FORT MYERS, Fla. – Before the first pitch was thrown at the 17u Perfect Game BCS Finals national championship tournament last Monday, fly-by-night prognosticators probably sat down with a room full of data and came up with a short list of eight-to-10 teams they felt possessed all the necessary ingredients to capture one of the playoffs’ top-two seeds. It’s a very safe bet that the Chamblee, Ga.-based Ninth Inning Elite didn't make the cut.
But as bracket-play began Saturday morning for the 34 teams that advanced there after five days of pool-play, there sat Ninth Inning safely on a line that declared it as the No. 2 seed after winning its pool championship with a 5-0-0 record. As the 2-seed, the Elite would open bracket-play with a second-round game against the winner of the play-in game between the Nos. 31 and 34 seeds.
It was all quite unexpected coming from a team fresh off a 2-2-2 showing at the 17u PG WWBA National Championship in Cartersville, Ga., last week. What makes the Elite’s success all the more surprising is they’re playing short-handed with several of their regulars unable to make the trip, including top-500 2017 right-hander David Johnson.
“We talked about this at the beginning of the tournament and we said, look fellas, we don’t have a lot of people here and for whatever reason we’ve got guys doing a lot of other sports or are hurt; it’s been a long summer,” head coach Vic Radcliff said Saturday before his team took to Field 5 at the 5-Plex Player Development Complex to face No. 31 Marquis Grissom 17u (4-2-0) in a second-round pairing.
“What I told them from the beginning was I need you guys on defense to take care of our pitching, just make all your plays and get (the pitchers) off the field,” he said. “It’s hot down here, and I also told our pitchers to use the least amount of pitches as possible to get the other guys off the field. They’ve really come together on trying to take care of each other, and we’re really trying to do it right and be a team.”
When PG tournament officials were finally able to determine the seedings and construct the bracket Friday night, Ninth Inning found itself in the No. 2 slot behind only the Sarasota, Fla.-based Florida Burn Platinum 2017. The Burn had out-distanced its five pool opponents by a combined score of 41-3 to earn the No. 1 seed, as opposed to No. 2 Ninth Inning’s 40-4 count.
Each of the top eight seeds had completed pool-play with unblemished 5-0-0 marks. The No. 9 Georgia Jackets, No. 10 Jersey Mudcats and No. 11 Xtreme/Orioles Scout Team all entered bracket-play 4-0-1.
There are a number of factors that went into Ninth Inning emerging as the No. 2 seed, but in an effort to personify the explanation, it’s really not necessary to look beyond the play of 2017 standout Baron Radcliff, the coach’s son. Baron Radcliff is a 6-foot-4, 205-pound left-handed swinging outfielder from Peachtree Corners, Ga., who will start his senior year at Norcross (Ga.) High School in the fall and who Perfect Game ranks as the No. 256 national prospect in his class; he has not committed to a college.
The Elites reached the playoffs on the strength of a .382 team batting average, although just nine of their 52 hits went for extra bases and Radcliff accounted for five of those. He slashed .571/.667/1.286 with two doubles, a triple and two home runs counted among his eight hits; there were seven RBI and seven runs scored. Austin Bowen was 8-for-15 (.571) with eight singles; Shota Barbeau was 7-for-17 (.412) with seven singles; John Traurig went 6-for-9 (.667) with six singles.
The Kansas City Royals made Vic Radcliff a fourth-round pick in the 1995 MLB Amateur Draft and he went on to play five seasons in the minor leagues and two more of Independent league ball. He’s seen baseball games won in a lot of different ways.
“That’s how our team is. We play small-ball,” Vic Radcliff said. “With Baron, we have the luxury of having a big bat in the middle of our lineup and maybe every now and then he can get us a home run or a double to move some runners up. But for the most part we try to move guys over, play small-ball and do it right, and that’s how we’ve been having success.”
