2017 Perfect Game High School Preview Index
The Land of Enchantment may never breathe the same rarified air as The Golden State, The Sunshine State, The Peach State, The Lone Star State or even The Grand Canyon State in terms of producing large numbers of the country’s top prep prospects, but it seems time for New Mexico to at least step out from behind the curtain and take a bow.
While the state doesn’t have a single school represented in the Perfect Game High School Preseason National Top 50 Rankings – Florida (Sunshine), Georgia (Peach), Texas (Lone Star) and Arizona (Grand Canyon) each have at least two – it does boast two of the top pitching prospects from the national class of 2017.
It is also home to two programs that have combined to win 16 big-school state championships since 1988 – 19 overall – and, as it happens, those two pitchers are on the rosters of one of those two schools. If that was happening one state east in Texas or one state west in Arizona, people would be singing its praises from the peaks of the Magdalena Mountains.
“It’s pretty exciting playing baseball in New Mexico; it gets pretty competitive,” elite Carlsbad High School senior and Perfect Game All-American left-hander Trevor Rogers said last week. “During the regular-season and especially during the district tournament going into the state tournament, it’s very challenging.”
This will be the fourth spring the 6-foot-5, 190-pound, hard-throwing Rogers – a Texas Tech signee that PG ranks as the No. 3 overall prospect (No. 1 LHP) in the national class of 2017 – will go to work for the defending New Mexico Activities Association (NMAA) Class 6A state champion Carlsbad High School Cavemen and head coach Cody May. The big-school championship was the 11th in school history and eighth since 1988, which included a three-year run of titles from 1988-90.
Carlsbad is located in the far southeastern corner of the state, and a pretty good chunk of real estate separates it from the state’s population center in Albuquerque, which is centrally located. Albuquerque is home to 13 high schools, including La Cueva, which opened in the fall of 1986 and played its first baseball season in the spring of 1987.
The La Cueva Bears posted their firsts of five state runner-up finishes in 1993 and won their first big-school state championship in 2003; three more state titles followed in order from 2004-06. La Cueva has now won eight state championships, with the most recent coming in 2014.
This year’s Bears’ roster features Jonathan Stroman, a 6-foot-3, 195-pound, hard-throwing, right-handed senior who has signed with the University of Arizona; PG ranks him the No. 58 overall prospect (No. 17 RHP) in the class of 2017.
La Cueva head coach Gerard Pineda gave Stroman the opportunity to play on the varsity as a freshman which, it turned out, made him a part of that 2014 state championship team. The experience helped Stroman come of age a little earlier than he might have otherwise, and he has nothing but praise for the way Pineda has worked with him.
“He’s been nothing but great to me … and he’s a great coach, he knows what he’s doing and he knows how to win,” Stroman said last week. “Ever since my freshman year and winning that state championship, I’ve always just wanted to taste that again. That’s the only thing I’ve been working for and that’s the only thing I’m focused on.”
The 2017 New Mexico high school season gets underway later this month, and it’s a certainty that both Rogers and Stroman will be grabbing their share of headlines once it commences. And, considering Carlsbad and La Cueva have combined to win 11 of the last 15 NMAA big-school state championships, it’s reasonable to expect that their teammates with the Cavemen and the Bears will be getting their fair share, as well.
“I’m more than ready; I’ve been ready for more than a couple of months now,” Rogers said of getting back out on the field. “The whole team has put in a lot of work in the weight room to get to where we need to be right now, and we’re ready to make another run at it.”
Stroman added his thoughts: “All of us seniors that have been playing together for three or four years now, we’re all really well-bonded and we have really good camaraderie; I think we have a really good chance of taking the championship this year. The only team that might be standing in our way is Carlsbad, and that’s mostly because of Trevor Rogers.”
Rogers and Stroman are not only two of the top pitchers in the PG HS Southwest Region (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah) but in the country; the same can be said about their high school teams.
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PITCHING IN SOMEWHAT REMOTE CARLSBAD, N.M., IT TOOK A LITTLE TIME for Trevor Rogers’ name to gain traction among the national scouting community. He said very few scouts were on hand to watch him pitch during his freshman and sophomore seasons, but he started to notice more showing up at Carlsbad HS’s games during his junior campaign in 2016.
