Skyline baseball keeps hold of first place with comeback at CSM

With the win, Skyline (14-4 Coast North, 28-8 overall) maintains outright control of the Coast Conference North. With two games remaining in the regular season, the first-place Trojans hold a one-game lead over second-place West Valley, with CSM (12-6, 21-15-1) falling two games back in a third-place tie with Chabot. The top two finishers will be guaranteed bids to the California Community College playoffs.

“We’ve been battling this entire season,” Coupe said. “We know we’ve got a good team. We know we’ve got good guys on the team. CSM being our biggest rival, we came out to play, we came out to battle, and hopefully we can carry this through the rest of the season, and hopefully into the playoffs.”

Things didn’t start well for Skyline, though. CSM came out controlling contact both sides of the ball.

The Bulldogs knocked the ball around the yard to rally for three runs in the first, and another run in the third. On the other side of the ball, CSM starting pitcher Noel Valdez was stellar through the first four innings, allowing just one ball out of the infield in commanding eight groundball outs.

“I felt great,” Valdez said. “The pitch count was low. I was locating that fastball in and getting a lot of outs.”

Then came the fateful top of the fifth. Despite Skyline loading the bases, Valdez was one strike away from fanning the side with no harm done. But then Pierce caught a hanging slider and drove it over the left-field wall for his third grand slam of the month, and his ninth home run on the season.

Skyline’s comeback rally started innocently enough. With one out, Michael Sarhatt muscled a bloop single to right and Trey Zahursky followed with a bunt single. Carlos Solis followed with a sharp single to center to load the bases. But No. 9 hitter Jeremy Chong struck out for the second out of the inning, turning over the batting order.

“Obviously I wasn’t able to get the job done,” Chong said. “It was tough, but my mantra has been: Next man up. So, my brother Jesse picked me up. He got that big hit for us. So, we were right back in the game.”

After Pierce’s momentous slam, Jeremy Keller got hit by a pitch and Jace Jeremiah shot a single to left, ending Valdez’s day, and leaving CSM reliever Ryan Baker to go to battle with Coupe.

Baker got two quick strikes on Coupe, but Skyline’s cleanup hitter battled through a nine-pitch at-bat. On the ninth pitch, he connected, drilling a three-run homer to left to give Skyline a 7-4 lead.

“I was just looking to drive something,” Coupe said. “I was in a two-strike count, so I was like: ‘I’ve got to battle here.’ … Once I saw that middle-middle pitch, I swung at it, natural instincts, and luckily I drove it out.”

And Coupe was greeted with a hero’s welcome at home plate.

“It was awesome,” Coupe said. “I got a little light-headed. But, yeah, it was fun.”

Skyline used five pitchers in the game, but perhaps the biggest arm was in right field with a clutch assist throw from Chong.

In the bottom of the fifth, CSM made some quick noise with a walk by cleanup hitter Tommy Eisenstat and a double by Max Farfan. That knocked starting pitcher Benito Valle-Jhanda out of the game after four-plus innings of work.

With left-hander reliever Josh Mathiesen — Valdez’s former teammate, and fellow 2021 El Camino boys’ athlete of the year award winner — into the game, CSM sophomore Marcus Aranda lifted a high fly ball into foul territory in right. Chong, the Skyline right fielder, made the catch just in front of the CSM bullpen with momentum toward the plate and finished the play with a lightning bolt of a throw, allowing catcher Jeremy Keller to slap a tag on Eisenstat at home for a double play.

“When it left my hand, I was like: ‘That’s a pretty good throw, it should be able to get him out’” Chong said. “And I was just happy I could come up big for the team.”

Had the ball been any deeper, Chong said he would have considered letting it drop to avoid letting the runner at third tag up.

“In this situation … if it’s foul and it’s deep, I’m probably going to let it fall because I’m not going to have a chance to throw him out,” Chong said. “But I was coming in on the ball, I knew I was in a good area to throw him out. The situation played itself out and I was able to make the play.”

Valle-Jhanda scuffled through four-plus innings of work. CSM opened the game with three straight loud singles, including an RBI single from Nolan Ackerman, followed by a sacrifice fly by Farfan and an RBI double by Aranda. Then in the fourth, the Bulldogs loaded the bases and pushed a run across on a swinging bunt by Aranda, when Valle-Jhanda committed a throwing error on a short toss to the plate allowing Ackerman to score.

Valle-Jhanda and Skyline caught a break when his errant throw struck the home plate umpire. Otherwise, the ball would have ended up at the backstop, and at least one more run would have scored. But the right-hander was able to capitalize, buckling down from there to notch a strikeout and a fly-out to strand the bases loaded.

The Trojans added two insurance runs on a two-run double by Jeremiah in the sixth. In the eighth, CSM pushed two runs across with an RBI triple from Connor Hennings, followed by a sacrifice fly by Luice Coca.

But the back end of the Skyline bullpen held the lead, with freshman Tyler Moniz-Witten working 3 2/3 innings, freshman Hayden Friedland entering with one on and two out in the eight to strike out the only batter he faced, and Sarhatt entering in the ninth to close it out for the save.

“The whole coaching staff was just so proud of the way the boys kept competing,” Trojans manager Tony Brunicardi said. “They kept fighting and they played for each other. And CSM is a great club. So, I couldn’t be prouder of the way we competed.”

The top four teams in the Coast North standings — all currently within two games of each other — will fight it out next week. Skyline closes the regular season with a two-game series against third-place Chabot (12-6, 24-12). CSM, tied for third place, has a two-game series with second-place West Valley (13-5, 23-15).