Menlo-Atherton back in win column after costly loss in PAL Bay Division baseball race

“We didn’t want to drop two,” Paroubeck said. “And we knew they were playing for something as well.”

After starting pitcher Caden Lewis took his first loss of the year, dropping his record to 6-1, M-A entered Saturday’s regular-season finale 1 1/2 games behind Burlingame, and 1 1/2 ahead of third-place Menlo School.

“I think it was tough, but our team bounces back,” M-A senior Max Brubacher said. “I think the hardest thing was seeing Caden, our guy, he’s been our guy all year, seem to struggle a little bit. But the team picked us back up. No one got down about it. We knew that it’s in our ability to win every game if we want. Picked it right back up today, came out ready to go.”

Brubacher got M-A back on track Saturday in an 8-4 win over Sequoia at Bettencourt Field. With the game tied 1-1 in the fourth, the big senior teed off on a fastball and delivered the first home run of his varsity career, a two-run shot to left.

“My approach was staying out front,” Brubacher said. “I was look for a fastball the whole time, waiting for my pitch. Saw a low fastball down the middle, and just swung it as hard as I could. I was trying to hit a ball hard and hit it hard.”

The homer opened the door for a 3-spot in the fourth, and three more M-A runs in the fifth. Freshman starting pitcher Jake Scott benefitted by earning his second straight win, allowing three runs on three hits and five walks, and striking out four, through 4 2/3 innings of work.

Sequoia (5-9, 15-12) was coming off an emotional game as well. The Ravens took care of business Saturday with a 7-6 home win over Menlo School, earning a critical victory toward securing an at-large bid to the Central Coast Section playoffs. But Sequoia’s top hitter, senior Morgan Winfield, was ejected from the game.

After hitting his ninth home run of the year earlier in the day — a no-doubter two-run shot down the left-field line to get the Ravens on the board in the third — Winfield got hit by a pitch in the sixth, and subsequently helicoptered his bat toward the dugout in frustration. The embittered bat toss drew an ejection, and with it a mandatory one-game suspension.

“Thankfully we had a makeup today so that his sit-out game was [Saturday], and not first game CCS,” Ravens manager Mike Doyle said.

Fortunately for Sequoia, a schedule shakeup moved the game with M-A, previously scheduled for Friday, May 1, to the final Saturday of the regular season after the Ravens’ game against Half Moon Bay at Oracle Park was moved landed on May 1 after originally getting rained out Friday, April 10.

Without Winfield in the lineup, Sequoia missed two chances in the late innings to cash in with the bases loaded. The Ravens have hit four grand slams in the late innings to either tie or take the lead this season, two of them off the bat of Winfield. But after loading the bases in both the fifth and seventh, the M-A bullpen was able to keep the ball in the yard — just barely.

In the fifth, Sequoia catcher Connor Murray stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and M-A clinging to a 4-3 lead, and hit a towering fly ball to deep left field against junior reliever Jake Emery. Left fielder Merrick Lee ranged back and, right in front of the left-field fence, made the catch to retire the side.

Murray took out any frustrations in the field by turning in one of the finest swipe tags a catcher can make to stifle M-A’s two-run rally in the bottom of the fifth.

With two on and two out — and two runs in from a two-run double from freshman Owen Coupe — Rowan Kelly followed with a line-drive single to right. Sequoia right fielder Luke Ostrander got to the ball quickly and fired a seed toward the plate that sailed just a few feet up the third-base line. Murray, though, went where the throw took him, gloved it, and swept back to tag Coupe on the foot as he was sliding headlong toward the dish.

“Unbelievable,” Doyle said. “Great play. We work on that. But regardless of how much you work on it, you’ve got to do it in a game. It’s hard to do in a game. I do give the umpire a little bit of credit on that as well because he caught his foot. It was a really great swipe-tag play, he caught his foot, and some umpires don’t see that. So, it was a great play, good call; it was the right call.”

M-A added an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth with an RBI groundout from sophomore Lucas Ten Vaanholt. The run loomed large in the top of the seventh when Sequoia got the run back.

Murray again stepped to the plate with the bases loaded, but this time got hit by a Ten Vaanholt pitch to force home Jackson Tetley. Then with freshman Oliver Coupe on in relief for just his third pitching appearance of the year, M-A popped out on the high sidearming right-hander’s third pitch to end it, earning his first varsity save.

“[Oliver Coupe’s] so valuable in the field,” Paroubeck said of his regular third baseman. “But I know what he can do pitching. He can throw three pitches for strikes, and he’s not scared, he competes. So, I was extremely confident going to him.”

Oliver Coupe paced M-A with three hits, while twin brother Owen Coupe added a double and three RBIs. Kelly, MJ Ellizar and Masataka Shudo totaled two hits apiece, at M-A racked up 14 hits against Sequoia pitchers Mays Pagnotta and Oliver Connelly.

Brubacher’s home run comes after the senior missed 15 months between his sophomore and junior year due to knee surgery. He has been a two-way staple in his first full season back, batting .302 at the plate while going 3-2 through 36 1/3 innings on the mound.

“I was exhilarated,” Brubacher said of the homer. “It felt amazing. It was a huge relief, finally getting one.”