FORT MYERS, Fla. – Playoff baseball is special, whether it comes in October during Major League Baseball’s postseason or on the last day of June during post-pool-play at the 16u Perfect Game BCS Finals national championship.
At the latter Tuesday morning, the players and their families and coaches seemed energized in spite of the drooping heat and humidity. A nice collection of college coaches and recruiters gathered early at the JetBlue Player Development Complex practice field quad, eager to see which of the young prospects would react the best to the playoff environment.
Few handled the situation any better than 2017 right-hander Scott Leitholf from Dillsburg, Pa., who was handed the ball to make the start for the No. 8-seeded Harrisburg (Pa.) Senators in their second-round playoff game against No. 9 Suncoast (Fla.) Select Old Hickory.
It would be Leitholf’s third appearance at the 16u PG BCS Finals, and he had been downright dynamite in his previous seven innings of work on Thursday (five innings) and Sunday (two) – he hadn’t allowed a run or walked a batter.
Those were pool-play games, and important games, to be sure, because if the Senators hadn’t won their pool with a 5-0 record, they wouldn’t have earned the playoffs’ No. 8 seed. But Tuesday morning’s game against Suncoast Select meant a little more, with a spot in the 16u PG BCS Finals’ quarterfinal round as the reward for a victory.
“You have to have a different mindset,” Leitholf said of the playoff start. “(The coaches) wanted me to attack the hitters with fastballs – that’s how I started them off – and my changeup was really working today; I felt real fresh. About the fifth inning my arm started to feel a little (tired), but that’s baseball.”
Leitholf finished with a complete-game, eight strikeout, no walk, seven-hitter the Senators’ 3-1 victory. Suncoast didn’t score its only run until the top of the seventh and by that time Leitholf had pitched 13 consecutive shutout innings over the course of six days.
It’s difficult to imagine a more efficient pitching performance than the one the 6-foot-4, 160-pound Pennsylvania righty turned in to help the upstart Senators reach the final eight. According to GameChanger, PG’s official scorekeeping service, In 14 total innings he allowed one earned run (0.50 ERA) on 14 hits, striking out 16 without a walk. He threw 179 pitches in the three appearances and 127 went for strikes (71.1 percent); 143 of his pitches were fastballs.
“Scotty is one of our best pitchers and he does a great job; he’s just got that long, lanky frame,” Senators head coach Ken Kremer said. “We saved him for this game in particular and he did what he was supposed to do. He pounds the zone, he has two pitches that he can throw for strikes and he’s a very effective pitcher; he did a great job today.”
This entire group of Senators did a great job during their entire stay (which is more than can be said for that other group of Senators that gather from time-to-time up in Washington D.C.). Seven other pitchers joined Leitholf in compiling a 1.83 team ERA through 46 innings of work and the Senators hit .287 as a team in the first seven wins.
Top 2017 Grant Breneman led the team with eight hits, including three doubles. 2016 Mason Hambright had six hits, two of them doubles, and drove in four runs; 2017 Kris Kramer had seven singles and five RBI. Anturo Figeuroa, Curtis Robison and Tommy Savastio – each a 2017 – all had five hits. Figeuroa had two doubles and a triple; Robison a double and a triple and Savastio two doubles and six RBI.
“We have a great group of guys,” Ken Kremer said. “We brought down a real small roster of 12 kids ... so we are doing battle with a short roster. Everybody’s playing a lot and they’re just a fantastic group of competitors. We have no stars, so to speak, and everybody’s on an even-keel. They work well together and they know how to play.”
This team, of course, shouldn’t be confused with the minor league Harrisburg Senators, the Double-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals in Eastern League. This young group is headed by general manager Michael Savastio and operated out of the Mechanicsburg-Harrisburg-Hershey area – they’re all between 10 and 20 miles from one another – in Central Pennsylvania.
The players come from those three cities, as well as the communities of Elizabethtown, Middletown, Dillsburg, Hummelstown and Thompsontown. “We’re all a good group of friends and we all live within a half-hour of each other. Most of us have been playing together for a long time,” Leitholf said.
Kremer likes the idea of getting these kids out of their comfort zones and letting them see a little bit of the country.
“We hear all the time in the Northeast how the kids from Florida and Georgia and Texas, they’re the ones that everybody’s looking at,” Kremer said. “In reality, Northeast baseball is tough and we’re it showing it down here that we can compete with any of them.
“It’s great for the kids to learn that everybody puts their pants on the same way, and when you get on the field it’s (about) who performs and who doesn’t.”
There probably weren’t a lot of folks who anticipated the Harrisburg Senators taking a 7-0 record into the quarterfinal round of the 16u PG BCS Finals national championship. The players and coaches certainly knew they could compete at this level but to reach this point without a loss, that’s something else altogether.
Regardless of how Tuesday finished up and if the Senators were able to play their way into Wednesday’s final four, these guys will always have the experience of playing in Southwest Florida on the last day of June on big-league-caliber playing fields against the best 16u competition in the country to hold near and dear. Sometimes, you just need to possess that playoff mindset.
“It’s beautiful, it’s always nice and warm, the fields are beautifully manicured, and it’s been just great,” Leitholf said. “We’re going to leave with some great memories of being around great baseball, and just being around this team. Hopefully, we’ll learn some stuff.”