Prep baseball: San Marin rolls past Novato into title game
The high-flying San Marin High baseball team never allowed cross-town rival Novato a chance to take a deep breath in Tuesday’s semifinals of the MCAL playoffs.
The Mustangs scored three runs on one hit in the first inning and galloped away to a smart 9-0 victory on a breezy afternoon in Novato.
San Marin (18-7) extended its winning streak to 10 and defeated Novato for the third time in a week to earn a spot in the league championship contest Friday night against No. 1 seed Redwood, which knocked off Marin Catholic 11-7 in the other semifinal game.
The MCAL title will be decided at 7 p.m. at Albert Park in San Rafael.
San Marin, which defeated Novato twice in the final week of the regular season to earn the second seed in the playoffs, makes its second consecutive appearance in the league title game. The Mustangs lost to Tam in the MCAL final last year.
Tuesday’s game was all about starting pitching – and San Marin’s Sean McGrath was in a groove from the word go while his counterpart, Novato sophomore JP Harmon, dug himself a hole every bit as quickly.
McGrath pitched a five-inning two-hitter and faced only one batter above the minimum while striking out five.
Two of McGrath’s strikeouts came back-to-back in the first inning after yielding a leadoff single to Gio Castaing.
Harmon, on the other hand, plunked Joey Cipollina with his first pitch of the afternoon. Before the inning was finished, Harmon walked four batters – the final three all coming with the bases loaded.
“He’s young and we wanted to make him throw strikes,” San Marin coach Jamie Vattuone said. “Our plan was to take a strike before we swung the bat.”
The plan worked to perfection as Harmon did not survive the first inning, making way for a reliever with two outs.
Hard-throwing McGrath had no such problems with his control. After allowing a walk in the first, he retired the next eight batters in a row.
“I threw a lot of fastballs,” McGrath said. “I just tried to attack the zone and tried to get out of the innings quickly. I felt really smooth out there today. I hit my spots, located my pitches well, and the defense did the rest.”
San Marin’s defense was flawless and included a diving catch of a sinking liner by center fielder Cipollina and two nice charging plays by third baseman Matthew Baldino on softly hit grounders.
“Our defense has been key the last few weeks during the winning streak,” Vattuone said. “And it’s not just one guy making plays. The whole team is playing great defense.”
San Marin turned to its right field power stream to break the game open in the middle innings.
Clean-up hitter Anthony Scheppler teed up a third-inning, first-pitch fastball and sent a towering flyball inches beyond the 300-foot sign down the right-field line for a solo home run.
In the fourth inning, an error and a hit batter set the stage for McGrath, who jolted a three-run, opposite-field homer over the right-field fence.
“I had not hit an opposite field home run ever before,” McGrath said. “I was just trying to battle in that at-bat. It was a fastball down the middle and it found the barrel and went over the fence.”
The Mustangs closed out the scoring in the fifth on a Daniel Rolovich run-scoring single and a Cole Chamberlain RBI walk. Chamberlain reached base in all four plate appearances and scored two runs.
San Marin reliever Tanner O’Keefe closed out the game, facing one batter over the minimum and allowed no hits.