San Mateo American 12s hurler Moreno regains form at right time

O’Brien won’t be available to pitch until this coming Monday after delivering American to the Section 3 tournament championship with a two-hit shutout in Wednesday’s 4-0 win over Bollinger Canyon at Athan Downs Park in San Ramon. O’Brien reached the 85-pitch limit with his final pitch of the game — strike three to notch his 11th strikeout of the game — and now must rest four days between pitching appearances.

“I’m actually kind of looking forward to the next few days,” San Mateo American manager Jason Gordon said. “The other guys have to step up and do it, and I think they’re going to do great.”

Christopher Moreno and Matthew Ward are slated to start Saturday and Sunday. Gordon said he has not yet decided on a pitching order. The two right-handers would be the aces on plenty other pitching staffs, and have certainly shown ace stuff at times through All-Stars summer play.

Moreno was the X-factor entering the All-Star summer season, as he was coming off an injury that almost cost him the chance to play for the team. During the spring, Moreno fractured his ankle playing basketball. While he has since returned and pitched four straight games for American spanning the district and section tournaments, the initial outlook was bleak. He was shut down for eight weeks, missing the second half of the San Mateo American Little League regular season.

Moreno has been a cornerstone player for American for three years since the team won the 2022 Northern California 10-and-under championship. No one was more scared of his not being able to play this summer than Moreno.

“A lot,” Moreno said. “Because we have a pretty good squad. So, I had been looking forward to it a lot.”

With the District 52 tournament opening June 22, American had a decision to make — whether or not to keep Moreno on roster.

“It was pretty crushing because at that point it’s a bad break, they said he probably won’t need surgery … but when we looked at the calendar (at the start of the District 52 tournament), we said: ‘That’s going to be really close,’” Gordon said.

“It was a full eight weeks where he was out,” he said. “So they had a date circled where he’d be back the week of districts. So we decided … he was too big a part of what we do to not give him a chance.”

After much deliberation, Gordon and his coaching staff of John Stone and Dan Workman opted to keep Moreno on roster. American had a bye in the first round of the District 52 tournament. When they did open play Sunday, June 23, Moreno was withheld from the lineup for the the team’s 1-0 win over Belmont-Redwood Shores.

The win earned American two days off, and when they returned to the field Wednesday, June 26 for a 7-1 win over Hillsborough, Moreno returned to the lineup. He wasn’t cleared to pitch or play defense, but he went 1 for 2 with a run scored in the game.

It was Moreno’s second game back that put his injury in the white, hot spotlight. Facing Alpine and their ace right-hander Lucas Maffia in the winners’ bracket semifinals, American found themselves trailing 1-0 after four innings. They had a chance to tie it in the bottom of the third inning when Connor Workman lifted a would-be sacrifice fly to medium-deep center field. With Moreno at third base — teams are not allowed to use pinch-runners with since the new continuous batting order rules were initiated in 2023 — and his ankle was still wrapped in a brace, Gordon, the third-base coach, opted not send him home.

“That was kind of a killer, and kind of magnified the risk we were taking right there,” Gordon said.

“Trust me, he wanted to go,” Gordon said, “and he kept telling me: ‘I would have made it, I would have made it.’”

American went on to rally for two runs in the fifth inning to win it 2-1. Had they lost that game to Alpine, they would have had to won three games on three straight days to claim the District 52 banner. Instead, Alpine got knocked off by Menlo-Atherton the next day in the elimination bracket semifinals.

When American finished off the tournament with a 14-4 win over Menlo-Atherton in the championship game, Moreno made his pitching debut. Ward took the start and worked 4 1/3 innings, striking out 12, to earn the win. Moreno came on in relief of Ward and something of a comical scene ensued. Moreno needed just one pitch to induce a comebacker for the second out of the inning. It was the only pitch Moreno threw in his highly anticipated return before O’Brien was summoned from the bullpen to close it out.

“It was pretty funny because I thought I was going to throw to one or two or three batters,” Moreno said. “And then I threw one pitch. So, that was pretty surprising.”

Moreno went on to pitch in each of the first three games of the Section 3 tournament. He has now worked five innings, allowing one run to record a 1.20 ERA.

“He really, really turned the corner between that first day of the district tournament and the last day of the district tournament,” Gordon said. “So, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief and gave ourselves a bit of a pat on the back. … Or we just got a little lucky.”

American opens play in the seven-team Nor Cal tournament Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Lions Town & Country Park in Madera.