GOODYEAR, Ariz. – Thanks to a couple of complete-game shutouts from a 2017 right-hander and a 2016 lefty on Friday, Lamorinda 18u out of Pleasant Hill, Calif., went into its final pool-play game Saturday afternoon at the Perfect Game/EvoShield Upperclass National Championship with a pool championship in the bag and a real shot a low playoff seed.
That didn’t happen, but a 3-0 record and a No. 10-seed in the 25-team playoffs – Lamorinda 18u will play a first-round game – is a result that would have left the vast majority of the 98 teams that started play at this PG national championship tournament on Monday feeling quite contented, if not even completely satisfied.
“We made a few upgrades for the fall – it’s a more seasoned group with all juniors and a few seniors – and these guys are pretty polished,” Lamorinda 18u head coach Andy Tarpley said before his team overcame a 3-0 third-inning deficit and posted an 8-3 victory over PCH Baseball Academy from Santa Barbara, Calif., in the team’s final pool-play game played Saturday on the Cincinnati Reds side of the Goodyear Ballpark spring training complex.
“This team is really a close group; they’ve been playing together now since seventh and eighth grade,” Tarpley said. “They don’t play with a lot of pressure on them and they’re out here having fun; they let their ability work for them.”
The 25-team playoff field at the PG/Evo Upper National was finally set at the conclusion of pool-play late Saturday night. The top seven seeds earned byes into the playoffs’ second round where they will face the winners of first round games. The top seven seeds, all with 3-0-0 records; five from Southern California and two from Peoria, Ariz., are:
No. 1 BPA DeMarini Elite (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.); No. 2 CBA Marucci (Temecula, Calif.); No. 3 GBG Marucci Navy (Los Angeles); No. 4 AZ Athletics 2016 (Peoria, Ariz.); No. 5 Team California (Carlsbad, Calif.); No. 6 All-Star Baseball Academy (Peoria, Ariz.); and No. 7 Southern California Bombers Black 2016 (La Puente, Calif.).
Lamorinda 18u’s run to the field of 25 seemed to begin and end in the blink of the eye. It played two of its first three pool games on Friday – other teams played one on Friday and two on Saturday – and when Saturday morning dawned Lamorinda had already clinched its pool championship and a spot in the playoffs; the game versus PCHBA was important only in terms of playoff seeding.
In the tournament-opener Friday morning against All-Star Baseball Academy Black out of Peoria, Ariz., Tarpley handed the ball to Leo Pollack, a 6-foot, 175-pound 2016 left-hander from Berkeley, Calif. Pollack responded with a complete-game, three-hit shutout, with eight strikeouts and five walks, and Lamorinda 18u moved on.
Game 2 versus ABD Nevada from Henderson, Nev., was played Friday afternoon, and this time Tarpley decided to go with 5-foot-10, 150-pound 2017 right-hander Ian MacIver from Pleasant Hill. Tarpley is very familiar with MacIver in that he is also the head coach at Bay Area powerhouse College Park High School and MacIver is one of his players. The somewhat undersized righty couldn’t have come up any better when he accepted the Friday p.m. start.
MacIver, too, pitched a complete-game, three-hit shutout with five strikeouts and no walks, and was much more precise and efficient than Pollack. According to the official GameChanger statistical report, MacIver threw only 56 pitches in his seven innings of work, and 48 of them went for strikes; he threw 21 strikes in his 25 first-pitches.
“The guys came out and for the most part we threw strikes,” Tarpley said. “I threw two of my better arms (Friday) because I understand what Perfect Game is all about (in terms of exposure) and nobody on this team is committed yet; we really need to be at these events to take advantage of that.”
Tarpley called the two complete games “huge” because it left him with so many options for not only Saturday’s somewhat inconsequential final pool-play game but for Sunday’s very consequential playoff game. He was quick to point out that at no time did tell either Pollack or MacIver to go out and try to give him seven innings.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he said with a smile while slowly shaking his head. “Everyone’s in shape – these are two varsity pitchers for their high school teams – but you never tell a guy that you have to go CG (complete game) for me, especially with 100-degree heat; you can’t take any of that stuff for granted.”
Lamorinda 18u won their three games by counts of 7-0, 5-0 and 8-3, so it also showed it had the capability of scoring some runs. Jack Downing, a 2016 catcher/first baseman from Pleasant Hill had a pair of doubles – both in Saturday’s win – drove in four runs and scored three times in three games; 2016 first baseman Jacob Rebar from Tracy, Calif., was 4-for-8 with a triple, four RBI and two runs; 2016 middle-infielder Hank Dare from Pleasant Hill was 4-for-12 with a double, three RBI and four runs.
It should be noted that that although Lamorinda 18u did not get is third straight shutout Saturday, 2017 right-hander Noah Daubin from Brentwood, Calif., pitched four, no-hit, shutout innings with seven strikeouts and two walks in relief. MacIver, Pollack and Daubin combined to pitch 11 six-hit innings without allowing a run while striking out 20 and walking nine.
Exactly where Lamorinda 18u finishes in the final standings at this event won’t be officially known until sometime Sunday night or Monday afternoon. But Lamorinda 18u’s head coach and seven of the players that occupy the roster have done enough winning during the California spring high school baseball season the past two years that they can show up at Sunday’s playoffs with absolutely nothing to prove.
In 2014, Tarpley’s College Park HS team won the CIF North Coast Section Division 2 championship with a 27-3 record, a season that this year’s seniors would have been sophomores. This past spring, College Park moved up a division and won the CIF North Coast Section Division 1 championship with a 26-4 mark and finished at No. 5 in the final Perfect Game National High School Top-50 Rankings.
MacIver, Downing and Dare among the seven players on this Lamorinda 18u roster that also play for Tarpley at College Park.
Tarpley has been at College Park for three seasons and has worked with the Lamorinda Baseball Club for the past five years. He played collegiately at the University of California-Berkeley where he joined the Golden Bears at the 1992 College World Series. He previously served as the hitting and third base coach at Diablo Valley College and was the head coach at Acalenes High School.
Quite a few of the players on this Lamorinda roster branch off and play for other organizations during the summer but then rejoin Tarpley in the fall; he compares it to an annual reunion. Lamorinda Baseball Club fields 10 teams in the 10u through 18u age groups and boasts an impressive alumni list, including 2014 PG All-American Joe DeMers, a 2015 College Park HS grad.
“They all bleed together; they’re brothers,” Tarpley said. “They don’t want to fail because they don’t want to let each other down; they’re not selfish in mind. I think that’s a lot to be said for young ballplayers these days – play for your family, your community, your teammates, but never play for yourself because that will be a short career; I preach that a lot.”
Tarpley loves bringing his Lamorinda Baseball Club teams to Perfect Game tournaments because of the exposure and the extremely high levels of competition. He likes seeing how the kids he puts on the field – especially those from his College Park program stack-up against those from far-reaching corners of the country.
“It’s easy to beat up on everyone in your area … and that’s why you come to these things. You want to get better and play against guys that are better you,” Tarpley said. “I come in with high expectations of them (and) I expect a certain of level of play out of them. If that all works out and you have better talent than the other team then, yeah, you’re going to win the game, but there’s always a teaching moment or a learning moment.
“You can’t go in expecting to win everything or you’re just going to be disappointed, and that’s the wrong way to play the game,” he concluded. “If you play the game the right way, good things will happen.”