FORT MYERS, Fla. – If one of the country’s top underclass baseball clubs makes the decision to travel 2,500 miles just to compete against dozens of other top underclass teams on the biggest of national stages, it’s probably best if the players are arriving with a sense of purpose.
So how about it, Trosky National 2023? What was the driving force behind leaving your comfortable base of operations in San Jose in the San Francisco Bay area to come down to Southwest Florida’s Gulf Coast and roll the dice at the Perfect Game WWBA Underclass World Championship? Sun-splashed beaches? Fame? Riches? Really, what gives?
“Our main idea is to come out here and have fun but we’re here to win,” Jacob Hudson, one of the Trosky National 2023’s veteran team leaders, told PG Saturday afternoon. “We’re not here to mess around, we’re not here to goof-off, we’re here to win ballgames. We’re going to have fun doing it but at the end of the day if we’re not winning we’re not doing our job.”
Three days and one playoff game into this prestigious PG national championship tournament that counted 308 teams in its expansive field when play opened on Thursday, Hudson and his Trosky National 2023 teammates had proved a point. They showed anyone paying attention that they did not come here to mess around, they did not come here to goof-off. It’s true, they came here to win ballgames.
Just look at their playoff opener late Saturday afternoon at the Terry Park Sports Complex. The 18th-seeded National 2023s scored 15 runs on the strength of 13 hits in a 15-0 win over the No. 47 Team Elite 17u White in a game – a bracket-play game – that was halted after three innings. That’s called making an early statement.
Hudson delivered on his words, stroking a pair of singles, driving in four runs and scoring two others from his No. 3 spot in the order. Leadoff hitter Will Matuszak doubled, singled and scored a pair of runs; No. 2 hitter Tristan Russell singled twice with an RBI and three runs scored. That’s six hits, five RBI and seven runs scored just from the top three spots in the order.
“You’ve got to play as a team but you’ve got to hit,” said middle-of-the-order hitter Zachary Justice, who singled, drove in a run and scored another in the win, maintaining a torrid pace he’s set all weekend. “Pitching is pitching and you’re going to run out of it eventually so you’ve got to hit from the start; that’s all it is.”
The Trosky National 2023 are under the direction of head coach Abe Ruiz, a young manager who has shown a proclivity for getting the best out of his players.
Most of this roster was together for much of the summer but like just about every other team there are still pieces being added and subtracted when fall rolls around. When the new faces came on board they were immediately introduced to a core group that knows the drill inside and out and knows what makes Trosky National a winning program.
The National 2023 does not lack for individuals willing to lead. While being sure note that quite a few players on this roster fit that bill, Ruiz did mention specifically guys like Jacob Hudson, Zachary Justice, Michael Castaneda and Alec Belardes.
Hudson is an uncommitted right-hander/third baseman/outfielder ranked 110 overall nationally in the 2023 class; Justice a catcher/utility ranked No. 469 and an Oregon commit; Castaneda an uncommitted infielder/right-hander ranked as a top-500 and Belardes a right-hander/corner-infielder who has committed to Arizona State and is ranked No. 378 nationally.
“Those are guys that have been in this program for a long time,” Ruiz said. “They’ve really started to take that next step in their maturity and the leadership process and being able to handle a lot of things without us coaches getting involved.”
Among the other top prospects, right-hander/corner-infielder Cole Schoenwetter (No. 146, UC Santa Barbara), Matuszak (No. 158, UC Santa Barbara), Russell (No. 228, Florida State), Cole Kershaw (t-1000, Utah), right-hander/outfielder Brayden Marx (t-500, uncommitted) are fully on board.
Other somewhat unheralded guys like Jackson Batten, Brad Johnson, Owen Estabrook and Andrew An also standout; catcher/corner-infielder Hector Roca (t-500) is the only 2024 on the roster and has been a key contributor.
“This is a super tight-knit group of guys,” Hudson said. “Obviously we have a couple of core guys who have been here since the start of the team and them we have some new guys. Whenever new guys come in we always just welcome them and we’re always excited to have them. We just try to optimize what they can do for us and do for our team to get us that win and push us forward.”
The Trosky National program makes a concerted effort to come down to Florida and Georgia for PG events as often as it makes sense, usually for the big PG national championship tournaments. It gives the players the chance to see some different teams and different faces and size themselves up against a different brand of competition.
It also gives the prospects a chance to be seen by coaches and recruiters from East Coast colleges with staffs that aren’t as likely to make their way to the West Coast as some of their coaching counterparts from other regions of the country. This includes schools from the ACC and SEC, dream destinations for a lot of college-bound players regardless of geography.
