff. I'm really impressed. "His control was completely on today. I hardly had to move. It's a little nerve-wracking (catching him for the first time), but it seemed like we had a good connection. So I was pretty confident."

Increasingly, so is the team.

"I think we'll play anyone," said Thornton. "We're ready to play, no matter what."

To Kitchen, Tuesday's win was a significant step forward.

"This was a critical game," said Kitchen. "It would have been a tough haul to go through what they're now going to go through. They're going to have to play five games to get there. Now, we're close."

Close to advancing, and closer by the day to erasing any concerns about a late-starting season.

— Contact Star columnist David Lassen at dlassen@Venturacountystar.com.