PLEASANT HILL — De La Salle won another North Coast Section baseball title on Saturday — its fourth in a row — and in the process ran its winning streak to 28 games, the third-most in section history.
After falling behind 1-0 against sixth-seeded Heritage, the No. 1 Spartans (29-1) scored five runs in the third and three in the fourth, eventually settling for a 10-1 victory at Diablo Valley College. Kyle Harrison and Chris Santiago each had three RBIs for the Spartans, and Harrison turned in a strong pitching performance, yielding a run on three hits in 5 1/3 innings.
Since the outcome was never in doubt after the third inning, the question that begged for an answer was the one about De La Salle’s two streaks: Is it tougher to win four straight section titles or 28 consecutive games.
“Definitely the four straight titles,” Harrison said. “Four straight wins in the playoffs is hard to do.”
Santiago said the same thing as Harrison until the De La Salle third baseman was asked if he had given the 28-game winning streak much thought.
“No, I didn’t think about it that much,” he said. “Once you do think about it, it’s crazy. You have to be so consistent. You have to work hard. You can’t overthink things.”
At the plate, Harrison had an RBI single in the third and a two-run double in the fourth. His single in the third put the Spartans ahead 2-1, and they never looked back. During his 5 1/3 innings on the mound, he struck out 10 and walked three. He came out after issuing back-to-back walks in the sixth.
Harrison was most happy to discuss his hitting. He was batting cleanup and entered the game with a .275 batting average.
“I was seeing the ball well at the plate,” said the junior left-hander who is committed to UCLA.
De La Salle coach David Jeans said Harrison was strictly a pitcher last season, but the Spartans lost a lot of their offense to graduation. So Harrison was told to pick up a bat.
“He’s a really good player,” Jeans said of Harrison. “I tried to tell people he can hit, he understands the game. He can do it all.”
Hitting in front of Harrison was Santiago, De La Salle’s RBI-leader with 38. Santiago drove in the Spartans’ first run with a single to left in the third, then knocked in two more with a long homer to left in the sixth. That turned out to be the final at-bat of Santiago’s De La Salle career. He will continue his baseball career at Saint Mary’s College..
“That was really cool, my last De La Salle at-bat,” Santiago said. “It was a pretty special way to end it for me.”
The Spartans sent 10 batters to the plate in the third, converting four singles, two walks, a sacrifice fly and an error into the five runs. They added four more hits in the three-run fourth.
So Coach Jeans, what do you think is the bigger accomplishment? Four straight NCS titles or 28 straight wins? NCS is a single-elimination tournament, and stringing together a long winning streak in baseball, especially in the playoffs, can be difficult because a hot pitcher can be so dominant.
“Twenty-eight in a row, you don’t even think about it,” Jeans said. “You just keep going to the next game. You just keep thinking about the next pitch.
“Winning four NCS crowns, that’s super hard,” Jeans continued. “The teams are really good. You gotta take it one game at a game. I know that’s cliche, but you really do.”
For the record, the only longer streaks in NCS history are a 30-gamer by De La Salle in 1985-86, and a 42-game win streak by Justin-Siena of Napa that stretched over three seasons from 2004-2006.
Heritage, which finished 21-7, made a nice little run to get to the title game. The Patriots came in as the sixth seed by knocked off the number two and three seeds — Acalanes and Amador Valley, respectively — to get to the championship game.
Heritage made Harrison work, putting two runners on in the first, third and sixth innings, and getting a leadoff single from Keith Jones in the fourth.
But once the Spartans got up 8-1, they were able to coast.
Monday, De La Salle will go back to work preparing for next year. Harrison thought he wluld be going back to work on Sunday.
“We’ll give ’em a day off,” Jeans said.
A well-deserved one.
HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS? WE’VE GOT YOU COVERED
For just 12 cents a day for a year, you can have access to all the digital content at mercurynews.com and eastbaytimes.com. You just need to sign up at one of these two links: Mercury News or East Bay Times.