Monarchs, Wildcats To Meet in CCS Final
The fifth and seventh seeds have advanced to the CCS Division I Championship.
SAN JOSE — It’s going to be a very long and busy Saturday for Nico Rodriguez and the rest of the Mitty seniors.
His class will graduate at 9 a.m., and 10 hours later, he’ll take the field at Excite Ballpark as his Monarchs battle St. Ignatius for the CCS Division I Baseball Championship.
Rodriguez went 4-for-4 at the plate with two runs and an RBI, then got the final two outs for the save in fifth-seeded Mitty’s 7-5 upset win over No. 1 Valley Christian (27-5) at Excite Ballpark in the latter semifinal on Wednesday night.
“It feels fantastic. We’ve taken some tough losses the last couple years to these guys,” said Rodriguez, a Wichita State commit.
Valley Christian and Serra had tied for the WCAL title in the regular season, and the Warriors won the league tournament. But neither will play for the championship in the section’s top division after SI eliminated the Padres on Saturday and Mitty (18-12-1) toppled the Warriors on Wednesday night.
After his excellent night at the plate, Rodriguez was called on to relieve Luka Pintar and get the final two outs. Pintar had faced a trio of Stanford commits, hitting both Tatum Marsh and Quinten Marsh with pitches before inducing a foul pop-up from Brock Ketelsen that catcher Andrew Sauceda was able to flag down.
Entering with the tying run on base, Rodriguez did himself no favors by uncorking a wild pitch to allow the Marsh brothers to advance en route to walking Nathan Choi on four pitches.
“This whole season, I’ve had trouble with that first guy,” Rodriguez said. “My coaches like to say I make it interesting.”
Rodriguez’s familiarity with the situation paid off. He fanned Nicholls commit Rocco Muccilli swinging, then got a grounder off the bat of Tanner Jones that shortstop Waylon Walsh fielded in the hole and tossed to second, beating the sliding Choi by the slimmest of margins to end the game.
Mitty led for the entire night thanks to a rally that Rodriguez started. He led off the game with a single to left-center and advanced to second on Tanner Kern’s walk. Saint Mary’s commit Makoa Sniffen followed, catching the Warrior defense off guard with a bunt. Nobody covered first to receive Kole Laubach’s throw, and as Sniffen advanced to third, the throw back to the infield bounced into the Monarch dugout for a two-error, three-run sacrifice hit.
“That’s just kind of the Mitty brand. Grind it out every bat,” Sniffen said. “Even though I’ve been swinging it really well, we bunt every day in practice. Once I saw the throw, I just kept running.”
Jordan Ortiz’s sac fly scored Jones to get Valley Christian on the board in the third, but Mitty answered in the fourth on Rodriguez’s two-out RBI single to right field. Muccilli brought Ketelsen in on a sac fly in the bottom half to cut the lead to 4-2, only for the Monarchs to tack on two more with a two-out rally in the fifth.
Laubach got Sniffen to pop out and struck out Santa Clara commit Waylon Walsh, but walked Pintar. Grayson Munoz followed with a single to right field, and after Sauceda walked to load the bases, freshman Derek Allen drove in a pair with a single to center.
The Monarchs tacked on another run in the sixth against USC commit Rohan Kasanagottu, with Rodriguez collecting his fourth hit of the night on a single to center and scoring on Walsh’s sac fly.
Valley Christian finally cracked the code against righty Carson Seeger in the bottom of the sixth, loading the bases on a Quinten Marsh walk, Choi HBP and Muccilli single. Jones followed with a grounder to the left side, and Muccilli beat out the fielder’s choice at second base. Luke Osuna-Summers brought Choi home with a single, and Muccilli scored on a wild pitch after Joseph Engin relieved Seeger, but Engin bounced back to freeze Hunter Fujimoto for strike 3 and got Ortiz to fly out to center.
St. Ignatius 10, Carmel 0 (5 innings)
The opening game of the semifinal doubleheader had nowhere near as much drama, with the St. Ignatius Wildcats racking up seven runs in the second inning and beating the Carmel Padres 10-0 in a mercy rule-shortened game.
Evann Smith drove in three runs in the big inning, starting the party with an inside-the-park homer and capping off the rally with a two-run single.
Confusion arose when he led off the frame with a fly ball to left-center that rolled to the wall. It settled underneath the ads on the fence, and the Carmel outfielder threw his hands up to signal a dead ball before reconsidering and deciding to play it. After the play concluded, the umpires convened and determined that it was indeed a live ball.
Smith rounded the inning out with a much more standard single to left, scoring Emmett Johnson III and Rocco Giometti to conclude a seven-run rally. Patrick Ruane, Johnson and Giometti each singled in runs after AJ Wineinger beat a throw home on DJ Delaney’s grounder to second.
Smith added a fourth RBI in the top of the fourth, driving in Johnson once again. An error and a Ruane RBI groundout in the fifth brought home the last two runs needed to end the game early.
Chase Gordon pitched five shutout innings for the Wildcats, allowing five hits and a pair of walks. In two CCS playoff games, St. Ignatius (20-9) has shut out two different sets of Padres, having eliminated No. 2 Serra on Saturday.
Bo Iandoli went 2-for-3 for Carmel (23-6).