Sierra lefty Leo Soto will continue baseball career at San Diego Christian College

The little lefty that can locate will relocate.

Sierra High School’s Leo Soto has turned an impressive two-year varsity stint into an opportunity to play college baseball beneath the Southern California sun.

Soto will sign to play at San Diego Christian College on Wednesday afternoon in the foyer of the school gymnasium. He’ll be joined by family, school officials and the man for whom he took the ball from every five days – coach Jack Thomson.

“It’s a great opportunity for him. I think the school will be a great fit for him. Leo doesn’t have the Division I body or the D-I velocity, but for us, he’s been a very successful pitcher,” Thomson said. “Realistically, without him the last two years, we don’t do what we’ve done in our conference.”

In a league dominated by power arms – think: Manteca’s Jacob Corn(Oregon) and Oakdale’s Bryce Dyrda (USC) of recent years — the 5-foot-7, 145-pound Soto was the anomaly.

He overcame his physical limitations with pinpoint control of three pitches: the curve, two-seam fastball and change-up. His mastery of the curve and change made his so-so fastball appear to have a little more zip. He painted the corners and let the defense work behind him, and the accolades and applause suggest he did it better than most.

“What has made Leo so successful is one, his ability to throw strikes, and secondly, his ability to throw more than one pitch for a strike,” Thomson said. “Even though his fastball is in the 74- to 75-mph range, when you have the ability to throw the other two pitches for strikes, that fastball gets on top of you a lot quicker than you think.”

Soto was a two-time all-Valley Oak League selection, amassing a 16-4 career mark with a 1.88 ERA.

He burst onto the scene as a junior with a 9-0 mark. Opponents hit just .208 against him. This season, he went 7-4 as the Timberwolves made history by completing the “Valley Oak League Slam.”

According to VOL commissioner Norm Antinetti, Sierra is the first school in the VOL’s modern history to hold all three of its major boys titles: football (shared with Oakdale), basketball and baseball.

Soto runs with that pack because of his brains (3.75 GPA, as a junior) and attention to detail. He lives and thrives in the smallest, tightest, darkest spaces of the strike zone, baiting the opposition into bad swings and disrupting approaches. He surrendered 37 walks in 1262/3 varsity innings and lost consecutive starts just once as the Timberwolves’ ace.

San Diego Christian could use some of that success. The Hawks went 11-41 overall and 10-32 in the Golden State Athletic Conference and were 1-16 against the NAIA’s Top 25. Opponents hit .308 against San Diego Christian pitching, which yielded nearly seven runs per game.

In two years, Soto returned Sierra to the top of the VOL. Now, he’ll get a chance to do it again in the “poor man’s Hawaii,” Thomson quipped.

“It’s almost one of (those) things where you’re going to have to wait and see. Will he continue to gain more velocity? If he does, that will make him a better pitcher,” Thomson added. “I think another key is will they be willing to trust a guy that is 5-7 and doesn’t throw very hard? Can he get people out? We have all the confidence in the world that Leo can.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2015 at 7:59 PM with the headline "Sierra lefty Leo Soto will continue baseball career at San Diego Christian College."