Prep baseball: Los Gatos rolls past Los Altos, win streak hits 12

LOS GATOS — The Los Gatos baseball team is on a roll.

The Wildcats won their 12th in a row Wednesday and clinched no worse than a share of the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza Division championship with a 12-3 win over second-place Los Altos.

Los Gatos – ranked fourth by the Bay Area News Group – improved to 18-6 overall and 11-0 in the De Anza Division. 

 “We’ve been really good at picking each other up after a bad at-bat or after making an error,” said first baseman and cleanup hitter Donovan Freed.

Three one-run losses to Serra, St. Francis and Mitty from the West Catholic Athletic League contributed to a 7-6 record in non-league play.

“Part of the reason for front-loading our schedule the way we did, we were looking to play tough opponents right out of the gate,” first-year Los Gatos coach Mike Minkel said. “The high school baseball season is such a short season and these guys were getting used to a new coaching staff.”

We battle-tested ourselves in the beginning, figured out what our deficiencies are and worked on those deficiencies in practice. Those close losses to West Catholic League schools gave us confidence we could play with anyone in the section.”

Los Altos (13-9, 8-3) went into the game two games behind Los Gatos, the only team in the division with a chance of catching the Wildcats. But the Eagles were unable to shut down a Los Gatos offense that scored in every inning.

It was 2-0 after one inning and 3-0 after two. Los Altos scored three runs in the top of the third.to draw even. But Freed’s home run over the left-field fence in the bottom half, his fourth of the season, put Los Gatos ahead to stay.

“It was a changeup up and in, I saw it pretty good,” Freed said.

Left-handed hitting shortstop Carter Johnstone’s opposite-field triple sparked a four-run fourth. Johnstone, who tied school records for both doubles and triples in a season last year as a sophomore, is batting .479 this season with 14 extra-base hits and 26 RBIs.

“He’s one of the best players in the section, if not the best player in the section,” Minkel said. “He never gets cheated, never takes a pitch off and comes out to play every day.”

AJ Minyard went the first five innings to get the win and improve to 5-2, with a 1.95 ERA on the season.

Los Gatos plays at Los Altos on Friday and has a home-and-home with Palo Alto next week before the Central Coast Section playoffs begin.

“We’re trying to make Division I and beat all those West Catholic League teams,” Johnstone said.