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High School  | General  | 12/27/2016

2016 Year in Review: High School

Photo: Perfect Game


2016 Year in Review: College | Draft | PG Events


Dirtbags end EvoShield’s Jupiter reign

After a remarkably impressive and unprecedented three-year reign as the WWBA World Champions, the EvoShield Canes had their winning streak snapped in 2016. Taking over the title as World Champs was the Dirtbags club out of North Carolina, who ended up beating an extremely talented Team Elite squad (Ga.) in the championship match. The Dirtbags got the job done by playing every phase of the game the right way, getting excellent pitching from a deep pitching staff and coming up with timely hit after timely hit.

Dirtbags’ Davis Schneider (MVP) and Mason Hickman (co MV-Pitcher) won the individual hardware given out at the end of the tournament, and with extremely good reason. Schneider hit an overwhelming .409/.519/.909, good for an OPS of 1.428, complete with a pair of home runs and 11 RBI. Hickman, who split the Most Valuable Pitcher award with Team Elite’s Ethan Hankins, pitched 8 2/3 innings across two appearances, striking out 11, allowing no runs, a single walk and scattering six hits, good for a WHIP of a mere .808.


Coppell features impressive array of arms

At the beginning of the 2016 season Coppell High School (Texas) could boast what some colleges couldn’t; they had five pitchers on their staff who could throw the ball 90 mph or harder and all of them were committed to strong D-I programs. Led by PG All-American Charles King, who is now making a case for a weekend rotation spot as a freshman at TCU, Coppell ended up making a deep playoff run — and spending several weeks atop our rankings — before ultimately falling short of a state title.

In addition to King, Coppell was able to send out a quartet of other talented arms including Ray Gaither (Dallas Baptist), John Kodros (LSU), Hayden Kettler (Baylor) and Chris Burdine (Oklahoma State) offering a kind of high-end pitching talent and ridiculous depth not seen often at the high school level.


Stoneman Douglas and Archbishop McCarthy dominate in Florida…again

When I first started doing the PG HS Top 50 team rankings, way back in early 2015, I reached out to people around the industry in various areas of the country, inquiring as to who the best high school teams in those respective areas were. When it came to South Florida, the most common answers were always Archbishop McCarthy and Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and that’s still true nearly two years later. Both schools won their respective state titles in 2016, with Douglas securing the Class 9A title and McCarthy reigning supreme in Class 6A. To say that much of the same is expected in 2017 would be a bit of an understatement given just how good these two schools have been.


PitchSmart at PG Events, further limits installed at High School level

New at PG events in 2016, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, were the PitchSmart guidelines for arm care and injury prevention, set in place to avoid overthrowing and the injuries that can come with it. At every Perfect Game tournament, coaches are given the mandated guidelines before the event starts, and pitch counts were kept by PG staff during each game of each event so as to ensure the rules were being followed to the T.

In a similar development, during the summer the national governing body of high school baseball put into place a policy that mandates a certain number of rest days for pitchers after an outing, depending on the pitch count of that outing. The most notable change here is the moving away from innings pitched to pitch counts, a definite step forward in the process of caring for amateur arms at the high school level.


Sparkman wins PG High School Showdown

Heading into the Perfect Game High School Showdown, a prestigious invite-only tournament held at LakePoint in mid-March, Sparkman High School (Ala.) was not ranked in the PG Top 50 High School Team Rankings, though the event featured a total of five ranked teams at the time. It mattered not to Sparkman, as they dominated the competition over the weekend and went an undefeated 4-0 en route to the championship victory over Gulliver Prep (Fla.). Read Jeff Dahn’s feature story on Sparkman’s victory here.

Each year, the PG High School Showdown provides an outstanding mix of individual talent (a great deal of the players in the event were either drafted in 2016 or are now on campus at D-I schools) and high-level team competition, as evidenced by the number of nationally-ranked teams in attendance every year, which, when considering all of the above, made the Sparkman victory that much more impressive. The victory vaulted them into the Top 50 national rankings, where they stayed for most of the season before ultimately falling in the state semifinals.


Huntington Beach wins NHSI

After starting the season as the No. 1 overall ranked team in the initial High School Top 50 Team Rankings, Huntington Beach started off extremely strong, winning the National High School Invitational in Cary, North Carolina in late March. Led by top 50-ranked righthanded pitcher and catcher Hagan Danner and others (including high-end two-way talent Nick Pratto), Huntington Beach ended their season with a record of 18-11, making it to the second round of the CIF Southern Section (Division 1) Baseball Tournament. Both Danner and Pratto (along with several others) will be back in 2017, as the nucleus of the Huntington Beach team consisted of mostly underclassmen, and they’ll be extremely strong come spring as a result.


Preseason Top 10, in hindsight

In looking back, when we ranked the initial top 10 high school teams to start the 2016 season, we actually did a pretty good job of projecting out who would end up being the dominant teams. Of course, Huntington Beach and Parkview both had uncharacteristically early exits, but, as they tend to do, will likely bounce back with extremely strong 2017 seasons. The two Florida schools in the initial top 10, both Archbishop McCarthy and Stoneman Douglas, finished the season as the state champs of their respective divisions, as well as top 5 overall finishers in our rankings.

