Sobrato reached Division II final last season
MORGAN HILL — The room for disappointment couldn’t be greater for the Sobrato baseball team. Anything less than a Central Coast Section championship will be a letdown to the Bulldogs this spring.
Their pitching is loaded; their lineup is stacked and the team can play as many as 10 returning starters from a club that reached the 2009 Division II title game.
If one was hard pressed to question anything about Shorty Gutierrez’s talented group, they might query how the Bulldogs plan to honor their one-game-at-a-time approach when all they can think about is playing for a CCS title again.
There are 25 games between then and now.
“That’s a pretty good question to ask,” Gutierrez said during practice Tuesday at Sobrato High School. “That’s why we’ve laid out plenty of individual goals we also want to accomplish on the side. Plus, I’ve put together a pretty tough schedule. There’s no way we’re going to look past anybody.”
If the Bulldogs want to have the best season in program history, they certainly have the right proving ground in store. Five of their six nonleague games are against teams that reached the CCS playoffs a year ago, including three that were seeded Nos. 1-3.
Then there’s the Mount Hamilton Division. One of the side projects Gutierrez alluded to is taking first in the Blossom Valley Athletic League ‘A’ conference, which promises to be just as tight as ever.
“We’d love just as much to bring that title back here this year,” said third-year starting pitcher Ryan Williams, a nine-game winner who batted .383 with 26 RBIs and eight doubles as a junior in 2009. “We want to prove we’re the best at each level.”
Winning their school’s first ‘A’-league team title would require the Bulldogs to do something they have never been able to do: peak early. Sobrato finished second in the Mount Hamilton a year ago and could have challenge for first with a better start in league.
Sobrato found its stride midway through the 2008 season and ended up winning the Santa Teresa Division outright.
“We’d love to get it going early, but it’s a tough task with guys coming out late every year from basketball and other sports,” Gutierrez said. “The challenge is getting these guys’ chemistry together right away.
“We know we can win every game. We already have some losses, but that’s OK. The losses help us refocus and work harder.”
The Bulldogs (2-3 overall, 2-1 league) have done so recently, bouncing back from an 8-5 loss to rival Live Oak to beat the Acorns 9-0 Friday, then blank Leland 4-0 in division play Wednesday. Basketball stars Bryan Bradley, Chris Bradley and Williams (2-0) are back at full speed as one of the best rotations in the section.
Chris Bradley, who batted .402 with 21 RBIs and pitched the first no-hitter in team history as a junior in 2009, took the loss in last May’s Division II final defeat, 4-1, to Los Gatos.
“I think about that game all the time. You always wonder about the ones you didn’t win, and I definitely want to get back there,” the lefty said. “Speaking for my brother [Bryan], Ryan Williams and the rest of the seniors, we’ve never been more excited about a team than this one. If we’re going to win CCS, this is the team.”
The Bradley twins will bat near the top of the order ahead of Williams, the 6-foot-4 cleanup man, and rotate in center field and shortstop. Bryan Bradley batted .364 with five doubles a year ago.
Williams also will play the corners, flanking the double-play duo of second-year starter Tim Andrade and Aaron Wallace.
“Our defense is the only thing we need to improve,” Andrade said. “We know we’re going to put up runs, and our pitching is amazing. We just have to stop the other team from scoring.”
Junior Tim Giles, a third-year starter, is tabbed for left field, and senior Deric Horan will play right.
The Bulldogs have a viable designated hitter in senior David Rotter, who last season collected seven RBIs in as many hits in five games.
First base and catcher, the team’s biggest vacancies, are occupied by freshman Tanner Di Sibio and senior varsity newcomer Alex Davis, respectively. Gutierrez has appointed Davis as one of his captains.
“We’ve always had good catchers, and Alex is definitely going to fill in with that,” the sixth-year manager said. “I worried at first because he hasn’t played since freshman year, but the team’s competitive nature is going to bring out the best in him and everyone else.”
