Sunday, August 23 — There is a version of this story that is only a scoreboard. The Topes finished the regular season 15–1; they went 4 - 0 in the postseason, capped by beating the San Jose Giants 8–2 to close out the Division I championship series. 

 

The better version is what those numbers keep meaning, year after year. This is the Topes' third consecutive Division I championship — 2024, 2025 and 2026 — and their fourth in five seasons, going back to 2022. In a league where rosters turn over, and the field is full of teams that get better every season, one club has spent half a decade refusing to hand it over.

 

The season that earned the bye

 

A 15–1 regular season earned the Topes the first-round bye — the only real reward the standings hand out, and one they cashed in immediately. They arrived in the second round rested while the rest of the bracket had already spent arms.

 

Two pitchers did most of the work getting there. Lucas Robinson (#1) went 8–0, throwing 50.2 innings across nine appearances with 59 strikeouts, a 1.60 ERA and a .151 opponent batting average. Nobody beat him all year.

 

 

Andrew Preimesberger (#9) went 6–1 over 44.2 innings with a 2.22 ERA and a 1.01 WHIP. Between them, two men accounted for fourteen of the team's fifteen regular-season wins and better than 95 innings.

 

Behind them, Zach Eddinger (#18) was the entire back end of the bullpen: 29 strikeouts in 15.2 innings, a 0.57 ERA, and a .111 opponent average. Hitters went 6-for-54 against him across the season. DJ Sharabia struck out 12 in seven innings of relief. Jay Alvarez and Scott Botterman combined for six innings out of the pen without allowing a hit between them.

 

The offense was built on a different idea.

 

The Topes hit three home runs all season and scored 113 runs anyway, because they simply refused to make outs. As a team they hit .310 with a .425 on-base percentage, drew 75 walks, got hit 30 times and stole 46 bases in 16 games.

 

Michael Stozs (#3) hit .469 with a 1.119 OPS, the best everyday line on the roster. Kevin Furuta hit .455 with a .600 on-base across eight games, and Jay Alvarez (#11) hit .400 with eight RBI in nine. Connor Mcward (#12) led the team with 18 hits, five doubles and two triples, and posted a .970 OPS from the middle of the order.

 

 

Then there is Jono Stoval (#57), who manages this team and also produced one of the stranger stat lines you will see. He hit .333 — and reached base at a .660 clip. Fourteen walks and twelve hit-by-pitches in 53 plate appearances. He got on roughly two out of every three trips to the plate, scored 11 runs, and drove in eight. Pitchers could not get him out and eventually stopped trying. More on him in a minute because the on-base percentage is the smaller half of what he did this year.

 

Adam Irino (#5) stole a team-high 10 bases and hit .312 across 15 games. Zach Eddinger hit .342 and stole seven. Logan Azem (#7) hit .333 with a .463 on-base and five steals from the leadoff spot. Scott Botterman (#41) and Willie Hodgins (#4) drove in 10 apiece. Jeff Ramirez (#35) had 14 hits, eight RBI and one of the team's three home runs. Stephen Flynn (#2) reached base at a .405 clip over 13 games, and Max Mclellan (#42) played 10 in the outfield and stole four bases.

 

That is a complete roster, and it is worth saying plainly what that means: every man who could take the field in the playoffs had already earned his way there over sixteen regular-season games. Nobody was carrying anybody.

 

One loss. All year — and it is worth knowing who handed it to them. On July 26 the San Jose Giants beat the Topes 5–2. That was the only blemish on the entire season. Hold onto that.

 

Four games, four wins

 

August 9, Capuchino High School. The Topes came off the bye and ended the San Jose Cubs' season in a single afternoon.

 

The morning game was a slow fuse: three scoreless innings, then three runs in the fourth, three in the sixth, two in the seventh and three in the eighth. Thirteen hits, an 11–4 win, and seven innings of one-earned-run ball from Andrew Preimesberger. Connor Mcward went 3-for-4 with a home run and scored three times; Michael Stozs drove in three.

