Finley Suppan (left) from Chaminade of West Hills is shown wearing her USA Athletics Rogers Gold uniform. At right, Trustin Mitchell from Fairfield High holds league championship banner that team won last season. Photos: usaathleticsgold.com & X.com.
(Click Arrows to See More Photos) It was especially tough finding usable photos for this week’s four honorees, but it wasn’t tough selecting each of them. We introduce you to a freshman baseball phenom from Santa Barbara County with the same last name as an immortal of the game, a sophomore softball star from the San Fernando Valley who’s the daughter of a former big leaguer, a pitching ace from Solano County and a slugging star from Marin County.
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Notes: For these honors, we consider CIF Central Section players for Northern California. To nominate anyone, email markjtennis@gmail.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Trustin Mitchell (Fairfield) Sr.
We begin this week in Solano County about halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento on I-80 and it’s at Fairfield High where we find this week’s NorCal baseball honoree. It’s more that Fairfield baseball head coach Alex Parrott has trust in his senior pitching star for his nasty stuff. He has trust in Trustin as a three-year standout with a 3.7 GPA and leader of the team.
Mitchell gets this honor mainly for tossing a one-hitter with 15 strikeouts and going 1-for-3 with a double in a 3-0 victory last week vs Napa. In his previous start the week before, Mitchell was equally dominant with a two-hitter and 15 strikeouts in a 9-0 win against Winters. This follows a junior season in which Trustin finished 6-2 on the mound with a 1.27 ERA. He also had 80 strikeouts in 49 2/3 innings.
Just going out there to pitch, however, is not why Trustin was the Fairfield Daily Republic Player of the Year as a junior. He also swings a big bat. Mitchell also went 1-for-2 with a double and three RBI in a 21-0 win by the Falcons last week vs Florin of Sacramento in a game he didn’t pitch. And in that shutout of Winters, he went 3-for-4 at the plate with a triple and three RBI. Mitchell’s batting stats as a junior showed him with a .418 average with two homers, 10 doubles and 37 RBI.
Cal-Hi Sports Northern California
Softball Player of the Week
Gabby Rodriguez (San Rafael) Sr.
We’ve been to San Rafael High in Marin County for a NorCal regional title football game where the campus near downtown makes it easy for fans to grab some dinner before a game or after a spring softball/baseball game. It’s at San Rafael where we find this week’s NorCal softball player of the week and so far this season Gabby Rodriguez has been feasting at the plate against opposing pitchers.
While San Rafael’s own pitching has been struggling, it didn’t prevent the Bulldogs from winning a crazy slugfest game on Monday of this week (which we’ve counted toward this week’s selection). In a 30-23 win over Terra Linda of San Rafael, Rodriguez had a huge day, finishing 4-for-5 with two homers, a triple and six RBI. In her previous game played last Friday, it was similar but not quite as crazy as Gabby went 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBI in a 21-10 triumph vs Justin-Siena of Napa.
Heading into a Wednesday game this week vs Redwood of Larkspur, Rodriguez ranks among the early reported state leaders (MaxPreps) with five home runs and 24 RBI with a .615 batting average. Her games from last Friday and on Monday were not close to her most memorable outing so far this season, which was pitching a complete game and driving in eight runs, in a 19-2 win vs Mt. Diablo of Concord. To get those batting totals, she went 3-for-3 with two doubles and one homer. As pitcher, Rodriguez has a 6.52 ERA but has a 6-0 record with 49 strikeouts in 24 innings.
San Rafael’s 7-0 start has included others besides Gabby who’ve been hitting the cover off the ball. We’re sure she wouldn’t mind also giving a shout out to sophomore Giuliana Hoover (had five runs scored in one game and has .667 batting average) and freshman Avery Prymak (21 runs scored and .619 average).
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Softball Player of the Week
Finley Suppan (Chaminade, West Hills) Soph.
We head to the far western part of the San Fernando Valley and about halfway between the 118 freeway to the north and the 101 to the south is where we land at Chaminade and where we find this week’s SoCal softball player of the week.
If Finley’s last name is familiar, it sure is to us. Her father, Jeff, was a longtime pitcher in the major leagues and was the National League Championship Series MVP in 2006 while with the St. Louis Cardinals. Jeff Suppan also was a dominant pitcher at Crespi High of Encino (a rival of Chaminade’s) and in 1993 he was selected to the Cal-Hi Sports all-state first team along with many more national/local honors.
Chaminade has gotten out to a 6-0 start to its season with its next game set for Thursday against league rival and State TOP 20-ranked Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks. Suppan was at her best in a 13-0 win last week against Royal of Simi Valley. She pitched a no-hitter over the five innings and had seven strikeouts. She also went 2-for-4 at the plate with two RBI. And in another game last week, Suppan went 1-for-1 with an RBI in a win vs Calabasas.
In Finley’s first six games this season, she has a 0.60 ERA in the circle with 35 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings. She also is shown with a .429 batting average and six RBI.
Last summer, pitching for the Valley Waves team as part of the USA Athletics Rogers 18 Gold program, Suppan helped her team win a PGF U16 Platinum Division national title. She was the only Class of 2028 player from the USA Athletics Rogers 18 Gold team that was nominated as a finalist for the PGF Futures All-American Game.
The Santa Barbara Athletic Roundtable already has gotten Matti DiMaggio out to one of its luncheons this season as a player of the week. We didn’t wait long to get the freshman picked this season, either. Photo: Dos Pueblos Chargers Baseball / Facebook.com.
Cal-Hi Sports Southern California
Baseball Player of the Week
Matti DiMaggio (Dos Pueblos, Goleta) Fr.
For our final stop this week, we head back up the 101 from the San Fernando Valley toward Santa Barbara. Instead of going into downtown, however, we keep going westbound toward the campus of UC Santa Barbara. Dos Pueblos High is north of the 101 freeway compared to UC Santa Barbara, which is to the south.
We’ve been to Dos Pueblos to honor a SoCal baseball player of the week before. It was in 2023 where the winner one week was Jesse DiMaggio, a junior at the time who also perhaps could have been picked again in 2024 (his senior year) except that we do tend to only pick a player once in his/her career as a player of the week. We’re back this week for Jesse’s younger brother, Matti, who is just a freshman but is putting everyone who follows baseball on notice after hitting three home runs in two straight weeks.
Matti and Jesse are not related to the super-famous Joe DiMaggio of New York Yankees’ fame despite Joe also being from California (played at Galileo High in San Francisco). Matti has already displayed a sweet swing as a freshman just like you would expect from someone named DiMaggio. In a 14-3 win last week against Buena of Ventura, Matti went deep twice and finished 3-for-3 with four RBI. He also went 1-for-2 with an RBI in another game last week vs Buena and on Saturday in a 6-3 win against Lompoc he hit his seventh homer of the year.
Prep Baseball California had this to say about DiMaggio after the home run on Saturday: “Simply put, he’s on another level. Bangs his 7th HR (3 away from school record held by his older brother) of the season to go with 19 BB walks and zero strikeouts.”
Matti swings from the left side and also has USA Baseball experience. He can be seen on social media hitting a 453-foot home run in a winter league game played in Arizona. Get used to hearing his name a lot in the coming years.
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports
