MJC baseball extends record season with wins in marathon NorCal Regionals weekend
The Modesto JC baseball team celebrated after a marathon weekend where they played four games in three days as part of the 2026 3C2A NorCal Regional playoffs from May 1-3.
The Pirates hosted Reedley and San Mateo for the first round of the playoffs in a double-elimination bracket and played every day. They had games once Friday, once Saturday and twice Sunday, securing their spot in the next round of the ultracompetitive 3C2A state playoffs. MJC is the No. 3 seed in Northern California and with two wins this weekend will advance to the NorCal Regional Finals.
The Pirates this week turn their attention to a familiar opponent as they host the Big 8 Conference’s Santa Rosa JC in the 3C2A NorCal Super Regionals. The two sides play a best-of-three series that starts Thursday and finishes Saturday, with one game each day. First pitch in the series opener is 2 p.m., Friday’s opening pitch is 1 p.m. and the if-necessary Game 3 is slated for a noon start.
“We’ve been playing playoff baseball the last five weeks, one-run games that are must-win games, some of the toughest games I’ve ever been part of, against really good teams,” Pirates head coach Alex Leach said.
The Pirates and Bear Cubs matched up in the regular season’s final series, which saw this MJC team put its name in the record books.
It won Games 1 and 3, winning the series and capturing the first Big 8 Conference championship in school history. The Pirates took Game 1, 16-9, fell 16-2 in Game 2 and bounced back with a 5-2 Game 3 win on the same day they dedicated the field to Bo Aiello.
“It was a testament to a bunch of guys that were just grinding,” Leach said. “They were tough and wanted to win. They wanted to win more than the self-accolades. We might lose, but these guys are cohesive. It’s really beautiful to see, man. It’s really refreshing.”
As the conference champions, the regular season awards also started to roll in.
Troy Morrow took home the biggest player award as he was named the Big 8 MVP, the first Pirate to earn the award. He also earned conference Freshman of the Year honors. Kannon Sharpe (starting pitcher), Braden Giardina (closer) and Ryan Silva (infield) earned All-Big 8 First Team honors, catcher Caleb Hendricks was named to the second team and earned a Gold Glove, and Leach was named conference Coach of the Year.
From last to first
The Pirates went from worst to first.
In 2025, they finished 5-19 in conference and 14-26 overall. They were the only Big 8 team that didn’t make the postseason.
But Leach’s faith in the program, his coaching staff and his players never wavered. Even in the midst of a five-win season just one year removed from a trip to the 2024 NorCal Regional, he vowed this year would be better.
And he was right.
The Pirates have won 32 games, their most in recent program history, and dropped just 11. They went 17-7 in Big 8 play and enter Thursday’s Super Regional with an 18-5 home record.
They lost just one conference series and never lost two games in a row.
“Everyone has doubt in Modesto and puts us at the bottom of the barrel, and we kind of took that personally,” Sharpe said. “(Winning the Big 8) was unreal. I’ve never been part of a winning program like that. We just put our nose in the ground and came out and grinded every day, and we got to celebrate for it. It was the best feeling in the world.”
Sharpe was there for both seasons. He saw the struggles of 2025 and was a leader in 2026, which makes the season that much sweeter. The Enochs product has pitched 71 innings and tallied 46 strikeouts, tallied five wins and has a team-best 3.17 earned run average. He has 17 appearances with 12 starts.
“Once you keep going out there every game, you start to develop a feel for your stuff,” Sharpe said. “It’s about having that mentality of going right after hitters, and that’s what Leach has really implemented in the pitching staff.”
He signed with the University of San Francisco as a high school senior but opted to play his first two seasons of college baseball locally. He was at the 8:30 a.m. team workouts no matter the weather, spending time in the outdoor weight room behind the center field fence and hours upon hours on the mound.
Leach admits he asks a lot of his ace. Sharpe has multiple consecutive complete games and more six-plus inning outings.
“He’s just our dude,” Leach said. When Sharpe is on the mound, “I’m good” win or lose, because the pitcher gives everything he has, the coach said.
Conference MVP and D-I reliever are big names
When the Pirates won the Big 8, they did not have a single Division I commit. But they had prospects.
They now enter the Super Regional with at least one player off the board, as Giardina last week announced his commitment to Oklahoma State University. One of the conference’s top relievers, he pitched 19.2 innings, posted a 6-0 record, had a save and 18 strikeouts.
As the MVP of one of the toughest baseball conferences in the nation, Morrow will likely have a long list of Division I programs to pick from. He’s come a long way since his freshman season, when he stepped on campus after graduating from Sierra High as a tall, skinny, talented outfielder with an admirable work ethic and high ceiling.
Like Sharpe, Morrow spent hours in the Pirates’ outdoor weight room, preparing for his freshman campaign. But in the preseason, he broke his hand and missed his true freshman campaign.
Morrow continued to work, went from 180 to 210 pounds and got an opportunity to play in Canada during the summer of 2025 along with MJC infielder JR Bedford. He returned to the U.S. with a new level of confidence and drive.
In the Western Canadian Baseball League, Morrow got valuable experience against top-level college pitching. He took 170 total at-bats in the summer (162 regular season, 8 postseason), finishing with a .276 batting average, 47 hits, 11 doubles, eight home runs, 36 RBI and 22 walks.
“That experience is where I found what type of player I was,” he said. “I basically spent the entire spring before that preparing for that summer so that summer could prepare me for this spring.”
Entering the Super Regional, Morrow is fifth among conference hitters in batting average (.375), second in RBI (48). He has 60 hits, 42 runs scored, eight doubles, nine triples and six home runs with 31 walks and 17 stolen bases.
“I believe I put in a lot of work coming into this season, and to see how it can pay off in different ways on the field is a real motivator for doing it more and more throughout the years.”
The Pirates enter Thursday’s game battle tested with 24 conference games under their belt, a fresh 0-0 playoffs series slate and players and coaches that have seen every situation.
In their playoff opener against Reedley, they overcame a three-run deficit in the top of the third inning, responding with five runs to take a lead. When Reedley tied the game late, they added the game-winning run in the bottom of the eighth inning.
They beat San Mateo 14-6 Saturday, fell in the first series-clinching game Sunday morning but responded with a 16-4 win in the weekend’s final game, the second of a Sunday doubleheader.
“I’ve got some of the best assistants in my opinion in the country,” Leach said. “You get guys around you where it’s a relentless, relentless amount of work. We’ve built the culture up of this club, and it’s beautiful.”