“A lot of people have been telling me that once this season kicks off I’m going to be having at least 30 (scouts) at each one of my starts,” he said. “It’s going to be crazy but it’s also going to be fun, so I just need to concentrate on what I need to do and get the job done.”
Perfect Game’s scouting department began tracking Rogers last summer, and even though he had never attended a PG event he was invited to last August’s PG All-American Classic in San Diego. He worked one inning from the mound at Petco Park, and allowed one hit and struck out one while consistently delivering 92 mph fastballs.
“It was unbelievable what Perfect Game put on (at the Classic),” Rogers said. “It was a bucket list item for sure, and I’ll never forget it. I’ve probably watched it two or three times on TV because we have it recorded, and it was just unbelievable. Even going to the (Rady) children’s hospital, that was a life-changing experience.”
Winning last year’s Mew Mexico Class 6A state championship with his Carlsbad HS teammates was also a very memorable happening for Rogers.
The Cavemen were twice down to their last pitch while trailing Albuquerque Eldorado 3-2 in the top of the seventh inning in quarterfinal contest, but rallied for three runs and held on for a 5-3 victory. They were down to Albuquerque Volcano Vista 5-0 after one inning of play in the semifinals and battled back for a 7-5 win.
And then, in the championship game against Rio Rancho (N.M.), the Cavemen had to go nine innings to pick up the 2-1 victory and claim Carlsbad’s first state title since 2012. Rogers pitched seven innings in the win over Eldorado and then threw five more against Rio Rancho.
“It was unbelievable,” Rogers told PG when asked about the championship. “It just showed how much heart we had and how much we wanted that state championship as a team. I’ll never forget that team and I’ll never forget the weekend that I had; it was an unforgettable weekend. … I was called on to do a lot but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Stroman showed up on the PG scouting department’s radar much sooner than Rogers because of his participation in eight PG WWBA events dating back to 2013. He played in six PG tournaments in 2016 – the last four with California-based national power CBA Marucci – and earned all-tournament recognition at four of the six. His fastball was gunned at 94 mph while pitching for CBA at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., in October.
“It’s probably one of the greatest things I ever could have done with my baseball career,” Stroman said of his association with CBA. “I can’t thank Coach (Jon) Paino enough for what he did for me this summer and the opportunities he gave me … and I couldn’t have been any happier about the way the summer ended for me.”
But the summer did end and now Stroman is excited to get back to work for Pineda: “This high school season has really been my only focus since I left Jupiter. I’m just so excited and I can’t get enough of it. I want our first game to come; I want February 28 to be here already.”
And Pineda is excited about having the opportunity to send Stroman back out on the mound: “There is some hope that he can kind of live up to some of the former (La Cueva prospects), and he understands that and he knows that it’s not easy and that there is a lot of work to do. He’s still learning and he’s still growing as a person and a young man and as a baseball player, so he has to continue to work hard and take care of his business.”
Despite attending high schools that are separated by more than 280 miles of New Mexico highway, Rogers and Stroman have become friends through their love of baseball; they were teammates while competing at the 2016 Area Code Games in Long Beach, Calif.
“He’s a really good guy, a great competitor; he’s just an all-around good person,” Rogers said of Stroman. “Playing against him is tough because, I mean, I’m good and he’s good and it’s neck-and-neck all the time. It’s always fun being around him.”
Both Rogers, 17, and Stroman, 18, are projected as early round MLB draft picks in June; Rogers, in fact, looks like a sure-fire first-rounder.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “It’s still a little ways off but I’ve been thinking about it, and it puts a grin on my face every now and again. But I can’t get too ahead of myself because you never know what’s going to happen; I’m just trying to enjoy my senior season of high school baseball.”
That’s the exact same approach Stroman is taking: “With everything that’s been going on – meeting with all the scouts and whatnot – it’s kind of hard not to think about it. But my only focus at this point is my high school season because if I don’t do well during the high school season, the draft won’t even be in the picture.”
