NorCal baseball regionals: How Valley Christian reliever held off Clayton Valley in game’s tightest moment
SAN JOSE — Nobody will deny that it was an extremely tense spot, even for a reliever as seasoned as Valley Christian’s Alec Belardes.
But to hear coach John Diatte tell it, this wasn’t anything new for the senior.
“We’ve put him in some big situations,” Diatte said. “We trust him. We believe in him. He’s been on the mound in quite a few big wins when it’s been tight.”
It was certainly tight in the fifth inning Tuesday.
What was a five-run lead for Valley when the frame began was down to three. There was nobody out. Clayton Valley had the bases loaded and its best hitter, Ryder Helfrick, a highly-touted pro prospect, at the plate.
Belardes, an Arizona State commit who closed out Valley’s win in the Central Coast Section Division I final on Saturday, fell behind in the count, three balls, no strikes.
Then he flipped the switch.
Belardes struck out Helfrick and then got a double-play grounder to third to end the inning.
Top-seeded Valley held off its eighth-seeded visitors from Concord and went on to a 7-3 victory to advance to the semifinals of the NorCal Division I regionals at home Thursday against Cardinal Newman.
“When I went ahead 3-0, I was just trying to see a pitch up,” Helfrick said. “He threw a 3-0 changeup and a 3-1 changeup that kind of got me off guard.”
Still, Helfrick was proud of the inning his team put together.
“It’s just how we’ve been all year,” he said. “We fight till the very end.”
Belardes understood what he was up against when Diatte called on him to face Helfrick after Clayton Valley opened the inning with a walk, three singles and another walk to cut the deficit to 5-2.
“We all knew that he was a great hitter,” Belardes said. “So I had to throw good pitches. He bailed me out a little bit, swung at a couple of balls in the dirt. Down 3-0, he swung at two balls and that last slider I got him to chase.”
Nico Olson, the No. 3 hitter in Clayton Valley’s lineup, followed with a grounder to third baseman Michael Castaneda, who stepped on the bag and then threw across the diamond to first for the double play to keep the Warriors in front by three runs.
“As soon as that ball was hit to me, I felt the bag and said, “Oh, we’re going to get out of this inning,’” Castaneda said. “Alec made three good pitchers to get Ryder out. He’s a really good hitter.
“Then he dialed in against the next guy and was able to get the groundball. The ground ball in that situation is exactly what we were looking for. It happened to be hit to me.”
Valley scored four runs in the second as Jacob Hudson singled to center to drive in one run and then Hunter Fujimoto singled to the hole at shortstop for another.
Tatum Marsh’s single to left brought in two more to make it 4-0.
When Fujimoto drew a bases-loaded walk in the third, Valley seemed headed toward a comfortable victory, up 5-0.
But Clayton Valley rallied in the fifth.
Jerry Coakley walked and then came three consecutive singles, by Hank Phifer, Aiden Romero and Josiah Morris to cut the margin to 5-1.
Myles Walton, the leadoff hitter in the order, worked a walk to make it 5-2, setting the stage for Helfrick and Valley’s ace reliever.
“We had a chance in the fifth and we had guys up that we wanted up in that situation,” Clayton Valley coach Casey Coakley said. “The kid executed some pitches.”
Now, Valley will move on to face Cardinal Newman, which rallied late to beat Whitney-Rocklin 2-1 on Tuesday to improve to 28-1.
Clayton Valley watched its season, which included a league championship and a runner-up finish in the North Coast Section Division I playoffs, come to an end.
“I told the kids if going into the year, you had told me our pitching staff was what it was with two guys injured that are scholarship pitchers and another kid transferred out that is a scholarship pitcher and we had a staff of six or seven guys that have never really had any varsity experience … they really took the bull by the horns and became a really good pitching staff,” said Coakley, the coach.
“We gave Ryder the opportunity to call games and really take control of the staff. He ran with that. The pitchers all believed in one another. The defense believed in the pitchers and it was the next-man-up mentality that we had as a club this year and the kids really did a heck of a job.”