FORT MYERS, Fla. – The 64-team playoff field at the 16th annual Perfect Game WWBA Underclass World Championship really began taking shape late Saturday, although there was at least one team that knew it had made the cut by the time its members had slipped between the sheets Friday night.
Power Baseball 2019, a close-knit outfit out of Winter Haven, Fla., was already assured of winning it pool championship even before it faced winless Team BEAST 2019 from Commack, N.Y. Saturday afternoon at Fort Myers’ Dunbar High School.
The Power had vanquished the Prospects National Team ‘19/’20 (Austin, Texas) and the Diamond Baseball Academy (King of Prussia, Pa.) on Thursday and Friday, so they had earned a berth in bracket-play even before taking the field against the BEAST. At end of the day there was no reason for worry in the Power Baseball camp, anyway, as it prevailed 7-1.
In this current travel ball world of scout teams and national all-star teams, Power Baseball 2019 is a bit of throwback. It’s important at this point to emphasize there is no right or wrong way for team directors to go about constructing a roster, mostly because it must be assumed everyone has the best interest of the young players in mind. But in this case, the Power has some powerful chemistry working on their behalf.
“I’ve played at this event for the past three years now on numerous teams, but this Power Baseball team is just a group of guys from Orlando, Fla., a group of friends, really, with a great coaching staff,” No. 28-ranked national 2019 infield prospect and Florida commit Isaac Nunez said Saturday.
“Being here, in general, is just a lot of fun. It’s an amazing experience knowing that the top players are here, knowing that the top guys from all over the country are here; it’s just fun to be a part of this with this team.”
Nunez is correct in his roster breakdown except he forgot to consider 2019 catcher/first baseman Kolsen Powers, who calls Abilene, Texas, home. Otherwise, the roster spots are all filled with Floridians although not all of them are from the Orlando/Tampa area – two players, for instance, come from Naples in far Southwest Florida. But that’s picking nits. This is an impressive collection of high school juniors from Florida that know each other much like brothers singing in the Sunday choir.
In addition to Orlando’s Nunez, the roster’s top class of 2019 prospects include Oviedo outfielder/first baseman Fabian Escalante (No. 174), Longwood infielder Logan Keller (No. 267, Alabama), Windermere left-hander Bryce Hubbart (top-500, Central Florida) and Orlando first baseman/catcher William Sullivan (top-500, Troy).
Power Baseball 2019 outscored its three pool-play opponents by a combined 18-6 which was good enough to earn the No. 18 seed in the playoffs. Over three games, that works out to a pretty simple average of score of 6-2, which time has told is a comfortable area code to be residing in.
“We’ve been pitching well and this game is all about pitching,” head coach Jesse Marlowe said Saturday. “We’ve been playing good defense and getting good pitching pretty consistently over the course of the fall, so far. So, they’ve continued to do that and we’re letting the bats kind of heat up as we go.”
This is a team that can present problems to opponents in bracket-play, simply because the teammates know each other so well. Marlowe has been a part of this travel ball gig at different organizations for quite a while now and he’s been around programs that bring in players from across the country and try to mold them into a team.
He’s noticed how those teams take some time to start functioning on the same wave-length and how they may not start to show any semblance of cohesiveness in the very short term. That hiccup can be amplified during a short fall season, although the really fine and upstanding programs – the ones that do things the right way – usually find a way to make things work.
With this Power Baseball 2019 group, Marlowe has several guys who are teammates and classmates at their respective high schools. If they don’t attend the same high school they almost certainly know the guy sitting next to them this weekend because they were sitting in the dugout across the field during the Florida high school spring season.
Marlowe is the head coach at West Orange High School in Winter Garden and he has two of his players on this roster: 2019 top-500 right-hander/middle-infielder Noah Janney (U. Central Florida) and 2019 catcher/middle-infielder Andrew Coello. The other players come from about 10 other high schools.
“Baseball players love familiarity and they love routines and it just makes it that much easier for them to be successful,” Marlowe said. “It’s just less pressure on the player, I feel like. It helps when you try to do the little things. When you want to run a play or you want to bunt or you want to do a hit-and-run, it just makes it so much easier because they’ve done it before.
“Our whole infield today will be from (Altamonte Springs) Lake Brantley High School. … We love having that camaraderie and familiarity with our teams.”
He wasn’t making that up. When the Power took the field against Team BEAST 2019 on Saturday, there was Lake Brantley junior Ryan Fischer at first base, junior Evan Siegner at second, junior Logan Keller at shortstop and the junior Nunez at third.
“It’s just the fact that we already have camaraderie and because we’ve played with each other before,” Nunez said. “This isn’t like a brand-new team where we just hop in and just play baseball. We know each other and so we go out there and just play and have fun.”
The PG WWBA Underclass World Championship provides a national stage for these high school juniors, sophomores and freshman; many of them, like Nunez, will be at this event three straight years. The prospects that are already committed, like the Powers’ Nunez, Hubbart, Janney, Keller, Sullivan and 2019 utility player Nick Durgin (Stetson) are often asked why they keep coming back. What’s the point?
“We still play the game for fun, we still want to play with the boys and come out here on the weekend and just have fun,” Nunez said. “The Perfect Game Underclass is just the perfect event for us.”
Nunez, who is about as personable and well-spoken as any 17-year-old a baseball fan is likely to encounter, didn’t stop there with his explanation of why he enjoys the event so much:
“Just the fact that you have the top (players) in the country here and you go out there and you’re competing, and it makes you want to step up your game a little bit,” he said. “I want to be just as good as this kid and let’s see who’s what, and he’s ranked number-one and I’m ranked number-three so I want to know he’s ranked higher than I am.”
Marlowe makes no effort to hide his admiration for this team and there certainly isn't any reason for him to do so. It’s a young group with about half of the roster already committed and yet it’s a team that comes ready to play every day, regardless of the circumstances, which the coaches love to see.
It’s not just a bunch of individuals playing showcase ball. It’s a good team that plays the game together. And it’s also an underclass group, and the players are still very much youngsters in the grand scheme of high school baseball.
“I love it because these are the guys that are really hungry to get picked up,” Marlowe said. “It can be a lot harder to motivate the older guys, especially if they’re not a pro prospect and they’ve already got a scholarship. … With these younger guys, they’ve got a purpose for being here, they’re trying to make a name for themselves and they’re trying to prove something to people.”
Editor’s Note: The top-four seeds heading into Sunday's Round of 64 playoff bracket (all 3-0-0) are No. 1 Team Ohio Pro Select (Aurora, Ohio), No. 2 BigStix 17u Prime (McDonough, Ga.), No. 3 Team Elite 17u Prime (Winder, Ga.) and No. 4 KBC Underclass Prime (Nicholasville, Ky.).