FORT MYERS, Fla. – Next Level Baseball 18u acting head coach Kelly Mosley didn’t really have many concerns regarding his team when it began play at the 18u Perfect Game BCS National Championship on Saturday, with the possible exception of those pesky 8 a.m. games.
The 8 a.m. starts are inescapable at the 18u PG BCS as tournament directors try to make sure play is wrapped up by early afternoon to avoid what seems like inevitable mid- to late-afternoon showers and thunderstorms. But sometimes it’s hard to get these 16-, 17- and 18-year old ballplayers playing with the desired level of mental toughness when they’re still digesting their breakfasts. But when they do show that toughness, good things are going to happen.
“We’ve come out and we’ve had some pretty good intensity,” Mosley told PG Monday morning before Next Level Baseball 18u faced Ninth Inning Royals-Bartlewkski in its fourth pool-play game of the event on one of the back-fields at the jetBlue Player Development Complex.
“Usually, early in the morning, it takes a minute to get woke up, but once we get rolling we’ve been clicking on all cylinders,” he said. “The guys play some heads-up baseball, we’ve had some timely hitting early, and then in the games later in the day we seem to find our groove and get going pretty good.”
The NXTL Baseball club found its groove early and often over the first three days of the tournament, winning four of its first five pool-play games by a combined score of 28-12 in the four games that were scored over the last three days; one of its four wins came by forfeit. It beat the Royals, 9-2, and lost to Nelson Baseball School 18u, 4-3, in its two games Monday.
Next Level got solid outings from 2017 left-hander Devin Hemenway, and 2017 righties Nicky Agosto and Zachary Taylor on its way to winning its first three games and has shown that the guys hitting up-and-down in the lineup can put the ball in play and score some runs.
Grant Rowell is a 6-foot-3, 170-pound outfielder/third baseman from Chipley, Fla., and a recent graduate of Chipley High School where he carried a 4.0 grade-point average. The 18u PG BCS National Championship is his first Perfect Game event but he’s played alongside this group of guys on many occasions.
“We always seem to have pretty good pitching and our defense is pretty solid, too,” Rowell said Monday. “We’re capable of holding a team to or two runs and we feel with our offense we can score more than that, so pitching is always the key.”
Before the summer season gets underway, the Next Level Baseball program conducts what it calls “NLB Weekend” where each of its teams from the 15u through the 18u age-groups are brought together to play a round-robin tournament. That goes a long way towards building valuable team chemistry even before the players begin playing in games that count.
This Next Level Baseball 18u team played in a couple of non-PG tournaments to get its summer going, and Mosley has had some difficulty getting the entire team together for various reasons. That can initially hinder the development of that team chemistry but it appears that as the calendar gets ready to flip into July, that development is coming along nicely.
NXTL Baseball 18u’s official roster for the 18u BCS lists 13 prospects from the class of 2017 along with eight 2018s and four 2019s; not everyone on the roster is here. The idea is to keep it fairly balanced with graduated seniors and incoming seniors to minimize the turnover from year-to-year, and add underclassmen as needed.
While the program is based in Tallahassee, the players from every corner of Florida ranging from Pensacola to Jacksonville to Miami; there are team members from Alabama and Georgia, as well.
The starting lineup for NXTL Baseball 18u in its Monday morning game against the Ninth Inning Royals-Bartlewski featured three 2017s, including the outfielder Rowell (Southern Alabama CC) and the right-hander Taylor (Andrew College); three 2018s, including outfielder Bennett Shell (South Alabama) and designated hitter Vallen Leach (New Orleans), and three 2019s.
Through the four games that were played, Shell hit .417 with a double and a triple among his five hits and Leach hit .385 with four doubles among his five safeties.
Sometimes it can take a mix of players from three graduating classes awhile to gel, and Next Level Baseball 18u might be experiencing a little bit of that early in the summer of 2017.
“We’ve been able to put together some decent runs so far, not just what we’ve typically been able to do in the past,” Mosley said. “It’s not something for us to be ashamed about. We’ve had a bunch of young guys with us (lately) … but they’ve really performed and they’ve held their own, so we’re pleased with that to[J1] this point. We’re asking them to do it again this week for this tournament, and they’ve exceeded our expectations.”
None of the 2017s on this team were selected in the MLB June Amateur Draft a couple of weeks ago, which means if their amateur baseball careers are to continue it will most likely have to be at the collegiate level.
College baseball programs across the country use the BBCOR metal bats instead of wood bats, and Perfect Game’s BCS National Championships also employ the BBCOR bats. For these college-bound prospects, that is a big part of the BCS’s appeal.
“I think it’s very important to get that BBCOR bat in their hands and get to swinging it and getting used to it because that’s exactly what they’re going to be doing for the next three or four years,” Mosley said. “There’s no better time than the present to get that going.”
With his baseball career set to continue at Alabama Southern Community College in Monroeville, Ala., Rowell was eager to get back to swinging the BBCOR bat at the 18u BCS National. Switching from metal to wood or wood to metal won’t change his swing at all, and he likes the way the ball comes off a metal bat. That simple little feeling, as inconsequential as it might seem, can impact an amateur hitter’s confidence at the plate.
Throughout the time he has been with Next Level Baseball, Rowell has found that his coaches put a lot of emphasis on staying aggressive at the plate – an approach he embraces – and, really, just playing hard nonstop from the first pitch to the last out. He can do that here and do it with a metal bat in his hand.
“This is really good because we’ve been using nothing but wood bats the whole summer so far and we’re going to be using them the whole rest of the summer,” he said. “It’s really nice to have a metal bat tournament right here in the middle.”
Rowell went on to say that he was “definitely” looking forward to playing at the 18u PG BCS National Championship for the simple reason that he would be playing with his Next Level Baseball 18u teammates and not another group of ballplayers.
He called the organization “great” and the team “close-knit” and that’s a combination that goes a long way toward making the game as fun as it was intended to be. Even during those pesky 8 a.m. games. Next Level Baseball 18u will play its final pool-play game of the tournament on Tuesday – at 8 a.m.
“These guys show up ready to go; we’re ready to compete as soon as we step out of the van,” Mosley said. “For me, that’s super important, because the last thing we want to do is get off to a sluggish start and fall behind because we’re still sleep-walking the first thing in the morning.
“This is just a good bunch of kids that want to play baseball and they’re hungry, and that’s always a good recipe when they want to compete and they’re hungry to win. So far, so good.”