The Chabot baseball team entered the week having accomplished a lot, with some unfinished business.
The Glads (27-10, 14-4 Coast-North), with a monster offense and a young but highly skilled pitching staff, have two conference games remaining and a chance to earn the Coast-North title outright by going 2-0, with a little help.
Chabot secured a top-three playoff spot in its division with an 11-6 win over De Anza on Saturday, April 20.
As for the conference race, first-place Skyline (26-11, 15-3), which leads the Glads by a game, will face tough College of San Mateo on Tuesday before traveling to Chabot on Thursday for a heavyweight battle.
If CSM upends Skyline, and Chabot takes down lowly CCSF Tuesday on the road and Skyline on Thursday at Steve Friend Stadium, the Glads will be the champs.
"Maybe we get a little lucky with San Mateo beating them, then we can actually take the league still," Chabot head coach Paul Wiebens said. "We are playing all right, the pitching's coming around. We always have hit, so we've always been able to produce runs."
Chabot and Skyline will finish tied for first if the Glads win their final two games, and Skyline goes 1-1, with a loss against Chabot. In that scenario, Chabot and Skyline would be 2-2 against each other this season, and it's unclear about tiebreaker formulas.
One thing's certain: Chabot's offense is a nightmare to face. The Glads are a close second in the state in homers, No. 2 in RBI, No. 1 in runs, No. 1 in hit by pitches, No. 2 in stolen bases. They are averaging over 10 runs a game.
"We hit you with a bunch of different ways," Wiebens said of the lineup. "… We have speed, we're smart on the base paths, and we can drive the baseball. We also can stack a lot of hits together too. We're multi-dimensional with the bat."
Emmitt Phinney leads the conference in hitting with a .411 batting average, and Phinney and Noah Morton are tied for second in home runs with 10 apiece.
Outfielder Jalen Owens is hitting .364 with 13 stolen bases, freshman TJ Costello has six Big Flies and 31 RBI. Noah Zertuche is hitting .338 with 25 RBI. Batters one through nine can all do damage.
Chabot historically has been aggressive on the basepaths, and this year is no different. Raoul Fabian Jr. is second in the conference in stolen bases with 21, and Daniel Behrmann has 19 base thefts.
From the hill, freshman Will Aviles, effective as a starter and reliever, leads the conference with an ERA of 2.57. Touted Isaac Lucas (6-4, 2.96, 80 K), a freshman lefty, has four Division I offers. Daniel Hernandez, another freshman, also has a Division I offer.
Young college pitchers must make adjustments during an often difficult transition from high school to college play.
"It's tough as a freshman when you get into that college game and you're facing college hitters and realizing that in high school that fastball got by him and now it doesn't," Wiebens said. "In high school that breaking ball was taken, and now they're hitting it. It's a little different game because the hitters are just better."
The head coach says his freshmen pitchers are really good, "it's just that they're freshmen."
That said, the Glads lead the state in shutouts and are No. 2 in batting average against."
In the first round of the playoffs, it'll be a more normal situation for Chabot. They'll need to win twice to advance, but the next round will have three teams vying, and pitching arms will be tested.
"We gonna see what they're made of, basically," Wiebens said of his young staff. … "Now it's just what do we do in the pressure situations, but our starters have been good all year."
Wiebens says he tells his guys that "all this stuff is just prep work for when the real season starts, and that's playoffs, so we've got to be ready for the real season. We're getting there."