Day 1 Recap
| Day 2 Recap
| Day 3 Recap
| Day 4 Recap
| Day 5 Recap
| Day 6 Recap
| Day 7 Recap
Jonathan
Heasley
(2016, Dallas, Texas) helped to propel the Dallas Patriots Stout team
into the 17u WWBA Championship Game with an impressive eight inning
effort in the semifinal game. Heasley, an Oklahoma State commit, also
earned the MV-Pitcher award for the entire tournament for his stellar
performances over the course of the week. On Friday morning, the
6-foot-3, 195-pound righty took to the mound and displayed an
aggressive, bulldog mentality and approach. He has a projectable,
well-proportioned frame with long legs, a high waist and an athletic,
lean build with solid present strength. Heasley has a well-paced
delivery with a high leg lift above his belt out of the windup, and
as a solid athlete he’s able to repeat his overall delivery pretty
well. He works to a high three-quarters arm slot and has a clean
break with a compact, abbreviated path and he’s able to get
downhill and over his front side pretty well.
In
the early going Heasley consistently sat in the 88-92 mph range with
his fastball. The heater showed good arm-side run at times, and he
displayed solid command of the offering, working to either side of
the plate and also showing the ability to change hitters’ eye
levels. Heasley also worked in 70-74 mph curveball. The offering had
varied shape, at times showing more 12-to-6 break and at others
flashing 11-to-5 with later glove-side finish, but the breaking ball
flashed good depth and some later finish when located down in the
strike zone. He lost a few pitches to the arm side, with the offering
backing up, but most of them had tighter rotation and he showed solid
feel to spin it. While the offering shows the makings of a quality
pitch, Heasley can be a bit more deliberate with his delivery and arm
speed when throwing his breaking ball.
Heasley
really displayed top-notch stamina and competiveness in the seventh
and eighth innings. On a day when the temperatures reached as high as
96 degrees, Heasley ramped up in the later innings. While he had
previously been living comfortably in the 88-91 mph range with his
fastball, in the last couple of innings he fired in a number of
heaters in at 92 and 93 mph and still was able to locate the pitch
down in the zone. As he continues to mature and add more strength
onto his solid yet projectable frame one would expect him to
consistently pitch in that velocity band.
Over
the course of the tournament CBA Marruci’s Nicholas
Kahle
(2016, Simi Valley, Calif.) split the catching duties with Blake
Sabol. Sabol, who was detailed in an earlier
notes portion,
is obviously a big-time talent on both sides of the ball, and Kahle
is no different. Both California natives participated in the Perfect
Game National Showcase, showed well there and continued to perform
well against some of the best high school talent over the past week.
At 5-foot-11, 195-pounds, Kahle offers a different frame and build
than Sabol, but the Washington commit has good strength in both his
upper and lower halves.
Defensively
Kahle shows good reactions and lateral movement behind the plate and
he shifts well into blocking position. He also has a quick, compact
arm action, solid transfer and strong, accurate arm that plays very
well in games. In the batter’s box the righthanded hitter starts
with a narrow base and high hand set. He stays very balanced at the
plate and even with a deeper load Kahle has a fluid swing with solid
bat speed and feel for the barrel that shows up consistently in game
action. As a result, Kahle was rewarded not just with the
championship trophy that he and his CBA Marruci’s claimed with a
victory over the Dallas Patriots Stout, but also the tournament’s
MVP award.
– Andrew Krause
Elite
Squad Prime headed into semifinal action in better shape than most
teams, with a high-end, fresh arm at their disposal in 2016
righthander Greg
Veliz.
Veliz is another well-known, South Florida product who is no stranger
to PG events, and is ranked No. 10 overall in the class of 2016
rankings. He's known as a righthanded fireballer who can dial his
fastball up into the mid-90s to go along with legitimate next-level
projection as a positional player as well. Veliz went four innings
for Elite Squad in their semifinal matchup against CBA Marucci, and
despite coming out on the losing end, Veliz showed some of the
nuances of pitching that we hadn’t seen from him before.
Working
with a fastball in the 89-92 range, touching 93 a few times, Veliz
was able to throw strikes and pound the bottom of the zone
consistently with solid arm-side life on the offering, and did a good
job keeping CBA hitters off balance. He also showed a better
curveball than we have seen in the past, with 11-to-5 shape and big,
biting depth, the pitch showed an above average future. He also mixed
in a changeup with good velocity differential from his fastball, and
though the pitch isn’t quite on par with his fastball/curveball
combo, he certainly showed enough feel for it to project it as a good
third pitch for him moving forward.
Trailing
1-0 in the late innings, Elite Squad’s 2017 first baseman Alejandro
Toral stepped to the plate and, as has become custom for Elite
Squad hitters in this event, delivered a mammoth, game-tying home run
to right field. Clocking at 106 mph off the bat, it was a rising line
drive that got out of Lake Point in a hurry, and was a very good
singular representation of the kind of silly-high offensive upside
that Toral has. The strength, bat speed and raw power that he has in
his lefthanded bat have been discussed in these recaps before, but
they certainly bear repeating. As only a 2017, we have plenty of time
to really decide what kind of hitter Toral will end up being at the
next level, but from the vantage point of the past few weeks (Junior
National, WWBA 17u), he has as high an upside as any lefthanded power
bat in his class or any other. He has a chance to be a very, very
special hitter.
CBA
Marucci sent 2016 lefthander Zack Noll to the mound for their
semifinal game against Elite Squad, and he was very impressive in
delivering them to the championship game, which they eventually won.
Noll is a tall, lanky lefty, listed at 6-foot-6, 185-pounds and
committed to Oregon. Working with his fastball in the 84-87 range,
topping at 88, Noll uses a little bit of herky-jerky funkiness in his
delivery to add deception, and when you combine the long limbs with
that deception, it makes it very hard for opposing hitters to pick up
the ball cleanly out of his hand. He showed an advanced feel for a
curveball/changeup combination, giving him an advanced three-pitch
mix with quality feel for pitching overall. He likes to throw his
changeup to righthanded hitters, using the fade and tumbling action
of the pitch to get them out in front and flailing over the top of
it, then comes back with the curveball to lefthanded hitters, where
the depth and angle of the pitch has much the same effect. He will
pitch backwards as well, throwing off-speed stuff in fastball counts,
and when you combine this overall pitchability with his present stuff
and overall projection, the sky may truly be the limit for him moving
forward.
– Brian Sakowski