Capuchino Mustangs swagger to win over Carlmont Scots

And even more majestic than the mighty swing, or the epic pose down as he walked halfway up the first base line before beginning his trot, or the rainbow arc bat flip directly in front of host Carlmont’s dugout, was the booming trajectory of the home run shot — a shot that was long gone.

“I got all of that one and more,” Balch said.

The victory, Cap’s 10th overall win of the year, puts the Mustangs (3-0 PAL Bay, 10-2 overall) in elite company as one of just three teams in the Central Coast Section to have reached the 10-win plateau so far. The other two are West Catholic Athletic League powerhouses Serra and Valley Christian.

Starting pitcher Devin Meyer was nails to deliver his first complete game since his sophomore year of 2019. The senior right-hander gritted through some early struggles when he was missing spots with his fastball, and Carlmont — batting .354 as a team this season — was jumping on him.

But Meyer mitigated the damage early on, thanks to two critical Carlmont outs on the basepaths, and settled in to retire eight of the last nine batters he faced.

“I’m not stranger to Devin Meyer,” Capuchino manager Matt Wilson said. “This is his third year up at varsity and his reputation speaks for itself. He’s a gamer. He’s a bulldog. He wants to go after you every single pitch and I just love coaching kids like that. So, I have all the confidence in the world every time he steps up on the mound.”

Meyer’s last complete game was on May 15, 2019 in Capuchino’s CCS Division II playoff opener, a 12-2 upset of Carmel. Since that day, his final start of 2019, Meyer has yet to play another complete varsity baseball season. His junior year of 2020, of course, was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. And he started this baseball season late due to his starting spot as the quarterback of the Cap football team.

So, it was a big moment for Meyer to walk of the mound Wednesday after finishing out the CG.

“It meant a lot,” Meyer said. “I knew I was throwing a lot of pitches. It was a battle. I just kept pushing through. I knew I could do it. My arm felt good the whole game. So, I just knew I was going to finish, and it was a good outcome.”

The win also marked just the second comeback victory of the season for Capuchino, and the first one hardly counts. That was last week’s 4-2 win over St. Francis, a game in which St. Francis scored a run in the top of the second, and Cap answered right back with a run in the bottom of the inning, two in the third and another in the fourth. Wednesday’s comeback was notably more dramatic.

Carlmont (2-1, 5-5) jumped on top with two runs in the bottom of the second. For the second straight game, junior third baseman Carson Vance laced a two-run double into the left-field corner. The Scots No. 8 hitter is currently hitting .474 (9 for 22) on the year.

“He’s been producing at the bottom of the lineup for us the last few weeks,” Carlmont manager Ryan Hamilton said.

But in the fourth inning, the Mustangs finally began to solve Carlmont starting pitcher Camden Scholl. The senior right-hander went 6 1/3 innings, yielding five runs (three earned) on 11 hits.

“He was on his game today,” Hamilton said. “He just ran out of gas in the seventh. That was his highest pitch count. He had never gone above 75 (pitches) on the season. So, he just ran out of gas.”

Scholl worked his way out of a second-and-third, no-out jam in the first inning with two strikeouts and a groundout to strand both Cap runners in scoring position.

“We’ve done that a few times this year,” Wilson said. “In the last two weeks, we’ve done it four or five times. So, it was very frustrating. But I’ve been preaching to these guys, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And the way that they bounced back, they made adjustments — because their pitcher was keeping us off balance in the beginning — we just kept fighting and we bounced back.”

In the fourth, the Mustangs started chipping away.

Ryan Lapuyade led off the inning with a double, then scored on an RBI groundout by Cesar Ceron. Then in the fifth, Nicholas Gomez doubled home Ryan Lordier to tie it. And after Conor Meehan singled Gomez to third, an infield error on a sharp chopper off the bat of Lapuyade scored Gomez to give the Mustangs a 3-2 lead.

Carlmont ran its way out of rallies in the first and third. In the first, Jack Vanoncini smacked a one-out double. But then the junior got too aggressive a lead on a planned steal of third and got picked off at second. Then in the third, after an Vanoncini single, a hit-and-run saw Tripp Garrish rope a liner to shallow center that got tracked down by the Cap outfield, only to see Vanoncini rounding second and heading for third, making for an easy double play.

“If he stops on that, he’s out anyway,” Hamilton said. “50-50 ball, if that drops, he’s scoring. The first one, he was stealing on that ball, so that’s why he got picked off, a little extra lead.”

Balch’s two-run blast in the seventh, bat flip and all, put the game on ice.

“It’s always a big win when you play Carlmont,” Wilson said. “They’ve been league champs six out of the last seven years. So, you know they’re always going to bring their best. They’re a great team and we always know we’re going to be in a battle when we play them.”

The two teams conclude a key Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division two-game series Friday at Capuchino.

“Definitely an important series for us,” Hamilton said. “We know they’re a top team in the Bay. We believe we still are a top team in the Bay. And it’s going to be a big game on Friday.”