WATSONVILLE >> St. Francis High’s streaking baseball team made it look easy again Wednesday. The confident Sharks are expecting to enjoy continued success in the upcoming Central Coast Section playoffs.

The Sharks continued to display the basic tenets for success and secured their 14th straight win on senior day. They pitched, played solid defense, and produced timely hits to pull off an 11-1, walk-off win over visiting Monterey in the teams’ Pacific Coast Athletic League Gabilan Division finale.

The game was called in the sixth inning on the mercy rule after Trey Silva smacked a bases-loaded double to drive in Pedro “Jr.” Ibarra and Donny Dominguez.

With their win, the Sharks (21-4, 18-3) finished in second place in the Gabilan behind Carmel (22-4, 19-2) and have qualified for the CCS playoffs, which begin next week. They close the regular season with a non-division game against Soledad (20-5) on Saturday at 11 a.m.

“I think the reason they’re so successful is just the brotherhood they have,” said Ken Nakagawa, the Sharks’ 14th year head coach. “Some of our seniors, it seems like they’ve been with us forever because of their brothers, or their cousins, or their relatives. They come into the program and know what we’re about. The first thing we talk about is our family. They’ve all bought into being a family. I think they support each, and as you can see, it’s not one guy. It’s all of them. Somebody isn’t swinging, they pick each other up. And that’s kinda how it has been all year.”

Nakagawa, who has coached two CCS finalists, including the 2022 D-IV champion, believes this might be his best offensive team.

“They don’t punch out a lot,” the coach said. “They’re good on hitting balls the other way, and having a two-strike approach. They’ve been really good on punishing guys who are trying to throw fastballs; more so, taking bad pitches this year. At the beginning of the year, we were swinging at a lot of bad pitches, and they’ve gotten continually better as the year went on, which is what you want to do.”

The Sharks are batting .354 (202 for 672) as a team, with 59 extra-base hits. They’ve drawn 114 walks and stolen 52 bases.

Against Monterey, Silva finished with two hits and four RBI. Teammate Javier Fonseca also had two hits, including a double, four RBI, and scored twice. Catcher Nash Horton had two hits, two RBI, and scored twice, and Ibarra scored three runs. Dominguez had an RBI and scored twice.

“We’re successful because we come out and play for each other,” Fonseca said. “There’s not really one game where we’ve come out and ego-ed each other. We knew we had one goal at the beginning of the season: play hard and just play together.”

Fonseca’s big hits, which came in the third and fifth innings, and staked St. Francis to a 5-1 lead, both came with two outs and two strikes against him.

Shortstop Micah Cervantes flashed some leather and helped turn a double play to help winning pitcher Adrian Leon escape a bases-loaded jam unscathed in the first inning.

“I think it’s our ability to adjust and have each other’s backs,” said Horton, of the Sharks’ success. “I think that’s a big part of it. … We’re all a family here. We pick each other up no matter what’s going on.”

Leon and Silva have been the workhorses on a pitching staff that holds a 3.06 earned-run average.

“They compete in the strike zone,” Nakagawa said. “More importantly, they throw a lot of strikes. They pitch to contact; our defense has done a great job.”

Ibarra and Horton have increased their workload in recent weeks.

Leon gave up one unearned run over five innings Wednesday. He surrendered four hits and two walks and struck out nine batters. Mateo Marotta-Gallegos scored the Toreadores’ lone run in the third inning after he reached on a single, moved to third on Nathan Wedderburn’s single, and scored after he inadvertently knocked the ball from Ibarra’s glove on a backdoor pickoff attempt from Horton.

Fonseca pitched the ninth and gave up a one-out double to Connor Rose, but Horton threw out Rose trying to steal third. Fonseca walked the next three batter to load the bases, but he recorded a strikeout to escape the jam.

The Sharks believe they can continue to have success in the playoffs. They have their eyes and hearts set on section and NorCal Regional titles.

“To be honest, success is ‘win the whole thing,’ ” Fonseca said. “It doesn’t matter how close you come if you didn’t win, so go out there and win.”

The Sharks have been virtually unstoppable after they got off to a 3-3 start this season.

Said Horton: “Go win NorCal. I’d love to win CCS. We came up barely short in league. Carmel caught us early in the year, but that is what it is. It’s in the past now, and now its attack in CCS. Winning CCS is the expectation and winning NorCal is the expectation right now. And I think we should set those goals to go reach them.”

With an enrollment of roughly 220 total students for much its existence, the Sharks, who have several year-round players, embraced the underdog role as they hung with and beat many of the higher caliber opponents over the past decade. But the underdog moniker, despite reality, has fallen from favor.

“It’s an expectation,” Nakagawa said of winning. “You come here and it’s an expectation. I think I’ve said that from Day 1. Back when I first got here and everyone was worried about who we played. We’ll play anybody, any time, anywhere. We don’t care if we play in the parking lot. That’s just kinda what we expect. We don’t shy away from competition.

“I think that’s kinda my mentality and I think the kids have really bought into that. It doesn’t really matter who you are as long as you buy into believing in what we do here. I think it works for us. It has been a good run.”