Sahuarita's strategy, pitchers have paved the way to semifinal berth

All season long, Sahuarita baseball coach Sam Gelardi has been telling his team that it's a race to five.

Gelardi's philosophy is that, as long as his able-armed pitchers can keep it together, the offense just needs to etch across five runs to for the win.

The strategy has worked, and it has the Mustangs one win away from the Division III state championship game.

Seventh-seeded Sahuarita plays No. 6 San Luis at Surprise Sports Complex in the semifinals on Friday at 6:30 p.m. A win there would send Gelardi and his Mustangs on to Saturday's title game, at Surprise Stadium.

“Now we need to overachieve here in the these next two games and we'll win a state title,” Gelardi said. “It's right there."

Sahuarita (25-6) has allowed 3.2 runs per game and is 20-2 when scoring at least five runs.

For years the Mustangs have been known for their stable of pitchers from graduated stars in Chris Kucko and Sati Santa Cruz and now, for the past two seasons, senior Austin Bryan.

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In three postseason games Bryan and sophomore Ian Mejia have combined to surrender three runs and strikeout 28 batters over 21 innings of play.

“Kucko passed to the torch to Sati and Sati passed it down to Austin,” Gelardi said. “Those are some thoroughbred pitchers and now the torch has been passed to Mejia.

"When we took Austin out in the last game, when I took the ball from him, his first words to Ian were, 'Close them out.' He was supportive, he wasn't asking why are you taking me out."

The stellar pitching staff has allowed Gelardi to stress the importance of winning each inning, something he's found to be very useful when trying to hold the attention spans of 15, 16 and 17 year-olds and keep them focused throughout a seven-inning game. He also realized that luck has finally turned the Mustangs way.

“Defensively, we try to put up a goose egg and offensively we try to tack on runs every inning,” Gelardi said. “We're not going to worry about the next inning. We've only had one error in three games, and that was a pickoff attempt. One error in 21-pressured innings, that's luck.”

Of the four Division III semifinalists, Sahuarita is the smallest in enrollment and has always been a traditional Class 3A program. As for San Luis, No. 5 Cottonwood Mingus and No. 1 Phoenix Alhambra, each of those teams were playing in last season's Division II state tournament. San Luis and Alhambra have been shuffled back into the 6A for next year.

“The thing I stressed to our kids is we're the David in this tournament, we've always been the David,” Gelardi said. “We have right around 900 kids in our school and we only had 34 kids try out for the entire baseball program and we took 30. We get every nickel out of these kids”