Daily Journal Athlete of the Week: Menlo’s Ryan Schnell

With the Knights holding a 4-0 lead mid-game, manager David Trujillo pulled Schnell after four innings. It was his shortest starting outing of the year, but it meant the senior could pitch six more innings in the tournament, with CIF capping a pitcher’s innings at 10 in a single calendar week, and the Nor Cal tourney spanning Tuesday through Saturday.

“I just kind of knew that this was my last year of baseball,” Schnell said. “So, as many innings as I could pitch by rule, I was going to go.”

It was the first step toward Schnell punching his ticket for the final Daily Journal Athlete of the Week award of the 2023-24 school year. He’d return to the mound Thursday for the Nor Cal semifinals to fire two shutout innings of relief to earn the win in a 3-2 extra-inning victory over Oakland Tech. With his second win of the week, Schnell’s record improved to 12-1, ranking him first in wins throughout the CCS, and tying him for fifth in the state behind four pitchers with 13 wins.

Schnell had a shot at win No. 13, but Menlo fell short in its run at a Nor Cal Division V title in a 3-2 loss to Woodland Christian in Saturday’s championship game at Cartan Baseball Field. The senior entered in the fourth inning with the Knights trailing 2-0 and gave his team four innings to max out at 10 innings on the week.

“By the rules, I hit my 10-inning limit,” Schnell said. “But if there were no rules, I would have tried to go 21 innings this week, every game.”

Schnell was touched for one unearned run on four hits, and finished the tourney with a 2-0 record, allowing five hits through 10 innings while walking one and striking out 12. He turned in a pristine 0.00 ERA, dropping his season ERA to 2.16. He also surpassed the century mark with a remarkable 100 2/3 innings pitched on the year.

“He’s our leader,” Trujillo said. “We wouldn’t be here without him. He does so much at practice and as a leader, obviously in games when he’s on the mound. But he’s a great culture guy. He’s really helped me build this culture we have today. The culture is built by these guys, and he was the main guy with that.”

Since joining the varsity pitching staff as a freshman, Schnell has helped Menlo recover from one its worst seasons in the history of the program. During his freshman season of 2021, a majority underclassman team returned from the lost pandemic season and managed to win just two games. At the time, however, co-managers Greg Hart and Tink Reynoso intimated the varsity group was going to make some serious noise over the three years to follow.

Hart and Reynoso departed after a bounce-back 2022 season in which the Knights reached the CCS Division V semifinals. Trujillo took over in 2023 and Menlo just missed the postseason after Schnell was injured much of the season. While the right-hander did log 36 1/3 innings as a junior, he was dealt downtime after suffering a freak injury in practice, tearing ankle ligaments while jumping for a baseball and landing on another one laying on the ground.

The missing time was a big motivator for him this year.

“It was really hard to be out,” Schnell said. “So, I was really glad I able to just finish the season.”

In turn, Schnell became Menlo’s biggest motivator. His workhorse ways were only half of it.

The senior’s leadership qualities were on full display in Saturday’s Nor Cal finals. With the Knights trailing 3-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh, Schnell ran off the mound and immediately called a team huddle in front of the dugout. Since he had maxed out at 10 innings and wasn’t in the lineup, it was the last contribution he’d make to the team.

His spirited Knute Rockne moment nearly did the trick.

“The thing is everybody respects Schnell because he doesn’t just talk the talk, he actually follows it up,” Menlo senior Mikey McGrath said. “And he just came out every single day and shoved. He just plays with so much heart, and you can see that emotion coming off the mound. He just really loves to be here and he really loves our team. And I think people just follow a guy like that, a guy who leads by example and not just by words.”

The Knights rallied for one run in the bottom of the seventh, and came within a few feet of tying it up. With runners on first and second and one out, Trujillo took a chance in the third-base coach’s box on an infield grounder. Woodland attempted to turn a 6-4-3 double play, but couldn’t double up Jake Sonsini at first base, prompting Trujillo to wave home Chuck Wynn, the runner from second, in an attempt to catch the defense off guard.

“We worked on that play for the last two weeks,” Woodland Christian manager John Rodegerdts said. “As we’re practicing, we’re making sure the first baseman knows to keep your head on a swivel and keep looking. It was a good call. ... It took two good throws, and a catch and a tag, and all of that to get the out.”

Schnell supported Trujillo’s gamble, pointing out Woodland’s first baseman, Jayden Badhesha, had pitched the first five innings as his team’s starting pitcher. Badhesha too had topped out at 10 innings for the week.

“I would have sent him too,” Schnell said. “I think, you have a lefty first baseman who pitched the whole game; he’s got a sore arm. You’ve got Chuck who’s barreling down the line, and that guy’s got to make the perfect throw. And he did, so hats off to him. But I wouldn’t have done it differently.”

If the Knights had to lose, they did so in the most exciting way with Wynn diving headlong toward the plate, only to get tagged out to end the game — and the season.

Trujillo was wearing it hard after the game, but hard decisions are part of baseball. Schnell too had a hard decision to make in terms of his baseball future, opting to step away from the sport after his senior season to attend Tulane University academically.

Schnell had offers to play collegiate baseball, including from the NCAA Division III program at Carleton College in Minnesota, where 2020 Menlo graduate Kiefer Lord pitched immediately out of high school, this before Lord transferred to University of Washington and was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles last year.

“I think there’s going to be more to my college experience than baseball,” Schnell said. “I’m really going to miss it, but I think it was time to hang up the cleats.”

Immediately following Saturday’s game, though, Schnell was all smiles, even if he was feeling it both physically and emotionally. The smiles were well earned after turning in one of the most impressive workloads you’ll ever see out of a high school pitcher.

“I kind of knew going into it this was my last meaningful week of baseball ever,” Schnell said. “So, just whatever I could do for the team. Yeah, I’m not feeling my arm at all right now. I’m just glad they trusted me to give me the ball and we were able to put us in a spot where we could hold it.”