GLENDALE, Ariz. – Despite opening play at the inaugural Perfect Game WWBA Underclass Fall National Championship Protected by G-Form with a disappointing 2-1 loss to the Aggies Baseball Underclass squad out of Watsonville, Calif., on Friday afternoon, there is plenty of reason for optimism in the CageRats NAVY camp with a lot of baseball still to be played this fall.
For one thing, the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based CageRats NAVY were a little undermanned against the Aggies Underclass on a cloudy but 100-degree afternoon at the Camelback Ranch Player Development Complex. And for another, it was a well-pitched game that both coaching staffs could be satisfied with as they moved into the second day of pool-play on Saturday.
That might be especially true for CageRats NAVY head coach Greg Moviel, a former left-hander at both Vanderbilt University and in the minor leagues for two seasons when he was in the Seattle Mariners’ organization. Moviel was a 15th-round draft pick of the Chicago White Sox out of St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland in 2003, and a 26th-round pick of the Mariners out of Vanderbilt in 2006.
Moviel comes from a family of pitchers – his brother Scott was a second-round pick of the N.Y. Mets in 2007 and pitched seven seasons in the minors and independent leagues, and another brother, Paul, pitched four minor league seasons – so he can appreciate a well-pitched game as much as anyone.
There were only 10 CageRats in the dugout on the Dodgers’ side of the Camelback complex on Friday. Moviel explained that he was missing about a half-dozen of his players for a variety of reasons, including injuries, personal commitments and a couple of conflicts with school.
Among the missing was No. 90-ranked 2020 left-hander/first baseman/outfielder Dalton Porter (Leander, Texas) – a University of Texas commit – who was set to arrive Friday night and join the team for the rest of the weekend. Moviel is confident he'll have his full roster available when the CageRats NAVY expect to play at the PG WWBA Underclass World championship in Fort Myers, Fla., in early October. Hurricane Irma will have something to say about that tournament going off as originally scheduled.
“We could probably have 20 guys on the roster (this weekend) but I want these guys that are here to play,” Moviel said Friday. “We have a double-header (on Saturday) and we’ll have 12 guys here tomorrow, and every kid is coming out here to play. We’re not going to run anybody down but, hey, here’s your shot.”
This CageRats NAVY roster is essentially a local one, with 10 of the 12 players listed coming from Colorado. Most are from right around the Colorado Springs area, and the players are able to get together to train at the program’s Colorado Springs facility as often as four times a week during the offseason.
Porter is the only prospect on the roster that has committed to a college to date, but Moviel expects most, if not all, to be on that list at some point. Major Hernandez, a 2019 corner-infielder from Fontana, Calif. – he and Porter are the only two non-Coloradans on the roster – and 2019 middle-infielder Tyler Shelly (Parker, Colo.) are top college prospects, according to Moviel, as is Jason Shuger, a 2019 right-hander/third baseman from Colorado Springs. And that is naming just a handful out of many.
“Jason is a really smart kid … and I can tell you he is going to be a Division I arm,” Moviel said of Shuger. “Right now, he’s sitting 85-86 (with his fastball) – he’s not going to sit 88 yet – but I’m looking to where he’s at by the time he’s a junior in college.”
Shuger, ranked as a “high follow” in the 2019 class, seemed excited to be at the PG WWBA Underclass West National Championship, as did his teammates. Playing baseball in the desert in early September might not be for everyone but it’s special for kids who come from cold-weather states, and opportunities like this one should not be missed or taken for granted.
“The fall is really a good time right now for (players in) my class to get scouted, get looks, and to get out and just play a little because in Colorado we really can’t do that with all the weather,” Shuger said. “I think it’s really good for us to get out here just to get to know how to play in front of scouts before we can actually work the process.”
The CageRats NAVY jumped to a 1-0 lead on the Aggies in the bottom of the second inning in Friday’s opener on an RBI single from Bridger Havens (Monument, Colo.) but couldn’t hold the lead. Six NAVY hitters knocked out seven hits including two off the bat of Shuger, who also scored a run. 2019 left-hander Bryce Eisenreich (Colorado Springs) scattered six hits over six innings while allowing the two runs, and struck-out six while walking one.
The Aggies’ Alex Castaneda double delivered an RBI single and Drew Bond doubled and drove in a run; three pitchers combined on an eight-strikeout, seven-hitter without issuing a walk.
Former Wichita State standout Tad Reida –also a former travel ball player with the Indiana Bulls and Midland Redskins – founded CageRat Baseball in 2010 and fielded teams in the Denver area and across the Midwest. Moviel joined Reida a little over a year ago and is now CageRat Baseball’s Director of Operations.
The organization runs a training facility in Colorado Springs call The Farm, and Moviel’s wife, Madeline, is an instructor there; Madeline played college basketball at Yale. The CageRats Baseball program is making an impact.
“Starting out with the CageRats, it’s just been really good; I know my arm velocity has gone up 10 miles-an-hour from the time that I started,” Shuger said. “We’re always in the weight room or practicing, going through throwing drills, hitting drills, always trying to better ourselves.”
The message the 32-year-old Moviel tries to get across to these young ballplayers is that they need to get bigger and stronger. Training and conditioning programs for every player and throwing programs for the pitchers are essential to a player’s development, and Moviel sees too many of these Colorado kids who aren’t getting exposed to those types of things until they’re already in college.
He feels fortunate that he’s still young and in great shape and can go out there be very hands on with these youngsters. He can pay catch with them, throw BP, lift weights and run with them, and they, in turn, show him respect based on his own playing career and knowledge of the game.
Moviel pointed out that a lot of these young players are going to get involved with the showcase circuit and will be asked to show they belong on the same stage with their age-group’s elite players. They might be asked to travel to places away from home and their personal comfort zones and then go out and perform at a very high level.
“Competing against guys from other states is huge, obviously, but at the same time it’s about being able to pack up, travel somewhere and go out and play,” he said. “Put your uniform on, put your cleats on and go out and enjoy playing baseball.”
Moviel doesn’t worry about his Colorado players showing a lot of fatigue this weekend mostly because the state’s spring high school season is so brief these guys don’t really start getting after it until school is out for the year.
He tells these players that from late May – around Memorial Day – through Nov, 1, they need to be prepared to go hard. And then during the months of November and December, the bats and balls will be put aside and their time will be spent in the weight room getting bigger and stronger.
“These guys are not on the brake pedal right now. We’re going all the way through October … and at the end of October we’ll be done and in shutdown mode,” Moviel said. “Things like this are just fun. We’ve been working a lot this fall already, go out there and play.
“If you’re not throwing strikes or you’re not throwing hard enough then you should compete a little harder and if they don’t we’ll come back on Monday and we’ll get ready for Fort Myers. But this right here is just fun.”
The CageRats NAVY are certainly buying what Moviel and Reida are selling and there is no reason to believe it won’t eventually pay dividends. There’s a lot of talent in the eastern foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and when everyone gets on the same page, good things can happen at events like the PG WWBA Underclass West National Championship or the PG WWBA Underclass World Championship.
“We’ve got a lot of different personalities on this team, but we’re always out there hoping to come together and combine as one (unit),” Shuger said. “Down here, we get to see a lot better competition than we would just playing in-state in Colorado.
“That’s really what it’s all about, getting to see better competition than what we would see (at home) so that we can see what’s expected of us when we do go out of state so we can get to that point at our next tournament.”