IOWA CITY, Iowa – The lineup Reds Midwest Scout Team head coach/manager Andy Stack posted for his team’s Perfect Game WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship tournament opener at Duane Banks Field on the University of Iowa campus Saturday morning was formidable by anyone's standard.
It was a lineup consisting exclusively of top prospects from Illinois and Wisconsin, two states that Stack, an area scouting supervisor for the Cincinnati Reds, knows and likes as much as a comfortable pair of shoes. Eight of the nine 2019s in the order were nationally ranked, as was is the only 2020 to crack the starting lineup, No. 111 Isaiah Jackson.
Eight of the 10 starters had already committed to NCAA Division I school, along with the starting pitcher, 2019 right-hander Grant Leader, a top-500 prospect and an Illinois commit.
“I do like this group,” Stack told PG before sending the Reds out on the turf field at DBF to face the DuPage Training Academy Wildcats. “There is no real superstar; we don’t have one kid that really carries us. … They all get after it, they all play hard.
“We have a little more team speed than we probably did last year – we were probably built a little more for power last year – but we have 12 or 13 position guys and they’re kind of interchangeable,” he added. “So, it’s a good group as a whole and there’s no real individual superstar.”
With top-500s Brody Harding (Illinois), Clark Elliott (Michigan) and Tyler Snep (Iowa) holding down the top-three spots in the Hartford, Wis.-based Reds MWST batting order, it was easy to feel like the future of the Big Ten Conference was on display. A little further down in the lineup there was Jalen Greer (No. 211, Missouri), Andrew Wiegman (No. 255, Louisville), Drake Baldwin (t-500, Missouri State) and Jack Krumbach (t-500, Xavier).
And be careful not to look past the kid hitting in the cleanup spot on Saturday morning. While Stack can say with confidence that this roster has no “real superstar” it does have in its midst 2019 catcher Nathan Stevens, an Arkansas commit from Waunakee, Wis., who PG ranks as the No. 62 overall prospect in his class. He is also the only alumnus of August’s PG All-American Classic playing at the Kernels Foundation Championship this weekend.
“I think this group is really fun,” Stevens told PG Saturday morning. “There’s a lot of really, really good guys on this team and everyone really wants to be here and really wants to compete at the highest level.”
Stevens singled and drove in a couple of runs in the Reds’ 8-3 tournament-opening win over the Carol Stream, Ill.-based DuPage Training Academy Wildcats. Elliott tripled and drove in three runs, Wiegman singled and doubled with an RBI, Cameron Lee doubled and drove in one and Snep doubled with an RBI. Leader allowed three earned runs on four hits in five innings of work, striking out five and walking three.
Stevens, a 6-foot, 197-pound left-handed swinging catcher, plays his summer ball with the Greg Reinhard Baseball Academy organization on a team called the GRB Rays. Stack has partnered with GRB so that when the fall rolls around he is able to pick up some of its top kids and bring them to both the PG WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship here in Eastern Iowa and then on to the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla.
“He’s got some teammates from his summer team here and that makes it comfortable,” Stack said. “A lot of the kids know each other beforehand and when they start playing together out here they come together even more.”
Baldwin, Krumbach and Hunter Rosenbaum (t-500, West Virginia) are among the 2019s that play with GRB and also rostered with the Reds MWST at this event, as is 2020 Ryan Stefiuk (No. 254, uncommitted).
This is Stevens’ 15th PG event and he previously earned all-tournament recognition at both the 2017 and ’18 PG WWBA 17u National Championships while playing with GRB.
This is the second fall season Stevens has played with the Reds Midwest Scout Team; he was with them at both this tournament and at the WWBA World last fall. Stack mentioned that 2019s Andrew Wiegman and Taylor Catton (t-500, Bradley) were also with the Reds both events in 2017.
“With the two-year guys, you kind of see them blossom in their second year and that’s always fun for me,” Stack said. “They were good players for us last year but they knew they were underclassmen, and this year they know they have to be leaders.”
Added Stevens: “This event and then (Jupiter), those are always the two events I look forward to in the fall. This is a very fun time of the year. This is one of the tournaments that everyone playing fall ball looks forward to, and if we do good here it gives our team a name heading into Florida as someone to watch out for.”