 

 

The afternoon game told you more. The Topes scored three in the top of the first, the Cubs answered with two, and the rest was a grind — 7–4 on six hits, five hit-by-pitches and four stolen bases. Logan Azem tripled. Zach Eddinger homered in two. Then the bullpen took it: Jay Alvarez and Eddinger threw four hitless innings with seven strikeouts between them to protect a lead that never once felt safe.

Which brought the Giants back around. The only team to beat the Topes in 2026 was the last one standing between them and a third straight title.

 

Championship Series:

 

August 16, Yerba Buena High School. Game 1 belonged to Preimesberger: six innings, one hit, six strikeouts, no earned runs. The Giants went 1-for-19 against him. The Topes put up 13 hits behind him — Scott Botterman 3-for-4, Kevin Furuta 2-for-4 — and won 4–2 in a game that was never that close.

 

August 23. Game 2 went all nine, and it turned in the second inning, on a bunt. Runners on first and second, nobody out, and Michael Stozs laid down a drag bunt — the least glamorous play in the sport and the exact right one. Three runs came around. Stozs doubled in two more in the sixth for a 6–0 lead.

Lucas Robinson threw five shutout innings for the win. Eddinger worked two and gave up the Giants' only runs. Jay Alvarez struck out the side in the eighth. DJ Sharabia took the ninth and ended the 2026 season on a strikeout.

 

Behind them, Logan Azem tripled, singled, walked and scored twice from the leadoff spot, Connor Mcward and Jeff Ramirez each drove in a run on a sacrifice fly, and Jono Stoval drew four walks, stole three bases and scored twice — a complete offensive game without a hit.

Final: 8–2. Four games, four wins, fourth title in five years.

 

The postseason numbers

• Andrew Preimesberger — 13 innings, seven hits, one earned run: a 0.69 ERA across two starts.
• Zach Eddinger — 5-for-10 (.500) with a home run and a .900 slugging percentage, plus two saves and eight strikeouts out of the bullpen.
• Scott Botterman — .455 at the plate, 5-for-11.
• Michael Stozs — three RBI in the opener, and on base in half his plate appearances on two walks and two hit-by-pitches.
• Lucas Robinson — 2–0, including the game that ended it.
• Jono Stoval — six walks and five stolen bases in four games. The least measurable player on the roster and one of the most valuable.
• Logan Azem — two triples from the leadoff spot.
• Jay Alvarez and DJ Sharabia — four relief innings between them without allowing a hit, and eight strikeouts.

Connor Mcward, Jeff Ramirez, Willie Hodgins, Adam Irino, Kevin Furuta, Stephen Flynn and Max Mclellan — the at-bats, the innings in the field and the sacrifice flies that don't headline anything and decide everything.

 

The man who built it

 

Somewhere in the middle of all this is Jono Stoval, who manages the Topes — and who has now led this club to four Division I championships in five years, including three straight.

2022. 2024. 2025. 2026. Only one year in five got away, and they have won every season since.

 

That is the number that deserves its own paragraph.

 

Anybody can catch a good roster for a season. Keeping one at the top of the division for half a decade — through the turnover, the injuries, and the guys whose jobs move them out of the Bay Area — is a different job entirely. It means recruiting every offseason. It means knowing which arm to use in the sixth inning of a one-run game in May so it is still there in August. It means being the person who answers the text at 11 p.m. about who is covering shortstop on Sunday.

 

He does all of that, and then he writes himself into the lineup and posts a .660 on-base percentage.

 

Managers in this league do not get paid either. They get the roster headaches, the umpire conversations, the field permits and the group chat, and if it goes well the players get the trophy. Four times in five years, it has gone well.

 

 

The dynasty question

 

Four championships in five seasons — 2022, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Three in a row. Nineteen wins in twenty games this year, counting the playoffs.

 

At some point the word for that stops being "hot streak."

 

Congratulations to the Topes, your 4-time SJ NABA Division I Champions.

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Read that and thought about it?

 

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