2015 Perfect Game High School Baseball Preview Index | Southwest Region Preview
There is no more perfect place on the planet for a baseball player to be right now than the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, or, as local chambers of commerce like to call it, the Valley of the Sun. While just about every place east of the Rocky Mountains is being staggered by snow, ice and sub-freezing temperatures, the Valley is being soaked in sunshine and 80-degree temps.
Major league teams have reported to spring training, getting ready to kick-off Cactus League play. College players at Arizona State University, Grand Canyon University and any one of the 10 or so community colleges in the area have started their seasons.
And right there in the middle of it all, hundreds of players at dozens of high schools are ready to get after it in Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) play. By the middle of May, state champions will crowned in four AIA divisions, with four schools looking to win consecutive titles.
One of those is Division-I (big-school) power Hamilton High School in Chandler, a city nestled into the desert in the Southeast Valley. With more than 3,600 students in grades 9 through 12, 16-year-old Hamilton HS is the largest enrollment high school in Arizona, and in short order its baseball program has become one of the state’s strongest with four AIA D-I titles since 2003, including one in 2014.
Thanks to a solid core of returnees from that 30-3, state championship team, the Huskies open play Feb. 27 ranked No. 30 in the Perfect Game National High School Top-50 Rankings. They trail only No. 20 Las Vegas Bishop Gorman among the ranked schools from the PG High School Southwest Region (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah).
There are a lot of things for the Huskies to be excited about as the start of the 2015 season nears. While much was lost, plenty of proven talent returns from last year’s championship team, including three starting pitchers that combined for 21 wins in 2014. But there is also no denying that the 2014 team was, indeed, quite special.
“We had a good group and we thought we were as good as anybody out there; everything meshed, all facets of the game,” head coach Mike Woods, the only head coach in the program’s 16-year history, told PG in a telephone interview last week.
“Our pitching staff was as strong as ever, we swung the bat real well; we played defense,” he said. “The kids came together and formed a real great ‘team’ and everything clicked. It was really like a dream season, to be honest with you.”
Entering the 2014 season, Woods and his staff anticipated they had a roster with enough punch and pizazz to contend for a state championship but they never anticipated a 30-3 season. With many of the top big-school programs that are clustered in the Southeast Valley sitting in AIA Division I Section II spending the spring beating up on each other, 30-win seasons just don’t happen very often.
“I never would have guessed we were going to put that many wins on the board but I knew we had a championship-caliber team,” Woods said.
Last year’s sophomores and juniors – this year’s juniors and seniors – soaked it all in, especially those with starring roles. The youngsters lived daily in the intoxicating, championship environment, learning from the seniors how to win with class and style.
“We had the best team chemistry of any team I’ve ever played on,” right-handed pitcher Zach Pederson, a junior last year, told PG. “… We all knew that we had like a security blanket with the talent we had and the leadership we had with the seniors. They put us on their backs and showed us the right way to do things; they were just great leaders.”
Standout catcher Logan Boyer, a key contributor as a sophomore in 2014, echoed those thoughts.
“It was probably the greatest experience I ever had in baseball,” he told PG last week. “I looked up to those seniors and they were great role models who worked hard every day and always wanted to get better. They just worked the whole season and got it done.”
WINNING BACK-TO-BACK STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS IN ARIZONA is becoming increasingly more difficult, especially in AIA D-I as the programs continue to step-up their games. Woods believes that the quality of play at the high school level in the state is at an all-time high and only continues to get better.
That said, this year’s Huskies firmly believe they have a shot at the repeat – Hamilton won back-to-back titles in 2003-04 – thanks in large part to an experienced and talented pitching staff.
“I’ve got a good staff with a couple of starters back, and a bunch of good kids that were waiting in the wings last year,” Woods said. “Last year at the beginning of the season we only had three returning starters. All those other kids were in the wings and they waited their turn and they just really performed.
“This year, we hope the same thing happens … and we have high expectations again this year.”
The staff is led by Pederson, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound senior right-hander who finished 12-0 with a 2.42 ERA as a junior, striking out 35 and walking 13 in 63 2/3 innings. His stuff isn’t overpowering but combined with a great defense behind him, he was super effective in 2014.
“My mindset is every single time I walk out on that mound I’m going to give it all that I’ve got,” Pederson said. “I’m going to put everything I have into it every single start because it means a lot more this season being a senior and everything. I’m going to try to shoot for a better ERA than I had last year. My record might not be 12-0 again, I’m not expecting that, but I’m going to shoot for a better ERA this year.”
The other two proven starters are junior right-hander Zane Strand and senior righty Jake Wong, who both possess fastballs that reportedly touch 90s mph. Strand was 6-0 with a 2.52 ERA for the Huskies last spring; he was named the Most Valuable Pitcher at the 16u Perfect Game MLK Championship while playing for AZ T-Rex Baseball Club over in Glendale in January.
Wong, who has signed with Grand Canyon, was 3-1 with a 2.17 ERA last year. The Huskies’ projected fourth starter, senior right-hander Nick Ohanian, was injured most of last season but was a starter for Woods two years ago as a sophomore.
“I think all of us can just go out there and get a quality start every game,” Pederson said. “We work well and we practice well as a unit.”
The top returning position players are senior second baseman Chandler Reynard, senior shortstop/outfielder Cameron Cruise and Boyer, the junior catcher. Reynard, an uncommitted top-500 national prospect, hit .355 with two triples, three doubles, 15 RBI and 15 runs scored in 30 games as a junior; Cruz hit .303 with four doubles, 14 RBI and 23 runs in 33 games.
