Stockdale baseball earns emphatic section championship win, 10-1 over Santa Maria-Righetti
May 28—VISALIA — You can never be sure which early-game Stockdale baseball team you might get: the exuberant one that put up eight runs early in the semifinal against Liberty, or the sluggish one that needed five innings to get going a round earlier.
But this season, it feels like you can always count on the Mustangs putting on a hitting clinic at some point. Even under the bright lights of Valley Strong Ballpark in Visalia with a Central Section Division I championship on the line.
After Stockdale fell behind Santa Maria-Righetti 1-0 just three batters into the game — and stayed scoreless for three innings — fans might have been getting a little nervous. Even an Owen Bolich RBI single wasn't enough.
And then Ruben Rodriguez hit a three-run home run to chase Warriors starter Omar Reynoso in the fifth, Austin Charles added a grand slam in the sixth and Stockdale cruised to a 10-1 win. Same old Mustangs.
"It was just a matter of when our offense was going to get going," Charles said.
Just days after locking down Frontier in the semifinals, Reynoso got off to a strong start with three shutout innings. But a single up the middle for Adam Enyart, a wild pitch and a bouncing ground ball from Owen Bolich opened the floodgates, and between the next two innings 19 batters came up for Stockdale.
"(Reynoso) was gonna work soft, he was gonna work away, and he got to us for four innings," Stockdale coach Brad Showers said. "But we persevered, stayed in the strike zone, which we preached all week — don't chase — and we got after it, we scored runs late, and won the game running away."
Charles had a different trajectory on the mound from Reynoso. He gave up three straight hits to start the game, capped by a Ricky Smith RBI double.
"I wasn't keeping them off balance enough," Charles said. "Throwing a lot of fastballs."
He then proceeded to allow just one hit for the remainder of the game, a two-out single in the sixth.
"He's a phenomenal, phenomenal talent," Showers said. "There's not another guy I'd want to have the ball in a pressure game like this."
Charles often leads the way at the plate as well, with a batting average hovering around .500. Today his teammates kickstarted the rally. In the fifth inning, Shane Heriford reached on an error and Matt Torres singled before Rodriguez — who was initially showing bunt — launched the game-breaking home run over the wall. After a key fielding error thwarted a possible double play on a Bolich ground ball, Nick Brown (who went 3-for-3 with a double and a walk) tacked on an RBI single to make it 5-1.
In the sixth, Heriford got on base again before Torres was hit in the head by a pitch from Cooper Bagby.
"I promised him I was going to go yard that next at-bat," Charles said.
Rodriguez singled to load the bases, then Charles — who was 0-for-3 at the time — swung at the first pitch he saw from Smith for a no-doubt grand slam to left to make it 9-1.
Freshman Hayden Elchlepp tacked on one more run later in the inning.
The win gave Stockdale its first championship since 2018 — and this time, a chance to compete in the SoCal regional playoffs, with brackets announced Sunday and Round 1 on Tuesday.
"Let's go see how we compete with the top teams in the state, you know?" Showers said. "Usually this is the end of the season, but we're practicing Monday.
"We're playing with house money. These kids don't know what house money is, but we just won the jackpot."
Reporter Henry Greenstein can be reached at 661-395-7374. Follow him on Twitter: @HenryGreenstein.
