FORT MYERS, Fla. – When the Florida Burn’s Mark Guthrie spoke with Perfect Game a couple of days before the 22nd annual WWBA World Championship was set to begin its five-day run in Southwest Florida, the program founder and co-head coach took a minute to discuss the pool his Florida Burn 2021 National team had been placed in.
The two-time defending champion Burn were part of a very solid grouping that included the always formidable Chicago Scouts Association, Dulins Dodgers 2021 Prime and Upstate Mavericks ST, with no discernible weak link in the bunch. But based on their 16-0-0 record over the last two WWBA World Championships, the Burn were penciled-in as the favorite.
“I liked it better in years past when we were never picked to win our pool,” Guthrie told PG last week. “Those are all really good teams and like I said, you can walk away 0-3 very easily if you’re not playing well. There’s no doubt you could lose all three games and that’s the respect you have to have for every team you’re going to face at this event.”
Guthrie’s words proved prophetic on Saturday when the Chicago Scouts rallied past the Burn for a 4-2 victory that clinched the pool championship and a playoff berth for the Scouts. It came on the heels of a 10-3 win over the Mavericks ST on Thursday and an important 4-0 win over the Dodgers on Saturday.
The Burn, meanwhile, did in fact finish pool-play at 0-3-0 and the Chicago Scouts Association had the pool championship clinched even before Saturday's game was played. That did nothing to diminish the deep feelings of accomplishment within the Scouts’ dugout.
“Very high emotions; very excited right now,” said 2022 middle-infielder Gavin Kilen, a Louisville commit out of Milton, Wis., who is ranked No. 9 overall nationally in his class. “Everyone on the team is doing a great job throughout the whole lineup, one through nine; the pitchers are pounding the zone, doing a great job. Everybody’s executing and doing their part and that’s all we can ask for.”
The truth is, even more will now be asked of the Chicago Scouts as they move into bracket-play as the No. 6 seed in the 32-team playoff field at the most competitive amateur baseball tournament for high school-aged prospects in the world continues its run into Championship Monday.
Brenden Spillane, who goes by Bren, is a third baseman in the Cincinnati Reds’ minor league system who the Reds took in the third-round out of Illinois in the 2018 MLB Draft; he was a 34th round pick of the Pirates in the 2015 draft out of Wheeling (Ill.) High School after wrapping up his high school and PG careers.
Spillane is also an alumnus of the Chicago Scouts Association and he was in Jupiter with the Chicago Scouts in both 2013 and 2014, earning all-tournament recognition in 2013; he was at the event in 2014 but didn’t play following Tommy John surgery. He is helping coach the Chicago Scouts this week and served as the coaching staff’s voice this weekend.
“We’re grinders; we’re grinders,” Spillane said – repeating himself for added emphasis – when asked to describe this team’s mentality. “We’re a scrappy team, we’re going to take extra bases when we can and we really harp on the little things. … We don’t have all the guys going to the top schools and stuff but we really take pride on being a grinder team and competing.”
They also take a lot of pride in representing the Midwest, in general, and the Chicago area, in particular. The vast majority of the roster consists of high-profile class of 2021 prospects from Chicago and its suburbs with some very dynamic southern Wisconsin talent mixed in for not just good, but great measure.
That Wisconsin talent includes the 2022 Kilen as well as 2021 switch-hitting middle-infielder Noah Miller (No. 73, Alabama), 2021 middle-infielder/right-hander Grant Ross (t-500, Valparaiso), 2021 shortstop Ryan Taylor (t-500, UCF) and 2021 right-hander Jacob Kisting (t-1000, Bradley).
“It’s been great,” Miller said of this Illinois-Wisconsin stew. “We all get along well – we’re all from the Midwest – and we love it. We love playing with each and we all get along great.”
Kilen is a bit of an outlier on this roster in two respects: he’s a high school junior on a senior-laden team and he’s a “cheese-head”.
“Just from everything, going through practices and getting to know people, it’s been a lot of fun getting to know these guys; getting to compete with these guys against good teams,” Kilen said. “It’s just all good.”
It was plainly obvious to any observer in attendance at any of the Scouts’ three pool-play games just how much these guys enjoy each other and, more importantly, enjoy winning. The atmosphere in the dugout was one of enthusiasm and supportive chatter, and the friends and family gathered just outside the field of play were equally enthusiastic.
“We feel like we’ve been playing together forever and it’s really only been like three or four weeks,” Donovan McIntyre, a t-1000 uncommitted 2021 outfielder from Richton Park, Ill., told PG Saturday. “It’s a family bond that we built immediately.”