Boyer is a rising junior PG ranks as the No. 124 national prospect in the 2016 class. He played in 17 varsity games for the Huskies last season and hit .429 (12-for-28) with a home run, four doubles and 13 RBI.
A San Diego State commit, Boyer was named to the Top Prospect List at the PG Underclass All-American Games in San Diego in August and to the all-tournament team at the PG/EvoShield National Championship (Underclass) in Goodyear, Ariz., in October while playing for the Dbacks Elite Scout Team.
He enjoys being a member of championship-caliber teams, like the Dbacks EST and especially the Hamilton Huskies.
“I like being able to walk around with a target on my back always knowing that people are trying to come at us,” Boyer said. “Just knowing that we’re the team to beat, it’s a good feeling.”
Woods also made special mention of sophomore Nick Brueser, a first baseman/outfielder PG ranks as the No. 297 national prospect in his class (No. 7 in Arizona). Brueser is a rare prospect who played on the Hamilton varsity as a freshman last year and hit .362 (17-for-47) with three doubles, six RBI and 10 runs in 27 games.
“He’s a special player,” Woods said. “Not very many people know about him but he’ll be our 3-hole hitter and he’s pretty darn good; the world’s going to find out about him.”
SEVEN GRADUATED SENIORS FROM THE 2014 TEAM moved on to the college ranks this year, including Ryan Peep at Arizona State, Justin Wylie at San Diego State and Austin Filiere at the academic powerhouse Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
That number is not an exception. Six alumni from the 2013 team moved on to the collegiate level, including Sean Rackoski to Kansas, and two others in that class were drafted: Patrick Murphy in the third round by the Toronto Blue Jays and Cody Bellinger in the fourth round by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mitch Nay, a 2012 Hamilton graduate, was a first-round supplemental pick (58th overall) by the Blue Jays.
“I honestly believe –and this is what I tell the parents and the kids – that if you make it through four years in our program, there’s a place for you to play,” Woods said. “Sometimes kids choose not to play … and they decide to just get on with their lives, and that happens often times.
“But we’ve got it going now and the pipeline is such, that if you’re a four-year player at our school you’re the kind of kid that can play college baseball at some level, somewhere.”
This was a program that had to be built from the ground-up, starting with inaugural season in 1999. The school opened with full freshmen and sophomore classes with some juniors joining the mix and Woods recalled having a very talented freshmen group that first spring.
He kept the freshmen together at their own level that year – where they dominated – while the sophomores and juniors took their lumps at the varsity level. A year later in 2000, with those freshman (the class of 2002) now sophomores, the Huskies made the playoffs. They advanced a little farther in 2001 and in 2002 they made it to the semifinal round of the state tournament.
“The point is, we wanted them to have success (as freshmen),” Woods said. “We keep kids together that way and we really stress playing together in the offseason. With Perfect Game and tournaments everywhere and the club scene is out there, we try to encourage our kids to do that and the showcase events.
“We try to build a team atmosphere and some camaraderie, and I think in the end the kids really care about one another because they spend so much time together,” he said. “… We’ve been able to keep everybody on board and understanding that if you put the team first good things are going to happen.”
As the young players come into the program as freshmen and gradually find their way, the come to appreciate what has been built here in Chandler since that first spring back in 1999. Woods and his staff talk about the past successes a lot and encourage the youngsters’ to educate themselves about the program’s relatively brief history.
“I wouldn’t want to play for any other high school in Arizona, and maybe even America,” Pederson said. “Coach Woods, he’s an amazing coach and I love him. All of the alumni that come out and practice with us, they’re all just great players, and it’s amazing to me to think that I could be one of the best players in this program because there’s so much good talent that comes through here.
“Coach Woods builds programs well; he builds up kids’ talents out of nothing if he has to,” he continued. “Being part of this team is just something special.”
IN 2011, SHORTLY AFTER HAMILTON HAD LOST IN THE STATE CHAMPIONSHIP game, an Ames, Iowa-based instructional video company called Championship Productions, approached Woods about doing some coaching videos.
The result was four DVDs: “All Access High School Baseball Practice with Mike Woods”; “Coaching the High School Catcher”; “Coaching the High School Hitter”; “Coaching the High School Pitcher”.
“It was all (Championship Productions) and they said, ‘Just do what you do and we’ll come out with a camera,’” Woods recalled with a laugh. “So one summer morning I brought some kids out and we did some drills … and we just kind of went through our paces.”
The sun is shining in the Arizona desert and based on the accomplishments of the Hamilton Huskies in 2014 and the positive outlook for the 2015 season, a follow-up DVD or two just might be in order.
Plenty of challenges lie ahead for the Huskies, with a regular season schedule that includes games against the usual suspects from D-I Section-II like Desert Ridge, Chandler and Mesquite but also games against teams from California and Colorado at the Horizon/Brophy National Invitational in late March.
“We’ve got a lot of competition here this year; it should be interesting. We’re going to work hard every single game of the season and we have to take it one game at a time,” Pederson said.
Boyer, the junior, talked about grinding it out day-in and day-out on the fields in the Valley of the Sun, working hard and, while echoing his teammate Pederson, taking it one game at a time.
“We’re trying to do the same thing as last year, of course, but we’re trying to take it one day at time and just get through the season and get to the playoffs and just get it going,” Boyer said. “Our team chemistry is really good this year and we’re looking good; we’re ready to get the season started.”