Baron Radcliff expounded on his coach’s/dad’s thoughts: “When I come up to the plate, I’m a big guy and I’m hitting in the 3-hole, so a lot of guys don’t really want to pitch to me what I want to hit,” he said. “I’ve been aggressive about putting balls in play for my team … and (the hits) have been finding gaps. We just don’t have many guys that put balls in gaps, but we have a lot fast, short, quick guys who can lay a bunt down and get on first, and then it’s up to me and the 4-hitter and the 5-hitter to knock them in.”
Ninth Inning’s pitching in its five pool-play wins was also a difference-maker. Eight pitchers combined to allow only three earned runs on 15 hits in 32 innings of work (0.66 ERA) with 19 strikeouts and six walks. 2017 right-hander Michael Hannah made two appearances during pool-play and gave the Elite 7 2/3 innings without allowing an earned run on four hits, striking out four and walking two.
“We are relying on some guys that we have not had to rely on before, and they’ve stepped up,” Vic Radcliff said of his pitching staff. “I have to take my hat off to them that they’ve been able to step up and get into the role that we need them to be in, and they’ve been able to do it.”
No one would know it by the results, but the Ninth Inning Elite players, coaches and parents have been able to use their time spent in Southwest Florida as a bit of a vacation in addition to their baseball-playing responsibilities. With only one game a day the first five days of the tournament, everyone has been able to spend some time at the beach while also taking part in other Florida-type activities.
“We have a close group of kids; we have the right kids here,” Vic Radcliff said. “They’ve jelled together; they’ve been going to the beach together. They’re having a good time and I think that plays into it also.”
It probably helps that he has a 17-year-old son on the team, but Vic Radcliff realizes this is a group of young guys who he doesn’t expect to act like grown men quite yet. He only asks they show some responsibility and they’ve done a great job of that so far.
“It’s been kind of eye-opening, really, because we didn’t come down here with a lot of the people that are key to our team,” Baron Radcliff said of the team’s success. “For us to go out and do what we did (during pool-play) was really good and it gives me a lot of confidence in our team.”
Baron Radcliff looked over at his teammates gathered behind the backstop on Field 5 at the 5-Plex waiting for the start of what they hoped would be the first of three playoff games Saturday, and saw a group lacking any true star-power. No one on the roster – even those who aren’t here – have college scholarships as of yet but that didn’t mean much at this point. In fact, it might help Ninth Inning play under the radar a little bit.
“I think a lot of teams walk up to their game with us and think they’re going to beat us just because we don’t have any commits (on the roster) but we’re still a really confident team,” Baron Radcliff said. “We just go out there and handle our business and make sure we can show them that we can compete at any level.”
The Ninth Inning Elite players woke up Saturday morning knowing that despite their No. 2 seeding, they would still have to play and win three games in about a 7-hour span in order to advance to Sunday’s final four (for a team like Marquis Grissom 17u it would be four games in about 10 hours). It can be a daunting prospect.
“That whole concept that we’ve had of taking care of each other is going to really have to come into play today,” Vic Radcliff said. “We want to have some quick games – of course, we want to hit the ball a lot –and we want to get in and out as quickly as we can. We don’t have a lot of people here so we just have to take care of each other and get ourselves on an off the field.”
“We had a meeting last night and we established that we might be going back-to-back-to back today, we started getting mentally prepared for having to play three games in a row,” Baron Radcliff added. “We want to make sure we take it one game at a time and just win every inning, win every game.”
That whole scenario Baron Radcliff outlined earlier when describing the way in which the Elite often score their runs played out in detail right in front of everyone’s eyes early Saturday afternoon in Ninth Inning’s playoff game against Marquis Grissom 17u.
With the score tied at 5-5 in the bottom of the seventh, the leadoff hitter Barbeau reached on an error and moved to second when the No. 2 hitter Traurig was plunked by a pitch. That brought Radcliff to the plate, who worked the count full before smacking a hard, ground ball double down the right-field line for the walk-off win.
Baron Radcliff had doubled earlier in the game and finished with three RBI. Six other Ninth Inning batters also got hits – all singles.