Santa Ynez High School senior Zachary Torra is the last man standing.
Torra, a starting pitcher for the Santa Ynez baseball team, is the only Pirates player who also played on the team that won a CIF Section championship back in 2014.
A sophomore at the time, Torra didn’t have the usual underclassman role of benchwarmer or secondary player. Torra was a key contributor to the team that year. He even started the championship game, masterfully pitching Santa Ynez in a complete game, shutout performance, to a 2-0 victory and section title.
“He’s a bulldog on the mound,” Pirates’ head coach Warren Dickey stated. “He’s not a rah-rah kid. He does his job.”
The following season, in 2015, Santa Ynez continued its success with many returning players on the roster. They finished the spring with a ridiculously impressive 23-4 record, they won another Los Padres League title, and they advanced deep into the CIF playoffs yet again.
“It’s been awesome,” Torra told the Sun of his high school run. “It started when I was a freshman and I got called up to play on varsity. It started there. Everyone took me in. They wanted me to fit in. That helped a lot.”
But after the 2015 season, which ended abruptly with a playoff heartbreaker, the team took a colossal hit: 13 seniors graduated.
Santa Ynez lost nearly all of its playoff experience and talent in one summer. That left a vacuum to fill and a big question mark as to who would step up to carry the torch of the Santa Ynez baseball program.
“There’s a little bit of pressure there,” coach Dickey noted. “We’ve been pretty successful the last five years, so coming into a program like that, you don’t want to be the guy that messes up.”
Take a quick glance at the Santa Ynez season so far in 2016, and you wouldn’t necessarily notice that the team’s missed a beat. The Pirates are currently 8-3 early in the season, with Torra leading a young roster comprised of a core group of sophomores and freshmen.
But look beyond the record, and it’s apparent the team is going through some growing pains and a rebuilding process. On March 25, they lost to longtime rival Cabrillo High School, 6-5, a demerit considering they haven’t lost to Cabrillo in three years.
Dickey and Torra are both seeing that building a team from the ground up can, at times, be a frustrating process.
“We’re very, very young this year,” Dickey said. “They’re very talented, but it’s a learning curve. As a coaching staff, we have to be a little more patient because they do make mistakes, especially with the pressure of winning.”
“It’s frustrating at times, honestly,” Torra added. “But everyone’s trying really hard. Everyone really wants it. We’re coming together.”
Torra sounded like a player-coach when discussing Santa Ynez baseball this year. His experience playing for the championship-caliber teams of the past provides the blueprint for what it takes to have a great team and season. Executing it, though, is easier said than done.
“We’re trying to replicate it. Not exactly replicate, but we know what we’re doing, myself and the coaching staff, in bringing these young kids up,” Torra said.
One aspect of the learning curve is that many of the newcomers to the team simply don’t have a lot of experience playing baseball. Some players have more football chops than they do baseball reps.
“They’re adapting to the baseball style and everything,” Torra said. “Everyone’s so gifted physically, but we’re just trying to get the mental state there.”
The Pirates are led by Torra and fellow seniors, catcher Ryan McCarty and infielder Brendan Gomez.
Coach Dickey dubbed McCarty “one of the top catchers in the league.”
After the senior core, Santa Ynez is chock-full of underclassmen.
You have left-handed pitcher Danny Atchinson—nicknamed “Torra 2.0”—infielder Dustin Gregg, outfielder Gabe Prendergast, and second baseman Travis Welker. The Pirates also start a freshman at shortstop, Cole Knightley,
Santa Ynez has their work cut out for them this season as they venture into Los Padres League play. Dickey applauded the quality of the league competition this season. There are more competitive teams, top to bottom, than in past years.
“You can’t have a bad week,” Dickey laughed. “It used to be a cakewalk with the Santa Marias and Morro Bays, but not anymore. They’re coming to play this year. Whoever the top four teams are in the league this year, they’ll be battle-tested and will represent the Central Coast quite well in CIF.”
However far this young Pirates team manages to go this season, it all starts with Torra—and he knows that. Torra reflects fondly on how he was treated by seniors when he burst onto the varsity scene as a freshman. He wants to give this year’s underclassmen the same mentorship that he received because it proved to be instrumental in building chemistry and, ultimately, winning a CIF championship.
“That’s basically how I learned everything that I did,” Torra explained. “So I just want to do the same thing or better than what they did for me. That’s my ultimate goal.”
The Santa Ynez coaching staff is hopeful that with some time and experience, the 2016 Pirates can get over the hump in time for a playoff run.
“Their upside [is big]. We’ve been getting better every week,” Dickey said. “I see that this team might be one that at the end of the year might be pretty formidable, if we can get through league.”
Contributor Peter Johnson can be reached at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 7, 2016.