PEORIA, Ariz. – The majority of the teams competing at this weekend’s Perfect Game/EvoShield Upperclass National Championship in the Phoenix area’s West Valley are based in cities in Arizona and California. States as far away as Hawaii, Maryland and Iowa – and Saskatchewan, Canada – are represented, however, and each team arrives with its own reasons for being here.
MAP Baseball, a team based in St. Louis Park, Minn., in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, is certainly armed with its own motivations. The players on the MAP Baseball roster are here to be seen, to get some of that valuable exposure in front of college coaches and recruiters that might escape them on the frozen tundra back home.
They got off to a good start Friday morning when they surprised a favored Slammers Black-Holzemer team out of Englewood, Colo., in their first pool-play game of the tournament, played on a Seattle Mariners’ spring training practice field at the Peoria Sports Complex.
The win just might have caught the attention of a recruiter or two, who in turn just might be tempted to check out MAP’s second pool-play game of the tournament.
“Up in Minnesota we don’t have a lot of opportunity for our kids to get recruited,” MAP Baseball director and head coach Brett Thorney told PG after his guys escaped the Slammers, 3-2. “Legion baseball is really big in Minnesota and that’s starting to change a little bit.
“Coming down here is just the beginning for us and even if our kids aren’t good enough to be seen by some of these schools, we have to give the opportunity to be seen.”
There is not a single player on MAP Baseball’s roster that has gotten a sniff of the national prospect rankings and none of them have committed to a college of any size. That doesn’t mean there isn’t talent on that roster, of course.
MAP managed just five singles in the 3-2 win over Slammers Black, including two off the bat of 2016 Edina, Minn., first baseman Nolan Friedrichs, who also drove in two runs.
Pitching was the key. 2015 left-hander Scott Richardson from Burnsville, Minn., pitched four no-hit innings before being touched for two runs on three hits in the fifth, and finished with nine strikeouts and two walks. 2015 lefty Cole Williams from Minneapolis threw the final two frames and didn’t allow a run on one hit while striking out two and walking no one.
“I felt really good with all my pitches out there; I felt like was in a little bit of a zone,” Richardson said after the outing.
“Us being from Minnesota and coming down here and playing … this was a good start,” Thorney said. “Obviously, there weren’t a lot of hits but there was some good pitching on both sides and we kept battling back and we found a way to score.
“I’m proud of my guys, they battled back and we found a way to come away with a victory.”
MAP stands for Minnesota Advancement Program, a fairly new organization that brings high school-aged prospects together to play tournaments in the summer and the fall. MAP had a team here at last weekend’s PG/EvoShield Underclass National Championship and also sent teams to PG WWBA tournaments over the summer. This same MAP Baseball team is entered in next week’s PG WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
The players that populate this MAP roster come from all across Minnesota, with 2016 second baseman/outfielder Tiegen Lindner calling Sioux Falls, S.D., home. There are pairs of players that attend the same high school but all told, players on the 15-man roster attend 11 different high schools. Many of them have been on the same teams in the past and have shown they can play well together.
“This is my group that is the most serious about baseball and wanting to play at the next level,” Thorney said. “I have a lot of good juniors on the team so next year we should have a real solid lineup. And these seniors – thank God for them. They’re really pitching for us and they’re really showing these younger guys how to do things.
“This is a good learning experience (for the players) even if we don’t win,” he continued. “We’re really not concerned about a win-loss record too much. We want to learn from it and get better every day and give the kids the opportunity to be seen if that’s what they want.”
Players not only want to win, of course, but they almost always expect to win. This MAP Baseball team is comprised of a lot of quiet kids, according to Thorney, and at times they need to have a little fire lit under their pants. “Sometimes I have to get them kind of mad,” he said with a laugh.
Playing in tournaments like the PG/EvoShield Upperclass – a Perfect Game national championship event that awards the players on the winning team with championship rings – can do a lot to raise a prospects’ energy level.
“This is a really fun experience getting to play with kids from all over and playing against these really good teams down here; I’m just enjoying the weather and getting away from Minnesota,” the lefty Richardson said. “I just like playing baseball and playing against the top competition in the country.
“We have really good defense and pitching,” he continued. “We need our offense to come around, but we can scrape together some runs and we can be really competitive and come together and play to win.”
MAP Baseball will have to hit the ball better in its final two pool-play games than it did in the opener if it hopes to be playing in Sunday’s championship playoff bracket as opposed to playing in a consolation game. Only the tournament’s 21 pool champions advance to the playoffs.
Just don’t tell the guys from Minnesota that they’re out of their league. They feel like they’ve earned a spot on this particular baseball map.
“I definitely feel like we belong at these events,” Thorney said. “We went to East Cobb (Georgia) last summer and we played every team strong in our pool and we actually beat the team that won the pool. I believe we belong at these events; it’s just a matter of developing more pitching and being able to start winning these pools instead of just finishing in the middle of the row.
“As Minnesota baseball gets better it’s only going to lead to getting more Minnesota teams down here,” he concluded. “I plan on going to as many Perfect Game tournaments as possible because it just gives you the most exposure and these kids need that.”