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Jonathan Heasley (2016, Dallas, Texas) helped to propel the Dallas Patriots Stout team into the 17u WWBA Championship Game with an impressive eight inning effort in the semifinal game. Heasley, an Oklahoma State commit, also earned the MV-Pitcher award for the entire tournament for his stellar performances over the course of the week. On Friday morning, the 6-foot-3, 195-pound righty took to the mound and displayed an aggressive, bulldog mentality and approach. He has a projectable, well-proportioned frame with long legs, a high waist and an athletic, lean build with solid present strength. Heasley has a well-paced delivery with a high leg lift above his belt out of the windup, and as a solid athlete he’s able to repeat his overall delivery pretty well. He works to a high three-quarters arm slot and has a clean break with a compact, abbreviated path and he’s able to get downhill and over his front side pretty well.

In the early going Heasley consistently sat in the 88-92 mph range with his fastball. The heater showed good arm-side run at times, and he displayed solid command of the offering, working to either side of the plate and also showing the ability to change hitters’ eye levels. Heasley also worked in 70-74 mph curveball. The offering had varied shape, at times showing more 12-to-6 break and at others flashing 11-to-5 with later glove-side finish, but the breaking ball flashed good depth and some later finish when located down in the strike zone. He lost a few pitches to the arm side, with the offering backing up, but most of them had tighter rotation and he showed solid feel to spin it. While the offering shows the makings of a quality pitch, Heasley can be a bit more deliberate with his delivery and arm speed when throwing his breaking ball.

Heasley really displayed top-notch stamina and competiveness in the seventh and eighth innings. On a day when the temperatures reached as high as 96 degrees, Heasley ramped up in the later innings. While he had previously been living comfortably in the 88-91 mph range with his fastball, in the last couple of innings he fired in a number of heaters in at 92 and 93 mph and still was able to locate the pitch down in the zone. As he continues to mature and add more strength onto his solid yet projectable frame one would expect him to consistently pitch in that velocity band.

Over the course of the tournament CBA Marruci’s Nicholas Kahle (2016, Simi Valley, Calif.) split the catching duties with Blake Sabol. Sabol, who was detailed in an earlier notes portion, is obviously a big-time talent on both sides of the ball, and Kahle is no different. Both California natives participated in the Perfect Game National Showcase, showed well there and continued to perform well against some of the best high school talent over the past week. At 5-foot-11, 195-pounds, Kahle offers a different frame and build than Sabol, but the Washington commit has good strength in both his upper and lower halves.

Defensively Kahle shows good reactions and lateral movement behind the plate and he shifts well into blocking position. He also has a quick, compact arm action, solid transfer and strong, accurate arm that plays very well in games. In the batter’s box the righthanded hitter starts with a narrow base and high hand set. He stays very balanced at the plate and even with a deeper load Kahle has a fluid swing with solid bat speed and feel for the barrel that shows up consistently in game action. As a result, Kahle was rewarded not just with the championship trophy that he and his CBA Marruci’s claimed with a victory over the Dallas Patriots Stout, but also the tournament’s MVP award.

– Andrew Krause




Elite Squad Prime headed into semifinal action in better shape than most teams, with a high-end, fresh arm at their disposal in 2016 righthander Greg Veliz. Veliz is another well-known, South Florida product who is no stranger to PG events, and is ranked No. 10 overall in the class of 2016 rankings. He's known as a righthanded fireballer who can dial his fastball up into the mid-90s to go along with legitimate next-level projection as a positional player as well. Veliz went four innings for Elite Squad in their semifinal matchup against CBA Marucci, and despite coming out on the losing end, Veliz showed some of the nuances of pitching that we hadn’t seen from him before.

Working with a fastball in the 89-92 range, touching 93 a few times, Veliz was able to throw strikes and pound the bottom of the zone consistently with solid arm-side life on the offering, and did a good job keeping CBA hitters off balance. He also showed a better curveball than we have seen in the past, with 11-to-5 shape and big, biting depth, the pitch showed an above average future. He also mixed in a changeup with good velocity differential from his fastball, and though the pitch isn’t quite on par with his fastball/curveball combo, he certainly showed enough feel for it to project it as a good third pitch for him moving forward.




Trailing 1-0 in the late innings, Elite Squad’s 2017 first baseman Alejandro Toral stepped to the plate and, as has become custom for Elite Squad hitters in this event, delivered a mammoth, game-tying home run to right field. Clocking at 106 mph off the bat, it was a rising line drive that got out of Lake Point in a hurry, and was a very good singular representation of the kind of silly-high offensive upside that Toral has. The strength, bat speed and raw power that he has in his lefthanded bat have been discussed in these recaps before, but they certainly bear repeating. As only a 2017, we have plenty of time to really decide what kind of hitter Toral will end up being at the next level, but from the vantage point of the past few weeks (Junior National, WWBA 17u), he has as high an upside as any lefthanded power bat in his class or any other. He has a chance to be a very, very special hitter.

CBA Marucci sent 2016 lefthander Zack Noll to the mound for their semifinal game against Elite Squad, and he was very impressive in delivering them to the championship game, which they eventually won. Noll is a tall, lanky lefty, listed at 6-foot-6, 185-pounds and committed to Oregon. Working with his fastball in the 84-87 range, topping at 88, Noll uses a little bit of herky-jerky funkiness in his delivery to add deception, and when you combine the long limbs with that deception, it makes it very hard for opposing hitters to pick up the ball cleanly out of his hand. He showed an advanced feel for a curveball/changeup combination, giving him an advanced three-pitch mix with quality feel for pitching overall. He likes to throw his changeup to righthanded hitters, using the fade and tumbling action of the pitch to get them out in front and flailing over the top of it, then comes back with the curveball to lefthanded hitters, where the depth and angle of the pitch has much the same effect. He will pitch backwards as well, throwing off-speed stuff in fastball counts, and when you combine this overall pitchability with his present stuff and overall projection, the sky may truly be the limit for him moving forward.

– Brian Sakowski