Stevens earned his invitation to the PG All-American Classic by turning in a standout performance at the PG National Showcase in June. His scouting report from that event read in part:
“Nathan Stevens …(has) plenty of present strength with room for more. Very good defensive tools behind the plate, very quick laterally blocking the ball … anticipates very well, strong arm with a quick release. …Left-handed hitter, hits from a wide base … has fast hands, fluid swing, long and loose swing with lots of power potential and lift.”
“The bat I think is what you’re buying with him,” Stack said. “It’s a left-handed bat with some power and if that bat clicks he’s going to be a special player. He’s carried us at times, and when he’s rolling it’s fun to watch.”
“I’m really happy with how I’ve been developing,” Stevens said. “There is still way more room for improvement and I’m going keep working hard to get to where I know I can be.”
The temperature hovered in the low 40s in Iowa City early Saturday morning, so Stevens didn’t mind at all thinking back on the days he spent in hot and sunny San Diego at the PGAAC in mid-August.
“San Diego was a great experience; it was probably the best week of my life so far,” Stevens said. “Going to see the kids at (Rady Children’s Hospital) and then playing in the game and getting all that great (gear), everything was just great.”
As was noted at the outset, quite a few of the prospects on the Reds MWST have already made their college choices and just about every one of the “Power 5” leagues is represented, save the Pac-12. Most of the commitments are to Big 10 schools, but Stevens wanted to head a different direction.
“I was talking with a couple of colleges and I knew I always wanted to play in the SEC because that’s the best conference for baseball,” Stevens said when asked about deciding on Arkansas, the 2018 College World Series national runner-up.
“I narrowed my choices down to three colleges and I went on my visits and I knew that Arkansas was going to be the best fit for me with the coaches and the facilities and all that stuff.”
The PG Kernels Foundation Championship serves as a qualifier for the PG WWBA World Championship, with the champion earning a paid berth to the exclusive, invitation-only Jupiter, Fla., mega-event. This year’s WWBA qualifiers are using a 64-team, single-elimination bracket-play format, which early on is being met with mixed reviews.
As a scout, Stack has always enjoyed having the opportunity to go out and watch other teams play between the Reds MWST’s games, but since the schedule can’t be set until the outcomes of games are decided, that has become much more difficult.
And as far as managing his team, Stack said it makes it difficult because he wants to make sure all his guys get a chance to play and pitch, and with this format he might end up having to hold a guy back for a fourth game that never comes. But there is a flipside, at least from a competition standpoint.
“If you go out and lay an egg, you’re out, and I like that part of it that every game matters,” Stack said.
Stevens agreed: “I don’t think it really changes anything; we need to win either way,” he said. “But I think it puts everyone on top of their game knowing that if we lose one game we’re done; people aren’t used to that.”
Round-of-16 and quarterfinal games – along with consolation contests – will be played Sunday at various fields sprinkled across four or five Eastern Iowa counties on Sunday. And, late Saturday afternoon with rain moving into the area, the Reds MWST secured a spot in the round-of-16 with a 4-1 victory over the South Bend (Ind.) Cubs.
Elliott had a two-run single in the third and Snep and Greer delivered an RBI triple and RBI single, respectively, in sixth to account for the four runs. 2020 right-hander Benjamin Wiegman (No. 71, Louisville) and the 2019 righty Rosenbaum were lights-out, with Wiegman allowing one earned run on two hits with nine strikeouts and two walks in five innings and Rosenbaum striking out four of the six batters he faced in two perfect innings.
“You try to win one game at a time and, the good Lord willing, you’re still around to win that last one on Monday,” Stack said. “That’s the only way you can approach it. Win or go home; take it one game at a time and see how it goes.”
The Reds Midwest Scout Team has a long history of success at the Kernels Championship, winning championships in 2009, ’11 and ’14 and finishing as the runner-up in ’04, ’06-’08, ’10 and ’12. It’s a team that will be going to Jupiter whether it wins the championship or not, but this is a signature event.
“This is the reason we do a little extended schedule instead of just putting a team together for Jupiter,” Stack said. “We want to get these guys together and see what they’re made of so when we do get to Jupiter you kind of know what you have; they’ll know each other and know how to play together. So, yeah, this is always an event I look forward to.”