Menlo’s Nor Cal title bid comes up short

“The ball beat me by a couple steps,” Wynn said. “I couldn’t do anything except put my body out there.”

Wynn was on second base when, with Menlo runners on first and second and one out, Jake Sonsini hit a bouncer to shortstop Jordan Villanueva, who flipped for the second out to Jeffrey Nannini covering second to attempt a game-ending double play. Sonsini beat the pivot throw to first base to prolong the game, at which point Knights manager and third-base coach David Trujillo waved Wynn around third base in an attempt to score all the way from second.

“We’re not going to change now,” Trujillo said. “We’ve been aggressive the whole playoffs. It took two perfect throws. It doesn’t happen very often now.”

Woodland’s first baseman Jayden Badhesha — who had thrown five quality innings as the Cardinals’ starting pitcher — spun and fired a strike to Howald at the plate. Wynn attempted to get to the plate with a headfirst slide, but Howald was waiting with the tag, leaving all in Menlo blue stunned as their home field was flooded with the head-to-toe bright red uniforms of the visiting Cardinals as they celebrated a state championship.

“Not the perfect double play,” Woodland manager John Rodegerdts said. “I thought we were going turn the regular double play, but to throw that throw, and to catch and tag, that’s a hard play at this level. That’s a hard, hard play.”

It marks the second championship in a CIF finale for Woodland Christian athletics in 2023-24. The private school some 20 miles northwest of Sacramento also claimed a CIF Division 5-A state football championship during the fall season, with four players — Nannini, Gary Mann, Gabe Sanchez and Joaquin Rodriguez — playing for both teams.

The Cardinals led the whole way, jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the first. Despite Sonsini’s solid outing as Menlo’s starting pitcher, the Knights yielded two unearned runs in the inning. Owen Tessier and Nannini each reached on infield errors and, with two outs, Badhesha lined a single to the outfield for the first hit of the game, and the ball was misplayed to allow both runners to score to give Woodland a 2-0 cushion.

Menlo (23-10) went on to commit five errors in the game.

“We came close,” Wynn said. “You just can’t win a baseball game with [five] errors.”

Sonsini gave Menlo three solid innings, allowing just two hits and two walks while surrendering two unearned runs. It was the senior right-hander’s first time pitching in over two months, last climbing the hill April 30.

“He hasn’t thrown in a long time but he really stepped up for us,” Trujillo said. “He gave us everything he had. He left it all out there. ... Our pitching did great. It wasn’t our pitching. We just didn’t get those timely hits.”

Senior right-hander Ryan Schnell took over in the fourth, marking his third appearance of the week, pitching in each of Menlo’s Nor Cal games. Having thrown four innings in the Nor Cal opener last Tuesday against Redding Christian, and two innings of relief last Thursday against Oakland Tech, Schnell had four innings remaining before hitting the 10-inning limit as per CIF rules.

Schnell left it all on the field, working four innings, yielding one unearned run on four hits and a hit batsman while striking out three.

Woodland’s left-handed starter Badhesha also topped out at 10 innings on the week, and kept Menlo off balance through five innings of work, allowing one unearned run on five hits.

“He had three good pitches,” Menlo senior Mikey McGrath said. “And his slider and changeup moved in opposite directions. Which, that’s pretty hard to hit when you have a high school guy that can locate three pitches.”

McGrath was one of Menlo’s only hitters to solve Badhesha, roping a one-out double into the left-field corner in the bottom of the fifth. McGrath went on to score on a two-out infield error on a ball off the bat of Wynn to close the deficit to 2-1.

Woodland got the run back in the sixth with a two-out rally. Villanueva reached on a two-out infield single on a dribbler up the third-base line. After Parker Howald reached on an infield error to put runners at the corners, Villabueva scored on a wild pitch to make it 3-1.

Menlo tried to answer in the bottom of the sixth against Woodland reliever Wyatt Trafican, and nearly was in business after Luke Rogers singled with two outs. Jack Freehill followed with a solid, sinking liner into the left-center gap, only to have it corralled on a dazzling play by Sanchez in center field, that left Menlo’s players thinking he dropped the ball when an object went bounding onto the outfield turf. That object, as it turned out, was Sanchez’s sunglasses.

“That was a hell of a play,” said McGrath, Menlo’s center fielder. “I mean, Freehill, he’s been hitting gappers like that all year and, I don’t know why, they just have not been falling. ... His glasses fell off, and it kind of looked like it was the ball dropping. Everyone got excited for a bit.”

Schnell finished the seventh with a pickoff play, throwing behind a Woodland baserunner at first to set in motion a 1-3-6 putout. Then on his way back to the dugout, the senior called him teammates together for a pep talk going into the bottom of the seventh.

“We’ve been a late-inning team, and we’ve been a pretty good comeback team,” Schnell said. “That guy had us fooled early. But I think there was still life in the dugout. We know that we’re going to score at some point, it’s just a matter of time. So, I was just trying to fire them up.”

Cleanup hitter Garrett Tran sparked the seventh-inning rally by getting hit by a pitch. Wynn followed with an infield single, and Renner Barnett roped an RBI single to left to make it 3-2, bringing Sonsini to the plate.

“Playoff baseball, they’re refusing to lose,” Trujillo said. “They don’t want to go down without a fight. I wish we wouldn’t have waited until the seventh inning. But our pitchers threw great. Three unearned runs and a bunch of infield hits.”

On the game-ending grounder, Wynn said he didn’t see the play develop as it was behind him while running from second to third. Trujillo was waving him all the way.

“The coach sent me so I just had to go and just hope for the best,” Wynn said. “And the ball just didn’t fall our way.”

For Menlo, the team’s postseason run was something of a Cinderella story. The Knights hadn’t advanced past the Central Coast Section semifinals since 2017, and finished in second place in the Peninsula Athletic League Ocean Division this season.

Still, the Knights went on to capture the CCS Division VI championship, the program’s second CCS title all-time, and first since 2017. In this the third year of the CIF Nor Cal baseball tournament, Menlo was making its first appearance in regional play.

“We didn’t have the greatest year last year, so I was just wanting to come out here, have some fun,” McGrath said. “Loved the group of guys. And from day one, just the energy with this team was really different. I think our senior leadership and the underclassmen, we just gelled so well together and had so much fun. And I think that’s what really led us to have such a long postseason run, is just our team chemistry. We got hot at the end and just never let up, and I’m just so proud of everyone on this team.”