EMERSON, Ga. – The players, families and coaches that make up the Baseball Northwest community that settled into the northern reaches of the Atlanta Metropolitan area over the past five or six days have made themselves right at home.
The Baseball Northwest program, which is based in Salem, Ore., had teams invited to each of the 13u, 14u, 15u and 16u Perfect Game World Series played here in Georgia and also had an invitee to last week’s 17u PG World Series played in Goodyear, Ariz.
They made the commitment, and the last of the group’s entrants still standing finds itself playing in the second-to-the-last day at the 15u PG World Series, which began its five-day run Sunday and concludes with the championship game Thursday morning at the Perfect Game Park South at LakePoint eight-field complex.
This is the first Perfect Game tournament experience for a lot of these 15-year-olds, and boy-oh-boy did they jump right into the hottest of fires. The 15u PG World Series field includes only the 20 best teams from across the country in that age-group, and Baseball Northwest is doing everything it can to prove it belongs.
What’s more, these 15u Baseball Northwest players are treating PG Park South as one beautiful baseball classroom, using this unique opportunity to make themselves better with an eye on receiving an invitation to next year’s 16u PG World Series.
“It’s been a lot of fun and it’s also been very eye-opening with the great competition we’ve been playing,” top 2018 shortstop/right-hander Jake Dukart told PG Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve actually been staying late every night after our games are over just to watch all the different brands from across the country, so it’s been pretty cool. We’re trying to take a little piece from what everyone else has, and that will make you a better player.”
The teenagers that make up this Baseball Northwest 15u roster come from romantic-sounding Great Northwest outposts like Eagle, Idaho; Bonney Lake, Wash.; and Lake Oswego, Ore. This is the first PG tournament experience for most of them and many are playing together for the first time.
They’re receiving great guidance. Co-coaches Jeff Sakamoto and Derek Dukart are in charge of the group and both tout impressive baseball backgrounds. Sakamoto played at Oregon State and is a scouting supervisor for the Seattle Mariners; Dukart played collegiately at Nebraska, was a 19th-round selection of the New York Yankees in the 1994 MLB June Amateur Draft and played in four minor league seasons.
Derek Dukart, Jake Dukart’s dad, told PG Tuesday afternoon there were six players on this roster he met for the first time when everyone finally got together after arriving in the Atlanta-area Thursday night. The “getting-know-you” phase was still taking place when the Northwesterners opened play on Sunday with a 5-4 loss to the Florida-based Elite Squad Prime, and a 1-1 tie with Georgia-based Team Elite.
“We were trying to figure out what people do in different situations – different people’s strengths and weaknesses – and trying to work together,” Jake Dukart said. “We all know how to play baseball the right way and that’s why we’re on this team. We just have to trust our abilities and let that take us somewhere.”
They put it all together on Monday after that 0-1-1 start to pool-play. 2018 right-hander Jayson Schroeder threw a complete-game, four-hitter with eight strikeouts and no walks in a 5-0 win over the Virgina-based EvoShield Canes, which put Baseball Northwest in a position to pounce.
It let its bats do the talking in a pool championship-clinching 13-6 win over the New Jersey-based Tri-State Arsenal, a game in which 10 players contributed at least one hit to a 14-hit attack and Adam Paganelli tripled, doubled, drove in a run and scored another.
That was four games against four of the most prominent travel team programs in the country: Elite Squad, Team Elite, EvoShield Canes and Tri-State Arsenal. 2-1-1 was certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
“We knew we had a tough pool going into it – the teams that were in our pool are all just outstanding programs – so we knew we had our work cut-out for us, but our guys really competed well,” Sakamoto said Tuesday. “That first day (Sunday) we kind of got our feet wet and then (Monday) we started to come together and play. We’re going the right way and hopefully we can continue it today.”
Baseball Northwest 15u has a pair of 2018 prospects that have already committed to NCAA Division-I schools, and both are unranked. Jake Dukart, who calls Lake Oswego, Ore., home, has committed to Arizona State; catcher/third baseman Alex Guerro from Eagle, Idaho, has committed to the U. of Washington.
2018 right-hander Jacob Pfennigs from Post Falls, Idaho, is uncommitted but ranked No. 68 nationally. Pagannelli, a 2018 outfielder from Maple Valley, Wash., is also uncommitted and ranked in the top-550 nationally in his class.
Another prospect who is uncommitted and unranked but may soon be both is 2017 right-hander/shortstop Alex Gregory from Seattle. Gregory was handed the ball to make the start for No. 4-seed Baseball Northwest in its playoff opener against the No. 5 Team California Warriors and was impressive with a one-hit, 10-strikeout performance over 6 2/3 innings in the Northwesterner’s 4-0 victory.
They dropped an 8-2 decision to the No. 1 Central Florida Gators in a winner’s bracket game later on Tuesday, but will play in a loser’s bracket elimination game Wednesday morning in a rematch with the Team California Warriors. All things considered, it appears the Baseball Northwest players have acclimated themselves to this part of the country pretty well.
“It’s a matter of getting them comfortable in what might be an uncomfortable setting, traveling across the country,” Derek Dukart said. “This is the first time a lot of these guys have been here, and we’re playing great competition, so it’s a measuring stick.
“You think you’re pretty good up where we are, maybe you measure yourself down here against some really great baseball teams. … It’s great for them to come down here and see from velocity from the mound and, again, see how they stack-up.”
These young men from Pacific-12 Conference country have suddenly found themselves transplanted deep in the heart of Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference country, not to mention some of the lesser-known but certainly not any less respected D-I leagues like the Sun Belt and the Atlantic Sun.
There is the chance, of course, some of these teenagers from Washington, Oregon and Idaho might want venture far from home for their college years – remember that Jake Dukart is headed for Tempe, Ariz. – and not stick around that neck of the woods they’re so comfortable with. And even if they do stay home, there is certainly nothing wrong with the programs at Oregon State, Oregon and Washington, to name but a few.
“It’s great for these guys to get some different eyes on them,” Derek Dukart said. “You look behind home plate, and that first day (at the 15u PG World Series) we had 30, 40 (college recruiters) watching one of our guys – we have some really good arms and some really good players – so it’s just about getting a different set of eyes on you.”
Added Sakamoto: “It’s great facilities, great competition, and it’s good for these guys to get out of their element a little bit. They get to see guys from other parts of the country and see how they stack-up coming from our corner of the country.”
That corner of the country is very important to these good people from Washington, Oregon and Idaho. They all take a lot of pride in what they do up there in the Great Northwest, and while they don’t really care what others might expect from them, they certainly arrived in North Georgia with very real expectations of themselves.
“We expect that they represent the organization well and that they compete, and that’s all we ask,” Sakamoto said. “The business on the field will take care of itself – we feel like we’ve got a talented group – but our expectation is that we show and represent the Northwest well.
“We’re the only club from the Northwest down here and we just want to show that our corner of the country has good baseball, too, and we play baseball the right way.”