The Serra Padres celebrated their second straight West Catholic Athletic League championship with a post facto dog-pile. Now, they\u2019re looking to enjoy the real deal in the Central Coast Section playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Padres enter the CCS postseason as the No. 1 seed in the Division I tournament, making them the top-seeded team in all of CCS. Serra has a lot of history to overcome, however. While the program has won six CCS titles all-time, the last one came in 2009. Even with that, the Padres haven\u2019t earned a No. 1 seed since 2006, when they were eliminated in the Division I semifinals.<\/p>\n
So, a super-charged dog-pile is by no means a guarantee. The Padres did dog-pile after their regular-season finale, a 12-0 victory over Riordan. But, it was simply for effect, as Serra had already clinched the WCAL outright three days prior.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe told them before the Tuesday game: \u2018Hey, if we win this game, we\u2019re not going to go dog-pile,\u2019 because we wanted to guarantee a solo share of the WCAL,\u201d Padres coach Mickey McDonald said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to tie … so, we\u2019ll dog-pile on Senior Day when we have control of our own destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the hours after that Tuesday, May 6 win, 13-0 victory at Riordan \u2014\u00a0clinching no less than a co-WCAL title \u2014\u00a0Serra found out it had won the title outright when second-place St. Francis lost its night game against St. Ignatius.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, it was kind of weird,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cBefore Senior Day even started, we had already clinched the solo share of it. But we didn\u2019t know that after the Tuesday game because the St. Francis game didn\u2019t start till 6.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first time Serra has clinched back-to-back WCAL championships since 2012 and \u201913. Maybe it was the McDonald magic that did the trick, as those \u201912 and \u201913 seasons were his junior and senior years. He returned to Serra as a coach last season, and has now gone a perfect 4 for 4 as a WCAL champ in his four varsity seasons, two as a player and two as a coach.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Padres team was an unlikely powerhouse, however, in that the team\u2019s identity was up in the air to start the season. Serra graduated 19 seniors in 2024, including a majority of its starters. The only surefire starter heading into 2025 was senior shortstop Ian Josephson, and even he had some question marks, as he played third base last season and dealt with some injuries at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew this year was going to be a group of a lot of players that really hadn\u2019t had any experience at the varsity level,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ian Josephson ranks second among WCAL hitters this season with a .495 batting average.<\/p>\n
Lee Harrison<\/p>\n
Two-way player Davis Minton was in a similar situation. Penciled in as a starter this season, he hit just .200 as a junior last year while pitching in 14 games, all in relief. The rest of the lineup was built on senior third baseman Evan Bradshaw, a role player in 2024; senior catcher Jack Armstrong, who backed up his brother Ian last year; and senior center fielder Tyler Harrison, who totaled just 11 at-bats his junior season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year, having Tyler Harrison, Evan Bradshaw and Jack, all of whom were juniors and didn\u2019t play too much, they all really stepped up and answered the bell as far as they carried the team, and went about it the right way,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n
From the start, though, the bedrock of the 2025 Padres has been its pitching. Junior right-handers Riley Lim and Kelley Crawford opened the year as rotation staples, and Minton joined the starting staff at the outset of the WCAL schedule, and has gotten stronger and better with each start. Junior right-handers Hate Hui and Aiden Waters have been the stalwarts out of a bullpen that has proven as effective as it is deep.<\/p>\n
Serra owns a 2.33 staff ERA heading into CCS.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel good about our depth,\u201d Padres manager Mat Keplinger said. \u201cI feel like our roles have started to solidify themselves and, in general, we\u2019re going to continue to do what we do with going with the best matchup, and kind of ride the hot hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keplinger was openly critical of Serra\u2019s offense in the opening week of the season, but the team has come on strong, currently hitting .311 as a team.<\/p>\n
Josephson has been the spark at the top of the batting order since the season opener. He is currently the second best hitter in the WCAL with a .495 batting average, and leads the Padres in each of the triple crown categories with seven home runs and 22 RBIs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was, day one, penciled in at shortstop, 1-hitter,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cNever even talked about changing it. That\u2019s the easiest spot to write in our lineup every game, is Josephson batting first, playing short.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josephson\u2019s defensive play at shortstop \u2014\u00a0with a .962 fielding percentage \u2014 has been remarkable. He had some big shoes to fill in this respect, as 2024 graduate Michael Perazzo was one of the flashiest sure-handed shortstops in Serra history. Perazzo\u2019s bolt-from-the-blue senior season carried over to the NCAA Division I level, as he hit .307 as a freshman starting shortstop at Sacramento State this season, while on defense etching a .953 fielding percentage.<\/p>\n
In the case of Josephson \u2014\u00a0a Division I commit to St. Mary\u2019s College \u2014\u00a0the bat is the standout tool.<\/p>\n
\u201cJosephson\u2019s bat is the real deal,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cI think he\u2019s going to play for a very long time. He can really, really hit. … He just understands, like, how pitchers are trying to get him out, and he knows he\u2019s the guy every team is circling him in the lineup … and the way he\u2019s navigated that, and still put up the numbers he\u2019s put up, it\u2019s very impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Insofar as dog-piles go, Serra did follow through Friday, May 9, on its Senior Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cFriday, they still went bananas, and it was really good,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cI\u2019m just proud of them. They worked hard, they did it the right way, and they never really wavered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, comes the quest for another. The Padres open CCS Division I tournament play Saturday, hosting No. 8 Palma at Frisella Stadium. First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m. The semifinal and championship rounds of the Division I tourney will be played at Excite Ballpark in San Jose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Serra Padres celebrated their second straight West Catholic Athletic League championship with a post facto dog-pile. Now,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[2315,2309,5,2316,2314,2313,2325,2331,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,2307,2431,2327,2321,2332,185,15434,2311,2312,1039],"class_list":{"0":"post-51048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-athletic-sports","9":"tag-ball-and-bat-games","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-baseball-competitions","12":"tag-baseball-finals","13":"tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","14":"tag-baseball-teams","15":"tag-batting-order-baseball","16":"tag-major-league-baseball","17":"tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","18":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","19":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","20":"tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","21":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams","22":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","23":"tag-mlb","24":"tag-mlb-playoffs","25":"tag-mlb-postseason","26":"tag-outdoor-sports","27":"tag-playoffs","28":"tag-seasons-in-american-sport","29":"tag-seasons-in-baseball","30":"tag-shortstop","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-st-ignatius-college-preparatory","33":"tag-team-sports","34":"tag-turf-sports","35":"tag-world-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}