“We’re a predominantly West Coast-based program but quite a few of our guys are interested in playing back East,” Ruiz said. “We owe this to them and the families in the program to try to get them in front of those guys as much as we possibly can so we try to get out here once in the summer and once in the fall.”
As a for instance, the Trosky National 2023 were at the PG 16u World Series in Sanford, Fla., in late July and left with a 1-4-1 record which included a pair of one-run losses.
“The biggest thing for us in coming down here is to get in front of those schools and getting our guys out of their comfort zone, too,” Ruiz said. “Being on the West Coast and going to Arizona, they kind of know how that works. So getting them used to a different travel schedule that a lot of these guys will see when they get to college is really important just in terms of their routines.”
And don’t be fooled, the draw of the SEC and the ACC is very real for college-bound baseball prospects. Social media content plays a big role in that, Ruiz believes, simply because everything seems so much more attainable to a young person these days.
Time and distance are almost abstract concepts because information flows from coast-to-coast so freely. The ability to feel connected to a place can be achieved by a couple of key-strokes and relationships can be formed and developed even without having to hop on a plane.
“That’s been the biggest thing for our guys is just being able to see all the activity on social media and they feel like they understand those East Coast schools a little more than they probably would have before,” Ruiz said.
“It’s definitely a privilege to play in front of them,” said Justice, himself an Oregon Ducks commit. “It’s fun, it’s different and we don’t get that on the West Coast so, yeah, it’s always good to play in front of different schools.”
But there is another reason, even more important reason the Trosky National 2023 are here this weekend and that’s to play baseball at the highest level the underclass grade level can offer. And make no mistake, these guys can play a little bit or they wouldn’t have been extended an invitation in the first place.
Ruiz doesn’t feel like it’s any secret that West Coast baseball and East Coast baseball are kind of different animals just in terms of the approach to the game. He thinks it’s important for his guys to understand that and learn as much as they can when they’re going up against their age-group peers from the other side of the country. Seeing the “same old, same old” makes everything seem stale; unfamiliarity can bring with it a certain freshness.
“One of the things we talk about is when meeting new people and new faces it’s going to be that type of atmosphere when you get to college,” Ruiz said. “When you’re in a college locker room everybody was the best guy where they come from. You’re going to meet new faces every fall … and you’ve got to get comfortable and form that team chemistry.
“All of that stuff has been really good for this group. And for our ‘23s kind of making that transition into the offseason after this event, it can be a little bit of a motivating factor for some of our uncommitted guys.”
The PG schedule-makers were kind to the Trosky National 2023 in that they were given a little bit of time to adjust to the three-hour time change with late afternoon games on both Thursday and Friday.
They responded admirably by taking down the Indiana-based Canes Midwest 17u 12-4, in the opener and then getting past Cadets Baseball out of Maryland 4-0 in their second Friday. They faced the New York-based Taconic Rangers in the pool-play finale in a noon start of Saturday and won that 4-1; the 22-5 run differential was good enough to earn the No. 18 seed in the 64-team playoffs.
“I definitely would love to see a little bit better offensive approach,” Ruiz said. “We’ve struggled early in the count getting a little bit too selective and I think (offensively) we have the bats to take advantage of the some of the mistakes we’re getting from that standpoint. …
“We’ve been really good on the mound but we’ve got to limit the free bases,” he added. “As it is at every stage of baseball free bases are going to kill you whether its walks or errors.”
So here they are, these West Coast guys more determined than ever to show their counterparts on the other side of the country how championships are won.
The Trosky National 2023 (4-0-0) have an early 8 a.m. Sunday date with the No. 15 Lone Star Baseball 2023 (4-0-0) in the second round of the playoffs at the Lee County Player Development 5-Plex in which they hope is the first of three games on Sunday, culminating with the quarterfinals. There is no place they’d rather be.
“I’m excited to be out here, being here with all my boys getting to experience this,” Hudson said. “Playing youth baseball and then getting to come out here, getting all these experiences is really important. It helps you grow as a baseball player and as a person. We’re out here to win and that’s what we plan to do and that’s what we’re going to strive for.”
Words like that only make his head coach smile: “We come out here and we’re going to scrap; we’re going to grind,” Ruiz said. “Something that is of the utmost importance for us is always taking care of arms first and foremost because that’s something that’s always tricky as you get deep into the event. … But we’ll scratch and claw and we’ll find a way to get some stuff done if we can make a little push at this thing.”
Added Justice: “We can win. We’ve got pitching but I think if we hit we can win. Any team that hits wins, so as long as we hit we can win this thing.”