NorCal baseball playoffs: Freshman’s masterpiece leads St. Ignatius to semifinal win over Bellarmine

PACIFICA — St. Ignatius freshman pitcher Chase Gordon had 24 hours to mentally prepare for his first-ever varsity start.

That start came in the NorCal Division II semifinals — and the 15-year-old delivered a masterpiece.

The left-handed Gordon pitched a complete game to lead the Wildcats to a 5-1 win over Bellarmine on Thursday at Fairmont Field in Pacifica and lead SI to Saturday’s regional championship game at Casa Grande-Petaluma.

“He’s just a ballplayer, man,” SI coach Brian Pollzzie said. “You can’t tell he’s 15 out there. He had a little swagger out there and he was locating, catching them off-balance.”

Gordon scattered six hits and one walk across his seven innings, only allowing one unearned run. While Gordon was barely touching 80 miles per hour with his fastball, he mixed in offspeed pitches and seemed to keep a Bellarmine team that wasn’t expecting him to pitch at bay all afternoon.

“He threw really well,” Bellarmine coach Nate Sutton said, adding that Gordon’s start “came out of the blue” to the Bells. “He definitely didn’t act like a freshman. He didn’t get caught up in the moment at all. Usually, young guys, it’s easy to get them rattled. But him, not at all.”

It’s been quite a run this postseason for Gordon. SI junior Rocco Giometti said the Wildcat upperclassmen gained a ton of confidence in the freshman when he threw two shutout innings to pick up the save against bitter rival Sacred Heart Cathedral on May 10. Gordon followed that up with 5.1 innings of shutout relief work in the CCS semifinals against Valley Christian on May 24.

“It’s insane,” Giometti said. “He’s such a good kid, too. He just stays ready. He’s a great kid, he has dirty stuff. He’s just mature for his age and he just gets it done.”

The Wildcats offense helped get Gordon into cruise control by putting up five runs in the first three innings on Bellarmine’s hard-throwing starter Paul Montgomery by focusing on going the other way.

Giometti got things started with one out and a runner on second in the first, poking a hard grounder down the left-field line for a run-scoring double. But even with the team’s approach, the left-handed hitter said he can’t remember ever poking a ball so tightly down the opposite foul line.

“That surprised me myself a little bit,” Giometti said. “During practice, we had a lot of preparation hitting that outside pitch. It just worked out today because of our preparation.”

Left-handed Nico Gomozias also went to left field with a single two hitters later, with Giometti barely scoring when Bellarmine catcher Ryan Bays couldn’t corral the throw home.

The Bells would get their lone run of the day with two outs in the third. Leadoff hitter Nolan Randol reached on an error by SI, then got to second when Gordon was called for a balk. Bellarmine senior Chase Knight scored Randol with a single to center.

But Gordon got a strikeout looking to end the inning and the Wildcats immediately attacked again. Giometti led off the inning with an opposite-field single and stole second before senior Leonard Beatie walked.

Gomozias then hit a comebacker to Montgomery, but the pitcher’s throw to second to try and turn a double play went into center field, allowing Giometti to race in from second for a run and ending Montgomery’s day.

“They’ve seen him a few times and obviously he’s a little funky, so they were prepped for him,” Sutton said of Montgomery. “But he’s been our guy all year, with tremendous numbers.

“We had our guy on the mound and some breaks here, breaks there, balls fall and we don’t make plays and that’s baseball. We only scored one run on [Gordon] anyways, so it was going to be tough.”

The Wildcats tacked on two more on Bellarmine reliever Luke Rooney in the third to push the lead to four runs. That would prove to be more than enough for Gordon, who was very expressive after finishing the sixth inning because he wasn’t sure he’d get to head back out on the mound.

“I was thinking, ‘Maybe, by chance, I’ll get to get a couple of outs in the seventh, but if this is my last out of the game, might as well make it a good one,’” Gordon said.

But Gordon was only at 88 pitches after six, so Pollzzie decided to give Gordon three more batters to finish the game off. Gordon retired the first two but the third reached base on a tough grounder to shortstop, but Pollzzie gave him one more batter.

On Gordon’s 102nd pitch of the game, he induced a grounder to short. When the forceout was record at second, the freshman threw his cap and glove skyward, his masterpiece complete.

Gordon said he dedicated this win to his senior teammates.

“For this to be their last game at this field, hopefully it was a special one,” Gordon said.

Bellarmine’s season ends at 21-13-1 and there were several players in tears after the game. But Sutton implored for the senior-heavy team to remember what they accomplished — like a CCS Division II championship and a wild NorCal quarterfinal win.

“The seniors are a great group of kids, they’re going to be sorely missed,” Sutton said. “We said, ‘We’ll be forever remembered. You’ll have your 2023 [title] on the wall.’ We accomplished a huge goal, winning CCS.”

SI didn’t get the CCS title in Division I. But they’ll get a chance to win the NorCal title at 1 p.m. on Saturday, making the trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to Casa Grande in Petaluma.

And thanks to Gordon’s effort, they’ll seemingly have their whole pitching staff ready to go.

“When you put a freshman out there and it’s their first start, you never know what you’re going to get,” Pollzzie said. “You see something in a kid, you see it in practice, but we hadn’t seen it in a big game like that. You think a kid has it in him, but you don’t know.

“He proved everything today that we thought about him. He really stepped up.”