FORT MYERS, Fla. – It was a sense of security visited upon only a handful of teams at this week’s 17u Perfect Game BCS Finals. Those select few teams went out to their respective ballparks Friday morning knowing they had already clinched their pool championship and would be rewarded with a top-17 seed in the 34-team playoffs regardless of the outcome of their fifth and final pool-play games. They would be playing on Friday only to improve their seeding, nothing more, nothing less.
But wait a minute. Is that really all that was at stake for a team like the Massachusetts-based EvoShield Canes Northeast 17u who showed up at Fort Myers South High School minutes after the sun had lifted above the horizon to play their “meaningless” fifth and final pool-play game against the Team Elite 17’s Select, a squad that had no chance at all of making the playoffs? Try convincing Canes Northeast’s standout outfielder Luke Benoit of that.
“You’ve got to take care of business, save your pitching, keep the bats hot and get the higher seed,” Benoit said matter-of-factly when asked about the importance of Friday morning’s game. “This is a business game right here regardless of how we’re doing in (pool-play) so far, and we just have to treat it like any other game, like we’re zero-and-zero.”
In truth, the EvoShield Canes Northeast 17u were a long way from 0-0. They had won their pool championship by outscoring their first four opponents this week by a combined 42-5, a “runs against” total that had the Canes Northeast 17u in the conversation for a very comfortable seed, possibly in the top-five. After disposing of the TE 17’s Select, 10-2 in five innings, that 52-7 run differential was still looking very, very good.
“We’ve really played well in all facets,” head coach Frank Cooney said Friday morning. “Our pitching has been phenomenal with great defense behind them, which helps, obviously, and the bats are all hot. It’s sort of everything working right at the same time, which has been fun to watch.”
The Canes Northeast 17u came into the 17u PG BCS Finals after what Cooney called a “disappointing” performance at the 17u PG WWBA National Championship in the north Atlanta suburbs last week. The team finished 2-3-1 at the mega-event, and Cooney felt like it was a very uncharacteristically poor showing.
“I’ve known the talent has been there but it’s either been that the bats have been hot and the pitching hasn’t been there or the pitching has been there and the bats have gone cold,” he said. “This is really the first time everything has all come together this way.”
The bats have been very hot under the hot Florida sun the last five days. The Canes Northeast 17u hit .418 as a team in the five wins, with 2017s Benoit, Peter Barry, Andrew Gorham, Tyler McManus and Ben Alexander swinging particularly big sticks; McManus hit a home run and drove in four runs in Friday morning’s win.
The Canes Northeast’s pitching staff was very good during pool-play, with seven pitchers combining to allow five earned runs in 26 innings (1.35 ERA) on 15 hits with 25 strikeouts and 15 walks. More importantly, in terms of seeding, there were only seven runs allowed overall.
The top hurlers are 2017 right-hander and Campbell commit Brandon Jenkins, and 2017 left-hander and South Carolina commit Chase Williamson, nationally ranked at Nos. 349 and 394, respectively. 2017 righty Jack Wallace, an uncommitted top-1,000 prospect, pitched four innings of hitless and scoreless ball without walking anyone and hitting a batter during a pool-play outing; he struck out seven.
And then there are the twin 2017 right-handers from New Jersey: 6-foot-6, 230-pound Jamil Vanheyningen and his brother, 6-foot-6, 205-pound Jermaine Vanheyningen, who attend Seton Hall Prep School and call West Orange, N.J., home; the twin brothers are of Dominican descent.
Jamil, ranked No. 346 nationally, pitched five innings of one-hit ball without giving up an earned run and striking out eight in his pool-play start; Jermaine, ranked in the top-500, also pitched five innings, gave up one earned run on five hits and struck-out three.
“Every college coach that I talk to thinks either, (A) they’re off the board already or, (B) they’re out of their league, and neither is the case. They really haven’t had much conversation with schools which is surprising to me,” Cooney said. “They both have big physical bodies, they’re both 4.0 students at Seton Hall Prep, both scored over 1,200 on the SAT, and just are really, really great kids. … They’re both really easy to root for and they’ve both thrown the ball very well.”
Cooney got a full five innings of work out of 2017 right-hander Mark Bernardo Friday morning – he allowed two earned runs while scattering seven hits, striking out three and walking two – and that was just what the doctor ordered. The two runs did very little to hurt the Canes Northeast’s seeding and with the game ending after five innings, Cooney didn’t need to use his bullpen.
That means the head coach is set up very well for the playoffs’ second-round Saturday morning. Cooney will have Jenkins, the Campbell commit, ready to go in the playoff opener and then be able to come back with Williamson, the South Carolina commit, in the second game if the Canes Northeast 17u are able to make it there.
“That’s a testament to the guys who have already thrown, who went deep into games and allowed us to save pitching and not burn up our bullpen to get to this point,” Cooney said.
“We’ve had a pretty good year so far working together and we’re showing right now that our chemistry is working great so far,” Benoit added. “We’re set-up pretty well; we’ve got a bunch of our pitchers left and a bunch of the guys who can come back from games one and two. We’re swinging the bats and we’re looking pretty good so far; I’m looking forward to the playoffs.”
This group is under the rather large and constantly growing Virginia-based EvoShield Canes organization umbrella. This is the same program that produced three straight titlists at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., from 2013-15, by the way. There were seven EvoShield Canes teams at the 17u PG WWBA National Championship last week although Northeast 17u is the only representative at the 17u PG BCS Finals.
The benefits of having the EvoShield Canes associated with a program are great, especially in the areas of acceptance into Perfect Game national championship tournaments and in recruiting the top players. “We make sure guys understand they’re going to get good exposure and get help with the college recruiting process, and that was definitely beneficial to us in getting some talented guys on the roster,” Cooney said.
Nine of the players on this 20-man roster are from Massachusetts, three each come from New Jersey and Louisiana, two are from Connecticut and one each are from Maine, South Carolina and Washington D.C. The Canes Northeast 17u hold tryouts to fill their roster but other kids find their way into the program by word of mouth or under the direction of specific coaches. This is their first summer playing together on the same team, and they’ve seemed to come together quite nicely.
“That was my biggest concern coming into the summer.” Cooney said. “I knew the physical talent was there but you never know how a group is going to jell, and that’s what’s been the most impressive thing to me. … The guys just genuinely seem to like one another and I’ve been around long enough to know that physical talent alone does not always get you by.”
The Canes Northeast 17u’s five wins this week have come against teams from Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and Puerto Rico. Cooney called the 17u PG BCS Finals a “great measuring stick” for his guys from up north, some of whom are considered the best their home-states have to offer. It’s an opportunity for them to see how kids from other regions of the country go about their business and maybe even see where they fit-in in the grand scheme of things.
A player like Benoit, a top-1,000 prospect who has committed to the University of Kentucky, has a pretty good idea of where he fits in. He has also shown he has the maturity to achieve the mindset necessary to go into a game a casual observer might view as “meaningless” and do everything he can to make sure his team comes out on top.
“We’re a group of Northeast boys and we want to show them that even though we play half the year with snow on the ground, we can hang with the best, too,” he said. “We’ve got something to prove – a little chip on our shoulder – and just want to show everyone what we’ve got.
“We’re only here for one thing, and that’s to win the championship and go home with a ring,” Benoit concluded. “We’re having fun with it but at the same time we’re all very serious about this tournament.”