25-04-2025
St. Brendan baseball breaks up no-hitter, then rallies to clinch series vs. Calvary
It mattered little that for most of the game, St. Brendan's baseball team couldn't touch Calvary Christian starter Braden Rosenthal.
When it counted the most, the Sabres found a way.
St. Brendan entered the bottom of the sixth inning trailing the Eagles, 1-0. The way Rosenthal was pitching, that score probably felt like 11-0 as he faced just 16 batters and had not given up a hit.
But that all came crashing down for the senior Samford commit and his Eagles team when the Sabres blitzed him with four hits and plated a pair of runs that proved to be the difference as St. Brendan, the No. 6 seed, rallied for a 2-1 victory over No. 3 seed Calvary Christian in the third and decisive game of a best-of-3 Region 4-3A quarterfinal series at St. Brendan.
Already enjoying their celebration, Sabres players got even better news a few minutes after securing their win when they learned that No. 7 seeded Miami Killian had upset No. 2 Fort Lauderdale Pine Crest in the opposite bracket.
St. Brendan (17-12) will enjoy homefield advantage on Monday when they host Killian at their field in Game 1 of a Best of 3 regional semifinal.
'Our kids, they finally put it together in that inning,' St. Brendan coach Jorge Robles said. 'The Rosenthal kid, he's a tough kid and he was really doing a job out there. But give our kids credit, they kept battling the whole game and stayed with it. Just a matter of time before we got a few big hits.'
Jan Perez Fernandez began the inning by breaking up Rosenthal's no hitter when he hit a slow roller down the third base line. Third baseman Selvy Lopez fielded it cleanly and made a perfect throw but with good speed, Fernandez beat the throw.
Jorge Heredia, the No. 9 hitter in the lineup, attempted a sacrifice bunt but popped out to the catcher. Fernandez then took off and successfully stole second and the timing was perfect. One pitcher later, leadoff hitter Luciano Nava stroked a soft liner to left. There was a play at the plate but Fernandez beat the throw home and Nava went down to second on the throw.
Two batters later, after Nava made it to third on an infield ground out to second, the big moment arrived when Kevin Leon took Rosenthal's first pitcher and drilled an opposite field shot off the left field fence scoring Nava and sending the Sabres dugout into a frenzy.
'We had been seeing his cutter all game so I was sitting on it to see if I would get it and I did,' Leon said. 'He left it up and outside and I just went with it opposite field. It was our third time around against him so we'd been trying to go to school throughout the game. What a great game, both pitchers were throwing well and it was crazy game for sure. But we were determined find a way and it feels great to be moving on.'
The Eagles (15-11-3) did not go quietly though as they put a rally of their own together in their final at-bat.
A one-out Nicky Lombardo base hit to right center, only Calvary's second hit of the game as St. Brendan starter Giancarlo Guzman and reliever Alex Rizo had been nearly as brilliant as Rosenthal, got the rally going.
After Lombardo advanced to second on an infield groundout, pinch hitter Luca Erazo walked bringing up No. 9 hitter Cole Diehl. Down to his last strike, Diehl drilled a shot right up the middle that likely would've been an RBI single to center. But the ball hit Rizo's knee and bounced away for an infield single loading the bases.
Looking for a lefty on lefty matchup, Robles then went back to his bullpen and brought in Henry Perera to face, of all people, Rosenthal, the Eagles leadoff hitter.
Perera promptly threw three consecutive balls for a 3-0 count as the Calvary bench got noisy. But Perera kept his cool, calmly throwing one down the middle for strike one before Rosenthal hit a ground ball right back to him.
Perera reached up and speared the ball with his right hand, bobbled it before cooly firing to first for the final out.
'My mind was racing obviously at that moment,' said Perera when the count went to 3-0. 'But it was just a matter of calming myself, slow my breathing down and just make the pitches I knew I was capable of. In the end my team and my defense was there.'
The Eagles got their only run of the game in the fourth when Carlos Lugo led off with a walk and Preston Bielec followed with Calvary's first and only base hit off Guzman to right center.
Blake Sundberg then hit a shot to first base that got under the first baseman Brandon Roca's glove for an error, scoring Lugo and leaving runners on the corners with no outs. Primed to break things open, the Eagles will look back at a lost opportunity as Lombardo struck out and Wes Altidort lined out to Roca who then doubled back Sundberg at first for an inning-ending double play.
'A great game between two terrific teams that just didn't go our way,' said Calvary Christian coach Wayne Rosenthal, Brandon's father. 'We just coudn't get enough going offensively and it wound up coming back to cost us.'
