Peninsula Prep Baseball
MOUNTAIN VIEW – Saturday is Commencement Day at Saint Francis High. New beginnings. The day everyone – past graduates and those getting ready to walk the stage alike – take stock in their journeys, idealistically pondering where life's path might lead them, while mindful of from where they've come.
Few have had a high school journey quite like Brody Larocque.
Four years ago, no one – not even the 6-foot, 185-pound right-hander from San Carlos – could have fathomed that it would be Larocque taking the ball on Graduation Day to begin the Lancers' quest for a first Central Coast Section championship since 2018 against Serra, a West Catholic Athletic League rival and the defending CCS champion.
Four years ago, you would have gotten long odds that Larocque would pen a senior season where he'd go 11-1 with a 0.71 earned-run average and 59 strikeouts in as many innings. Nobody would have believed he'd become an All-WCAL pitcher and one of the mainstays for one of the most dominant team pitching performances ever.
"I think freshman year me would be surprised by this year," he said. "Then again, maybe he wouldn't be. I mean, I've put in the work. I've put in the hours when the lights are off. I'm lifting on school nights. I'm throwing on school days. I put in the work, and I'm glad that everybody else gets to see."
There's no cockiness in his voice. No vindication. The kid talking is literally tasting the fruits of his labor. Maybe for the first time. He's talking about it because someone finally asked him about it. It's a story he's been wanting to tell, a rags-to-riches tale about someone how has worked hard become a key piece to a memorable season simply by continuing to work, and by not buying into the early reports that he wasn't good enough.
"Brody's story is a story of hard work," said Saint Francis catcher Gino Cappellazzo. "He works harder than anyone and it shows in where he is right now."
It's a journey that Lancers coach Erik Wagle calls one of the most impressive he's witnessed. Larocque is truly a Cinderella story. He's a kid who came out of nowhere to earn the chance to pitch next year at Chapman University, one of the top Division III baseball schools in the country.
He makes no bones about it. As a freshman, Larocque was a baseball afterthought, just like hundreds of kids who excelled in the youth leagues but were quickly dismissed and deemed to be not quite good enough to shine brightly at a WCAL school.
"In my freshman year, I was, I was basically a team manager," he said. "I wasn't really on the team. I think I maybe had like two innings, but my job was feeding the (pitching) machines. I was feeding the front toss and doing all that other good stuff."
But he just kept moving forward. He kept working. Even if his place on the roster was as a supporting member and his view of the diamond was from the end of the bench, he never stopped working.
He lifted weights in the offseason with his teammates and kept working on his pitches, his "demon slider," in particular, as Wagle calls it. He knew he'd never come anywhere close to 90 mph, but that his ability to control the strike zone was far more important. At the high school level, a pitcher who can throw strikes is an effective pitcher, especially if he has a defense behind him with Division I-caliber players at every position.
"I have an amazing defense behind me," he said. "Knowing that, if I just pitched to weak contact, our defense is going to make the plays like they have all year long."
But first he needed a chance. And those kinds of opportunities don't just fall into the laps of everyone. He was used sparingly as the fourth or fifth starter at the junior varsity level as a sophomore and made the varsity squad as a junior but threw just 12 scoreless innings as he watched Landon Kim and Nick Chow dominate as seniors.
Still, he kept competing. He kept moving forward. He kept working. And learning. The time spent watching Kim and Chow, he says, showed him what it took to be a top-of-the-rotation pitcher.
The plan for this year was for him to come out of the bullpen as Ian McMahon and junior Kyle McMillan stepped into the rotation, but McMahon suffered an arm injury in the fall that kept him on the sideline, thus giving Larocque the opportunity he sought.
"He got his opportunity and grabbed it," Wagle said. "Look what he's done with it."
All the hard work, the running and weight room sessions, the throwing drills and the honing of his pitches and his control of them were immediately put on display when he shut out Leigh in his first varsity start in late February. It would be six weeks before he gave up a run.
"We talk a lot about winning in the margins," Larocque said. "You know, we're all given 24 hours a day, depending on how you use them. It's not just me. This entire staff has really used our time wisely. Smart. We've won when the lights are off and we show that when we win when the lights are on."
Larocque will be the first to tell you that he's not a strikeout artist. His forte is pitching to contact, he says, but as he says this, the numbers say otherwise. Averaging a strikeout per inning means he has the stuff to get swings and misses.
Much of that has to do with his approach, Wagle says.
"I think that's him having the cajones to throw any pitch in any count," Wagle said. "When it's a 3-2 count and the hitter's sitting dead red on a fastball, we will throw a slider. He's able to get out in front of a hitter mentally with the way he pitches."
And success breeds confidence. That's what his catcher has noticed.
"I think he's the same as he was last year," Cappellazzo said. "I think he's a little bit more polished. He's gotten some more opportunity to shine. His confidence levels are through the roof. He'll throw any pitch to any player in any count. It doesn't matter."
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