Menlo rolls into second place in the Bay

Two years ago, the Knights won a “B” league PAL Ocean Division title. Since moving up to the Bay Division, though, the youthful Knights have been on a quest to prove themselves worthy of remaining among the league’s elite.

Fittingly, senior right-hander Justin Nam led the victory charge Friday. With a majority junior roster, Menlo is counting on the third-year varsity starter to lead the team back to the Central Coast Section playoffs, where he was a postseason hero as a sophomore during the 2017 Division II championship run.

“He pitched well,” Menlo co-manager Greg Hart said. “He’s pitched for us for three years. This is his senior year so we expect big things.”

Nam delivered one of his finest performances of the year Friday, allowing one run on five hits through six innings of work to earn the win, upping his record to 4-2. He and junior right-hander Julien Hernandez have proven an effective 1-2 punch and are now tied for the team lead with four wins apiece.

“[Hernandez] is another guy who’s an incredibly hard worker,” Nam said. “So, we’ve just been kind of feeding off each other, just getting outs and throwing strikes, that’s all.”

Nam has been stellar both sides of the ball. He entered the game leading the Knights in each of the triple-crown categories — with a .563 average, two home runs and 20 RBIs — and added a 2-for-4 batting line to his pitching exploits.

Menlo’s defense was shaky early on, but Nam’s stuff was fresh, crisp and up to the challenge. The Knights committed two errors in the first inning to put Carlmont leadoff batter Sean Vanderaa at second base with no outs. But Vanderaa advanced no further as Nam started a streak of setting down seven Scots in a row.

Then in the third inning, an error by Nam opened the door for Carlmont to load the bases with two outs. Nam then ran the count to 3 balls, 2 strikes against cleanup hitter Logan Snow, but escaped the jam by notching one of his five strikeouts.

Then in the later innings, Menlo’s defense not only sharpened its game, center fielder JC Ng turned in what will quite possible stand as the play of the year with a diving catch in the fifth. With one out, Vanderaa hit a rocket toward right-center. Ng had been shading Vanderaa toward left-center to pull, but got an explosive first step and sprinted a good 20 paces to lay out with a headlong dive, nabbing the sinking liner with an all-out backhanded catch.

Nam said, off the crack of the bat, he didn’t think Ng had a chance to catch the ball.

“I didn’t think so,” Nam said. “I thought it was in the gap … but he gets really good reads off the bat and he just went and got it. That was impressive.”

There was far more drama attached to Ng’s next putout, on Nam’s final batter of the game to finish the sixth inning. Carlmont loaded the bases with singled from Tyler DeSMidt and Mateos Melkesian, and a walk by Ben Fong.

Then senior Daniel Friis stepped to the plate, already having one grand slam to his credit this year in a 14-0 rivalry-game win over Sequoia. Nam challenged Friis with a first-pitch fastball and the senior just missed connecting, instead sending a high fly to center for Ng to camp under and end the threat.

“I was looking first-pitch fastball just because he had walked the previous guy,” Friis said. “I thought he was going to come into me, which he did. I got good barrel on it, I just missed it a little.”

On the flipside, the Menlo offense made the most of its opportunities. Eight of the Knights’ nine starters reached base. And then after getting on the board in the third inning on an RBI single by Ian Collins, Menlo continues adding on, scoring in every inning from there on.

“That’s very important,” Hart said. “And after a game like we had on Wednesday (Menlo won 15-8) where we got a lot of hits and a lot of runs, you worry it’s going to be a 1-1 game the next day. But we kept adding on. That’s very important.”

Carlmont answered back in the top of the fourth with an RBI double by Fong. But Menlo took the lead right back in the bottom of the fourth on a two-out RBI infield single by Ng, knocking Carlmont’s starting pitcher Snow out of the game.

Snow, at times, looked sharp in striking out seven through 3 2/3 innings. But he got tangled up mechanically in the middle innings, walking three in the third inning to set the table for Menlo’s first run. He then hit No. 8 batter Kiefer Lord, then threw consecutive wild pitches to move him around to third, and issued his fifth walk of the day to No. 9 hitter Adam Kasser before Ng’s go-ahead single.

“I think his pitch was the breaking ball,” Carlmont interim manager Jesse Velez said. “But not getting the fastball over, guys are going to sit and wait for that off-speed pitch. And that’s what hurt us.”

In the bottom of the fifth, Menlo added on with the help of a controversial play.

With runners at second and third and no outs, Carlmont reliever Jason Korjeff was facing Collins and threw a pitch in the dirt. As the ball skipped through the left-handed batter’s box, the left-handed hitting Collins kicked at it, and appeared to make contact with the ball. The pitch skipped to the backstop, with Carlmont’s catcher Friis initially not chasing it down presuming the play was dead. But neither a hit batsman nor batter’s interference was called, and courtesy runner Jake Tsutaoka dashed home to score on the wild pitch.

“On the hop I saw the lefty batter stick his back foot out and just kind of kick it away to the other side,” Friis said. “And I think the reason it was such a big play is because we were struggling to get outs at that point of the game. They were really starting to hit us well. … It scored runs and it just let momentum get to their side.”

Menlo added another run when Collins lifted a sacrifice fly to score Max Chou. Then in the sixth, Chou doubled home Charlie Giesler to up the lead to 5-1.

Carlmont got to Menlo reliever Bennett Norman for a run in the seventh on an RBI double by DeSmidt, but the sidewinding Norman closed out the game with his second strikeout of the frame.

“We hit the ball but it was always right at somebody or just up in the air,” Velez said. “And you can’t score runs when you try to make it rain.”