Baseball club earns playoff berth
The Live Oak baseball team has new life.
After struggling for most of the season with a young team and
hovering in fifth-place in league, last year’s Tri County Athletic
League champions squeaked their way into the 2006 playoffs by
beating cross-town rival Sobrato High on Wednesday afternoon in
Morgan Hill.
Baseball club earns playoff berth
The Live Oak baseball team has new life.
After struggling for most of the season with a young team and hovering in fifth-place in league, last year’s Tri County Athletic League champions squeaked their way into the 2006 playoffs by beating cross-town rival Sobrato High on Wednesday afternoon in Morgan Hill.
The win put the Acorns at 9-8 in league play – enough to inch them one game ahead of the playoff prerequisite .500 benchmark and keep the school’s number of 15 straight playoff appearances alive.
“This has been an up and down year for us,” said Live Oak coach Mark Cummins. “We lost seven starters from a year ago. The schedule and the weather haven’t favored us either. We had to face (Breyon) Canez (San Benito pitching ace) three times, and that didn’t help things either. But I’m not making excuses.”
When the playoffs start this week, Live Oak won’t worry about pitchers like Canez or any other pitcher on any Division I team since the Acorns are expected to compete for the first time at the Division II level – which ironically will make their trek through the postseason much easier than in past years when they were tops in the league.
And they have Sobrato High to thank for that since Morgan Hill’s newest high school has caused Live Oak’s student body population numbers to fall below the Division I threshold.
So this week Live Oak won’t have to game plan around the league champion Balers or any of the other top Division I schools in the area that includes all of the strong teams from the West Catholic League like St. Francis, Bellarmine and Valley Christian, which make winning CCS almost like an annual formality.
In addition to losing seven starters from last year’s team, Live Oak has had to forge ahead with the knowledge that it will lose more players to Sobrato as the years go on, especially next year when the new high school houses its first senior class.
“I don’t think Sobrato has hurt us yet,” said Cummins. “We still have plenty of quality players. It will down the line though.”
Another thing that has hurt them this year is the absence of Kyle Mosbrucker on the pitcher’s mound.
This season the once-dominant hurler has been allocated to playing centerfield after suffering a serious elbow injury in his throwing arm a year ago that has since required two surgeries.
“He hasn’t pitched for us all year,” said Cummins. “That was a big blow for us to lose him on the mound. He broke a bone and had a pin inserted into his right elbow. We hoped he would pitch for us this year, but he broke it again in the fall. It doesn’t hurt him to play centerfield though.”
Although he can’t pitch it doesn’t mean that Mosbrucker can’t contribute. In addition to his solid play in the outfield this year, Mosbrucker is leading the Acorns in nearly every offensive category and is batting .430 overall this season too.
Before the injury, he was considered a Division I college pitching prospect.
“He’s still going to try and walk on at the University of Arizona,” said Cummins. “His heart is still set on pitching. Hopefully, it works out for him. He’s a great kid and one of the best I’ve ever coached in the 22 years that I’ve been doing this.”
In addition to Mosbrucker’s explosive bat, the Acorns will rely heavily on the play of sophomore Matthew Cummins, who is batting .447 in league and senior second baseman Brenden Flaherty, who has also shown his prowess batting in the team’s leadoff slot. Senior hurler John Stemel has also performed well this season and should be a factor in the playoffs.
And Cummins knows anything can happen in the playoffs.
“We’re starting to get hot at the right time,” he said. “If we can get our rhythm and flow going, who knows? It will help if we’re not in Division I. Because in Division I you have a good chance at getting St. Francis, Bellarmine or Valley Christian right off the bat, since teams from the same league can’t face each other in the first round.”
Although Live Oak is expected to drop into Division II, it’s not a guarantee since the TCAL is such a strong league coupled with the fact that Live Oak has had such a solid program for a number of years.
All the guessing will be over today at 4 p.m. though when the seeding meeting, which determines playoff teams and brackets, takes place.
