EMERSON, Ga. – Team Georgia Baseball Academy Blue is showing everyone why Georgia baseball is some of the best amateur baseball in the country at the WWBA National Qualifier, soundly defeating its opponents en route to a 3-0 record in pool play and a berth in Sunday’s playoff rounds with a shot at winning an automatic paid invitation to the prestigious WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla. at the end of October.
“This is really the first group of guys that we’ve had that’s really wanted to go,” said TGBA president Chris McRaney. “We all know Jupiter is just different than anything else that you could do in amateur baseball, so I want these guys to have that experience and to be able to one day tell their kids and their spouse because it’s the Disney World of amateur baseball.”
So far, so good. This group is playing like they want that bid to Jupiter and are excelling in every facet of the game. Through three pool play games, TGBA Blue Borcherding outscored its opponents 32-6 with many notable highlights along the way.
TGBA’s pitching started pool play Friday night with a five inning no-hitter tossed by Colby Tobin and continued that stellar performance Saturday when Cory Campbell tossed a complete five-inning one-hitter.
The highlights continued on the offensive side when Jack Dunn put an exclamation point to the end of pool play by connecting for a walk-off grand slam over the left field fence on Field 13 at Perfect Game Park South at LakePoint.
It’s been hard for opponents to keep TGBA Blue off the base paths. They tallied a .381 batting average (24-for-63) with 12 extra-base hits, on top of an overall .527 on-base percentage.
It’s been equally as difficult for opponents to reach base off of TGBA’s pitching and great defense. The pitching staff has combined to post a 1.40 earned run average through 15 innings of work while collecting 19 strikeouts. In fact, Lenny Webster’s CATCH42 Baseball was the only team able to score against TGBA, and they still lost 14-6.
“We’ve pitched extremely well and played really good defense and we’ve had good situational hitting,” McRaney said. “In order to go any further tomorrow, we’ll have to continue to pitch well and play great defense.”
Success on the diamond is something McRaney could only envision 10 years ago when he started Team Georgia Baseball Academy, but now it’s something his program has become accustomed to.
“It actually started with just one team and our first team ever won a WWBA National Championship,” said McRaney. “We’ve built from one team and now we’re 9u to 18u and we’ve got about 25 teams on the baseball side. We’ve been fortunate enough to win a 15u and 16u WWBA and finished fifth in Jupiter a couple years ago. For us, it’s been a great ride so far; great kids, great families, great coaches.”
The formula has resulted in TGBA emerging as one of the most recognizable travel baseball organization in one of the premiere areas in the country for amateur baseball and its young history has already seen well over one hundred players continue on to the college baseball level and another dozen taken in the Major League Baseball Draft.
“We were fortunate enough in the early years to have a lot of success and because we had success it helped us to expand over time and we did it in a slow, methodical way as not to overgrow too fast, but to do it structurally where we continue to keep our family-type atmosphere,” McRaney said. “All of our teams, from 9 to 18, we create a family atmosphere.”
McRaney’s program has been in the middle of the surge in amateur baseball Georgia has enjoyed over the recent years, as several Major League stars and recent high-caliber draft selections hail from the area. Guys like Buster Posey, Atlanta Braves fan favorite Jason Heyward, and top-ranked Minor League prospect Byron Buxton all played their high school and travel baseball in Georgia.
“In my opinion, we’re in the best baseball area in the country,” said McRaney. “The competition is the greatest, but there are guys like 6-4-3 and Team Elite and Homeplate and those guys, though competitors, are good friends of mine because we all get the big picture and that is to help kids prosper and give kids an opportunity to go on and play at the next level. Our goal and mission at the end of the day is to get guys in school and if they’re fortunate enough to play pro baseball, then that’s great.”
There’s a good chance you’ll see a few of these guys taken in future MLB Drafts as well. This team in particular already has eight Division-I commits, including three committed to SEC schools.
“This is a combination of my 16-year-old group last year and a combination of our older guys and we’ve got a lot of really good players,” McRaney said. “There’s really good team chemistry and they play loose. They compete and they love each other and that’s a winning formula.”
The formula is in full effect through two days of the WWBA National Qualifier as teams battle for that final chance for a spot in the WWBA World Championship.
“I want this group to get an opportunity to go to Jupiter and I think, honestly, we could go down there and compete at a pretty high level,” said McRaney.
This TGBA Blue team will come into Sunday’s playoff bracket one of the hottest teams in the tournament. Now, just four more wins stand between them and the prize of all prizes: a ticket to the Disney World of amateur baseball.