JSerra and Coppell both made deep state playoff runs before ultimately falling just short, and Coppell’s incredibly deep stable of arms has been well-documented. Barbe, as we’ll get to next, continued their utter domination of the competition in Louisiana by winning yet another state title. Oxford (Miss.) showed well at the PG High School Showdown (as did Buford and Parkview out of Georgia), then went on to dominate the Mississippi 5A state tourney en route to another state championship. Buford made it all the way to the Class 4A state title series, before ultimately falling to Locust Grove.

JSerra (Calif.) made it to the final four of the CIF Southern Section D1 playoffs before falling to Harvard-Westlake; while Flower Mound (Texas) made it to the regional quarterfinals of the Texas 6A state playoffs before falling to Coppell. All of the teams listed above certainly look like they’ll be ranked again in 2017 and are poised for big seasons.


The Barbe Dynasty continues in Louisiana

The word dynasty is derived, via Latin, from the Greek word dunasteia, which translates to mean “lordship” or “power.” When taking that definition, what Barbe has done in Louisiana’s Class 5A in recent years has been nothing short of dynastic in that regard. They won the state title again in 2016, which marked their third consecutive title and their fourth in the past five years.

One often hears the phrase “they don’t rebuild, they reload” when referring to perennial powerhouses of sport across all levels. It’s been said about the New England Patriots of the NFL, the New York Yankees of the late 1990’s in the MLB, and most recently, about the University of Alabama football team. The same could be said of the Barbe Buccaneers baseball program, as they’ve consistently been the cream of the crop in the past five years with big contributions from underclassmen, a feat which has allowed them to continue their domination year to year, even with the losses of big-time senior players.  


Strong prep draft classes in Georgia and California

In the top 42 selections of the MLB Draft, a total of 10 players came from high schools in either Georgia or California, making up over a quarter of those selections. This was led, obviously, by first overall selection Mickey Moniak (La Costa Canyon HS, Calif.), taken by the Phillies. He was joined in the first round (technically through pick 23 in 2016) by Matt Manning (Sheldon HS, Calif.) who went ninth to the Tigers; Joshua Lowe (Pope HS, Ga.), selected 13th by the Rays; Will Benson (Westminster School, Ga.), selected 14th by the Indians; and Blake Rutherford (Chaminade Prep, Calif.) who went 18th to the Yankees.

Carter Kieboom (Walton HS, Ga.) was picked 28th overall by the Nationals (picks 24-34 were considered the first compensatory round) and he was followed by Dylan Carlson (Elk Grove HS, Calif.) at No. 33, where he was selected by the Cardinals. In the Competitive Balance Round A (picks 35-41), Taylor Trammell (Mount Paran Christian, Ga.) was selected 35th by the Reds while Nick Lodolo (Damien HS, Calif.) was taken 41st by the Pirates. Lodolo was also the highest-drafted player to not sign a contract, and is now on campus at Texas Christian University, the prohibitive favorite to begin the season ranked No. 1. Right after Lodolo, Kevin Gowdy (Santa Barbara HS, Calif.) was taken by the Phillies at No. 42 overall in the first pick of the second round.


Player of the Year: Mickey Moniak, OF, La Costa Canyon HS (Calif.)

Picked first overall in the 2016 MLB Draft, Moniak became the fourth position player taken first overall since 2005 (Justin Upton, Tim Beckham, Carlos Correa). A sweet-swinging lefthanded hitter with extremely high projection on his hit tool, Moniak showed off that hit tool during his senior season at La Costa Canyon (Calif.) HS, hitting .476/.540/.942 over the course of the season, including seven home run, a development of his power tool that likely played no small part in the Phillies’ decision to make him the first overall pick. He projects to be a very good defender in center field while possessing the best pure hit tool of the prep class, with some evaluators foreseeing a future as a .300 hitter in the major leagues.


Pitcher of the Year: Braxton Garrett, LHP, Florence HS (Ala.)

One would be hard-pressed to find a more dominant season on the mound than the one Braxton Garrett, PG All-American and eventual No. 7 overall draft pick, had in 2016 (although Kyle Muller, who we’ll get to, has an argument). As the obvious ace at Florence (Ala.) High School, Garrett threw a total of 62 1/3 innings over the course of the spring, allowing only five earned runs for a miniscule 0.56 ERA. He struck out an astronomical 125 players, good for a strikeout-per-nine ratio of over 18. Perhaps even more impressive than those numbers, however, was the fact that he allowed a mere 15 walks. His combination of present stuff, projection and potentially plus command of his arsenal make him a tantalizing prospect to watch as he develops in the minor leagues.


Two Way Player of the Year: Kyle Muller, LHP/1B, Dallas Jesuit HS (Texas)

The argument can be made that no prep player in the nation enjoyed a more all-encompassing domination of a season than Kyle Muller. As the ace of the eventual Texas Class 6A state champion Dallas Jesuit ballclub, Muller allowed an extremely small 0.46 ERA over the course of 83 innings pitched, striking out 142 hitters while allowing only 19 walks. An obvious candidate for Pitcher of the Year honors, Muller’s offensive prowess forced our hand in creating a third award: Two Way Player of the Year. Hitting in the middle of the obviously potent Dallas Jesuit lineup, Muller hit .393/.480/.827, good for an OPS of 1.308. What really stands out, despite those video game numbers, is the fact that Muller belted 15 home runs in those 145 at-bats (173 plate appearances), which equates to a home run every 9.67 at-bats. For reference, the all-time Major League leader in at-bats per home run is Mark McGwire at 10.61. (Babe Ruth is second at 11.76). Muller was also named the overall 2016 Perfect Game/Rawlings National Player of the Year.
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