Cameron Hill is a talented, 6-foot-3, 195 pound top-500 2021 outfielder from Chicago who has committed to Purdue from the Big Ten. The roster lists six Big Ten commitments in all with 2021s Gavin Bennett (t-500, Illinois), Alex Calarco (t-500, Northwestern), Grant Comstack (t-500, Northwestern), Camden Janik (No. 492, Illinois) and Chad Readey (HF, Northwestern).
There are Notre Dame recruits in 2021s t-500s Karson Bonaparte and Nick Demarco, and Louisville commits in Kilen and 2021 Eddie King Jr. (No. 366).
“I’d describe it as a really good (group) personality and everybody on this team is very intelligent baseball-wise,” Hill said. “From the catchers to the pitchers to everybody else, they have some idea of what they’re talking about. You just see it when they’re picking each other’s brains and it makes it even better.
“It’s really beneficial because (no one) can win the game by themselves. Everybody’s got to pitch in one way or another.”
The Chicago Scouts set the tone early at this event with a 10-3 opening day victory over the Upstate Mavericks ST. The bats were hot out of the gate with McIntyre, hitting leadoff, contributing three singles, two RBI and two runs scored, Hill three singles an RBI and two runs and Ross a pair of singles, two ribbies and a run.
Also, Kilen doubled, drove in a run and scored one; Miller singled and doubled and scored a run; and Calarco doubled and drove in three. 2021 lefty Jackson Kent (t-1000, UW-Milwaukee) threw a five-inning one-hitter striking out seven and all three runs Upstate scored were unearned.
It needs to be noted that this was also the day in which the Dulins Dodgers 2021 Prime pushed across three runs in the bottom of the fifth to break a 1-1 tie and beat the Florida Burn 2021 National, 4-1, bringing to an end the Burn’s WWBA WC two-year, 16-game winning streak.
“I kind of knew the makeup of these guys and how they play together; they grind it out and they’re just really good baseball players,” the Dodgers’ Tim Dulin told PG on Saturday. “I played with Craig Faulkner from the Burn; Mark Guthrie is a great guy and obviously a big-time pitcher in the big leagues.
“They’re very professional and a great organization and we knew when we saw they were in our pool that if you lose that game you can forget winning your pool.”
The Dodgers were up next for the Scouts and, coupled with the Burn’s 3-0 loss to Upstate, CSA’s 4-0 win over Dulins clinched the pool championship.
The outcome with Dulins centered on the pitching performance turned-in by the Valparaiso recruit Grant Ross, a 5-foot-10, 180 pounder who is a primary middle-fielder. The 2021 righty shutdown the Dodgers’ bats over five innings of work, allowing just one hit and striking out nine; Ryan Weaver (t-1000, Illinois State) finished them off with two hitless, scoreless innings of relief, striking out three.
McIntyre (2B, RBI, run), Miller (2 1Bs, run) and Calarco (2B, 2 RBI) continued to swing it well and Antoine Harris (t-500, uncommitted) delivered a pair of doubles, a single and scored a run from his No. 9 spot in the order.
“A lot of these southern teams don’t think that we can play,” Miller said. “But we come out and we beat ‘em and that’s just how we play. That’s what it is and we love doing it.”
And they continued to do it for yet another game on Saturday, this one against the frustrated Florida Burn National. The Chicago Scouts, down 2-0 after two, scored three runs in the top of the fourth and added an insurance run in the fifth for a 4-2 victory and 3-0-0 pool-play sweep.
They used four pitchers who limited the Burn to the two runs on seven hits. Kilen doubled and singled, Miller doubled and Hill singled and all three drove in a run. These kids from Illinois and Wisconsin know how to play and they just don’t pay much mind to who might be standing in their way.
“We felt like we had a chip on our shoulder the whole time and we played like it the whole time,” McIntyre said. “Even when we were down we were never really down on ourselves. We were always ready and we always had each other’s back and that’s what really made us pull through.”
And then McIntyre repeated some words of wisdom provided by the coaching staff: “Play like you’re in first and compete like you’re in second,” was the message he heard. “We’ve got something to prove. (Opponents) don’t think we can play because we’re from up north so we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.”
It is a group effort and very much a “local” effort, at least as far as the word can be applied to a truly national event like the WWBA World Championship. Spillane has been here himself as a player, now he’s here as a coach. The Jupiter tournament is a unique experience that shows what it takes to not only play at a high level but also win at a high level – preparation is key.
“Leading into this we scrimmaged some pro guys that were possibly getting ready for instructs so they got a taste of what that competition could be like … as far as the arms we’re going to face and the teams we’re going to play,” Spillane revealed. “For them to go out and execute and play the game that they know how to play it’s really fun to watch.
“We take pride in being from Chicago,” he concluded. “We can play baseball in the Midwest and it’s really fun to come down here and be able to show that on a national stage like this is.”