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EIGHT PLAYERS HAVE BEEN SELECTED WITH ONE OF THE FIRST 73 PICKS in the MLB Amateur Draft right out of their respective New Mexico high schools. They include Farmington’s Duane Ward (9th overall, 1982), Carlsbad’s Shane Andrews (11th, 1990) and Cleveland’s Blake Swihart (26th, 2011); Swihart was a Perfect Game All-American in 2010.
Alex Bregman, a 2011 PG All-American, was a 29th-round pick of the Boston Red Sox in 2012 out of Albuquerque Academy, but opted to honor his commitment to Louisiana State. He became a collegiate All-American during his three years in Baton Rouge, was made the No. 2 overall pick in the first-round of the 2015 draft by the Houston Astros and then made his big-league debut with the Astros last July 25.
Another notable New Mexican is Cody Ross, a fourth-round pick of the Detroit Tigers in the 1999 draft out of Carlsbad HS who played in the big leagues for 12 seasons before retiring in 2015 at the age of 34. Ross was a bit of a Perfect Game pioneer, participating at the very first PG World Showcase in Fort Myers, Fla., in 1997.
“With these recent guys like Blake Swihart and Alex Bregman, those are names that nearly every high school kid in the state of New Mexico knows and aspires to be,” La Cueva’s Pineda said. “Those guys have been great stewards of baseball in the state and come home frequently, and will be out at high school practices or youth events during their off-seasons.
“They are very much within the eyesight of the young players; they promote the game and promote New Mexico baseball very well.”
Pineda once coached in the college and junior college ranks, and when he went out recruiting he made it a point to scour the New Mexico high schools for talent. Having grown up in the state, he knew what type of player he was going to find, and they were the ones who sometimes got overshadowed by the kids from Arizona and Texas.
Stroman is not naïve. He knows that the high school baseball scene in New Mexico is no rival for those in afore-mentioned states. A lot of that, of course, is simply a smaller population base from which to mine the talent, but Stroman is quick to remind a questioner that he sees plenty of players during his high school season who are going to make him work to earn everything he gets.
“This summer, I played with a bunch of top-100 kids and a bunch of D-I prospects, but that doesn’t change who I am once I get with my high school team,” Stroman said. “Just because I played with (elite players) doesn’t mean I’m going to throw differently. I’m going to throw like I have (PG All-American) Ricardo De La Torre hitting every time.
“It’s just the mindset, really,” he said. “I don’t really get all caught up in anything else; it’s just the mindset.”
Pineda believes his La Cueva Bears should at least be in the preseason conversation regarding state championship contenders every year, and recent history backs up that belief. It could be argued the program first got on the national map when James Parr was a fourth-round pick of the Atlanta Braves in the 2004 MLB Amateur Draft and Jordan Pacheco was a ninth-round pick of the Colorado Rockies in 2007.
Both became major-leaguers and Pacheco played last season for the Cincinnati Reds. Parr was a senior and Pacheco a freshman on the 2004 La Cueva squad that finished 28-0 and was named the high school national champion by Collegiate Baseball.
“We talk to our players about (representing a program) that everybody knows about,” Pineda said. “Year-in and year-out we have a very talented roster … but a lot of the success of the program has been built on guys that have come before the current players. We definitely instill that in them and we get a lot of former players that will come back and workout.
“I really try to instill the pride – as I know Carlsbad and a lot of the other successful program do – and let them know that you have a reputation to uphold on and off the field, and their getting the recognition because of the guys that have come before them.”
Yes, the same thing can be said about the program at Carlsbad, according to Rogers: “It’s definitely a baseball-crazy school. When you come to Carlsbad you know you’re going to play some good, quality baseball once you’re here; we’ve always been known for that. When people hear ‘Carlsbad’ they’re going to be like, ‘Oh man, that’s a baseball town; that’s a baseball school.’”
It’s a baseball school that sits in one of the four corners in a place known as The Land of Enchantment. Regardless of how enchanting the high school baseball scene in New Mexico is, it certainly is intriguing.
“In comparison to everywhere else, I really do think that I’ve been made a better ballplayer because of where I’m from,” Stroman said. “The (depth of) talent here might not be the talent that you see in California or in Florida or in Georgia … (but) when I’m going against guys (from out of state) it makes me realize how much better of a pitcher I’ve become when I can consistently get those guys out.”
Land of Enchantment, indeed.