Gut-wrenching loss for Gators baseball

SANTA CLARA — While it was a heartbreaker for the Sacred Heart Prep Gators, a better pitching duel you will not see.

The No. 4-seed Gators (20-8-1) fell 2-1 in Thursday’s Central Coast Section Division III baseball semifinals, getting walked off by No. 1 seed Branham at Mission College. The Bruins won it on Colin Williams’ RBI double into the right-field corner to score Keaton Cooper all the way from first base — leaving SHP stunned in the season-ending elimination game.

SHP freshman Rallin Covey took the hard-luck loss on the mound, recording his second complete game of the season. The tall right-hander with the signature curly locks flowing from the back of his baseball cap locked up with Branham ace Evan Williams to work 6-plus innings, allowing two runs (one earned) on six hits while hitting his spots with precision all day to the tune of 76 pitches.

“What you saw today was him and what he’s done all year,” SHP catcher Mason Chetcuti said. “He’s a freshman, which is pretty remarkable. To come out here and only give up two runs against a team that is known to just beat you by scoring more runs is pretty incredible. And he did everything we could have ever asked for.”

Branham (22-7) entered the day hitting .319 as a team, but Covey set down the first six batters he faced, with 12 strikes on his first 14 pitches. But the highlight of his day came in the third inning, ironically, the inning the Bruins scored the game’s first run.

Nolan Rodriguez jumped on Covey’s first pitch in the third inning and scorched it over the center fielder’s head for a leadoff triple. Then SHP’s freshman starter bore down. Covey only struck out four batters in the game, but with a runner at third, he punched out the No. 8 and 9 hitters back-to-back.

Then with two outs, Covey induced a slow chopper to the left side for third baseman Conrad Wilbur to make a nice charging play. The senior fielded on the run and made an off-balance throw, firing a strike to first base ahead of the runner, but the ball popped out of the first baseman’s glove for an error, with Rodriguez scoring on the would-be third out of the inning to make it 1-0.

Gators manager Sean McMillan argued with the first-base umpire, saying there was contact between the base runner and the first baseman. The umpires conferred upon McMillan’s request, but the safe call was upheld.

“I was asking if he was out of the baseline there, that’s all,” McMillan said. “There was obviously contact there, which is fine. But it’s just a baseline issue — if he’s out of the baseline.”

Branham’s starter responded with a 1-2-3 shutdown inning, amid a string of eight straight Gators retired. Evan Williams is a menacing at-bat, with his low, sidearm delivery producing a hard, biting fastball. The senior earned the complete-game victory, allowing one run on four hits while striking out six. His record improves to 13-2.

“He threw great,” Covey said. “He had great command. He had three pitches that kept us off balance.”

After the Gators stranded five baserunners through the first five innings, they finally broke through in the sixth. No. 3 batter Tyler Wong earned a bruise by getting hit with a pitch on Evan Williams’ first offering of the inning. Wong promptly stole second, then advanced to third on a fortuitous SHP bounce when Wilbur struck out on a check swing, but reached first base with the ball skipping to the backstop on a wild pitch.

Despite Wilbur getting picked off first base with Daniel Gee at the plate, Gee still delivered a sacrifice fly to right field, with Wong tagging from third and sliding headlong across the plate to tie it 1-1.

“That was awesome,” Covey said. “I feel like we were having good ABs the whole game, and it finally paid off with a run.”

At the start of the seventh inning, however, the bad karaoke version of “Hotel California” playing over the public address system foreshadowed SHP’s fate.

The Gators saw one runner reach when Devin Saltzgaber socked a one-out single to left. Max Courson followed with a sacrifice bunt to move Saltzgaber into scoring position. But Evan Williams buckled down and finished his day with a three-pitch strikeout, freezing the batter with a high fastball for a called third strike.

Then the Bruins — who were dancing around prior to the bottom of the seventh to upbeat karaoke “La Bamba” playing on the PA — won it in walk-off fashion in the bottom of the seventh.

Cooper set the table for Branham with an infield single, scorching a liner through the middle that Covey got a glove on, deflected, then chased down and threw to first for a bang-bang play with Cooper earning the safe call with a head-first slide.

“It popped in, popped out; it’s a hard play as a pitcher,” McMillan said. “Honestly, it should have been a base hit up the middle. The fact that he even got a glove on it was awesome.”

Covey said he thought his throw beat the runner to first.

“It hit my glove, I saw it next to me and I just reacted — head-first slide, I guess he beat it out,” Covey said. “I thought I had him, but the umpire had a better angle, he called him [safe].”

Then, facing Colin Williams, Covey ran the count to 2-2 before leaving a fastball over the heart of the plate for the fateful RBI double into the corner.

“I saw the ball come off the bat, I knew it was going to be a tough play,” Chetcuti said. “But I had all the trust and faith in our guy that we could make it. At the end of the day, we just came up short.”

Branham now advances to Saturday’s CCS Division III championship game to face No. 3 Carmel. Game time at Excite Ballpark in San Jose is schedule for 4 p.m.

For the Gators, the 2023 season was quite a ride considering they started the year with two sophomore starting pitchers in Saltzgaber and Connor Schmalzle, then added a freshman to the rotation upon Covey’s callup from junior-varsity just prior to the start of Peninsula Athletic League Ocean Division play.

“That’s the key to getting us here as a whole, especially when they’re young arms,” said McMillan, in his second year at SHP. “You don’t know what you’re going to get early on. We’ve pitched basically with two sophomores and a freshman all season. So, to know we’re returning that is awesome. But that pitching and defense is what I’ve said, coming into this job, was that’s what we’ve got to be good at if we’re going to win. And two years in a row, we’re in the semifinals and finals of CCS. So, I’m going to keep preaching pitching and defense.

“But if we could get a couple of hits,” he said, “that would be nice too.”