Austin Lachapelle fires no-no for San Mateo in PAL Ocean Division baseball opener

But it wasn’t until Lachapelle finished the day with his 12th strikeout, and catcher Aaron Wong sprinted toward the mound to celebrate, that the senior southpaw knew for certain he had just fired a no-hitter in San Mateo’s 2-0 victory at Woodside in Tuesday’s Peninsula Athletic League Ocean Division opener.

“’The reaction is really good, my catcher is running at me, I think we have a no-hitter,’” Lachapelle said of his thoughts as Wong and his teammates converged on the mound. “Then all the guys started storming around me, and that’s when I knew we got it.”

Lachapelle has been the ace of the Bearcats’ pitching staff this season and has enjoyed several dominant outings. He held Lincoln-SF to two hits through six innings in San Mateo’s 3-2 win March 1. And last week, he limited Aragon to three hits through five frames in a 3-2 loss.

While the left-hander has proven a strikeout specialist, the one downside has been his propensity for wildness. And while he has been able to work through his high walk rate with an even higher strikeout rate, the combination of the good and the bad has often made for ugly pitch counts.

“He’s been throwing this way all year for us,” San Mateo manager Neal Goldstein said. “The one thing that worries me is … the pitch count gets up there. This game he was right on the edge, but he got through it.”

Lachapelle finished the day with 104 pitches, just shy of the 110-pitch limit allowed for high school pitchers before they must, by rule, be removed from a game. But he was sitting at 95 pitches after six innings of work.

“I was thinking, we’ve got a shot,” Goldstein said. “But I still was warming up a guy just in case.”

While Goldstein had left-hander Victor Angulo warming up in the bullpen, Lachapelle quickly put his manager at ease.

After opening the seventh with a four-pitch strikeout, Lachapelle needed just two pitches to induce a hard groundball to second baseman Giancarlo Selvitella. Then Lachapelle went right at the final batter, notching the game-ending strikeout on three pitches.

“When I do struggle with command, I walk a lot of people, but I’m typically able to limit the damage when I’m on,” Lachapelle said. “When I’m on, I’ll be able to work my way out of the inning.”

And despite the perilous pitch count, Lachapelle said he only felt stronger as the game wore on.

“At the end of innings … when my arm usually gets tired, it didn’t really feel tired at all, and I was able to keep going,” Lachapelle said.

Not that he started the day with as much confidence.

When Lachapelle began his warmups, he went through his usual plyometrics workout to get loose. But when he started throwing his pregame bullpen, he couldn’t get a handle on his fastball. The senior has been through this before and, in these cases, relies on his curveball to find his rhythm.

Come game time, however, Lachapelle’s curveball started getting away from him as well. And through the first two innings, it was a constant struggle to find a consistent arm slot.

“My curve was definitely my best pitch in this game,” Lachapelle said. “It wasn’t really working until the third inning but once I found it … I was able to use it as a strikeout pitch.”

San Mateo got all the runs it would need in the first inning when Chad Hawkins shot an RBI single up the middle to score Wong. Arnav Singh gave the Bearcats and insurance run in the fifth inning with a solo home run to left, the first homer of his varsity career.

Lachapelle did the rest. And with his gem, the Bearcats’ team ERA dropped below 1. Through nine games, San Mateo now owns a 0.93 staff ERA.

“We’re 6-3 (overall) now and 1-0 in league and we’re pretty good,” Goldstein said. “We have a pretty good lineup and depth on the bench — and pitching. Pitching has been our strongest point.”