2017 Perfect Game High School Preview Index
Arlington is as a land-locked on its east and west borders as any booming big-city in the state of Texas can be. The home of both the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys, the city sits about 12 miles east of downtown Fort Worth and about 20 miles west of downtown Dallas, and is a very prominent member of the vibrant D-FW Metroplex.
It is also the home of five Texas University Interscholastic League (UIL) Class 6A high schools, each of which boast prominent baseball programs. On that same front, Arlington sits in the middle of what can only be described as a national high school baseball holy land with five programs – regardless of UIL class –finding a spot in the 2017 Perfect Game High School Preseason National Top 50 Rankings; amazingly, several others could have been considered.
Among those ranked programs this season are No. 2 Dallas Jesuit, No. 12 Flower Mound, No. 16 Coppell and No. 44 Colleyville Heritage. Not to be outdone – and conspicuous by its central location west of Dallas Jesuit and south and a little west of Flower Mound, Coppell and Colleyville – is No. 34-ranked Arlington James Martin High School. The school has fielded Texas state championship-level baseball teams since it was established in 1982.
When considered by its national ranking, Martin HS is the No. 4-ranked team in the Perfect Game High School Texahoma Region (Texas and Oklahoma). And the three ahead of them are all part of the D-FW Metroplex.
“You don’t have to drive very far around here to find a (high school) baseball team that can play,” 13-year Martin head coach Curt Culbertson said with a chuckle during a recent telephone conversation with PG. “And it certainly gives you a sense of pride that year-after-year we’re included on the same list with those other teams; there are a lot of teams that aren’t. We’re humbled by the fact that we’re on that list with those people.”
The Martin Warriors go to work every day during the regular season in UIL Class 6A Region I District 4 alongside seven other neighboring – if not entirely neighborly – programs: Arlington HS, Bowie HS (Arlington), Lamar HS (Arlington), North Crowley HS (Fort Worth), Pascal HS (Fort Worth), Sam Houston HS (Arlington) and Weatherford (Texas) HS.
It is a difficult row to hoe, any way the plow is pointed. And in addition to its games with its district opponents, Martin also has scheduled regular-season games with Colleyville Heritage and other traditional powers like Marcus HS (Flower Mound) and Keller (Texas) HS in 2017; there are also regular season tournaments where the opponent is TBD.
“We want to compete against those guys just to see where we’re at and see how we respond to those types of teams and programs,” Culbertson said. “You react differently to those types of teams than you do against some other ones. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to react to that type of intensity; it tells us a lot about our team when you play teams like that.”
Perfect Game hired former Howard College (Big Spring, Texas) head coach and 2009 National Junior College Coach of the Year Britt Smith last July to oversee operations in its South Region (Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma). Smith, who knows Texas high school baseball as well as anyone, is certainly impressed by what he sees coming out of the Metroplex high schools these days.
“There is just such a concentration of talent in that area,” he said last week. “… There has been such a development of baseball in the last 25 years in the Metroplex, and it shows now. Not only has the population grown in that area but the commitment to baseball has grown, and that’s just a big shift in the last 25-30 years. It used to be that baseball was completely a secondary sport to football and it’s not so much that way anymore.”
And Arlington Martin High School has not been left behind. Welcome to life in D-FW Metroplex high school baseball, the 2017 edition.
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COMING INTO THE 2017 CAMPAIGN, COACH CULBERTSON FEELS LIKE he has an athletic roster stocked with players who are going to be pretty salty defensively and should be able to hit the ball; it will also feature a young and inexperienced pitching staff. Off-setting that youth and inexperience, however, is an overall talent level that should be able to carry the Warriors through all those hand-wringing UIL Class 6A District 4 showdowns and possibly beyond.
The Warriors won 24 games and advanced to the UIL Class 6A Region 1 Bi-District round of the playoffs in 2016 thanks in large part to the efforts of a group of seniors led by right-hander Eric Walker (now at Louisiana State), left-hander/first baseman Nick Steffington (Abilene Christian), left-hander Kody Bullard (Western Texas College) and right-hander Conner Lidiak (basketball at Dallas Baptist).
The guys coming back – this year’s seniors – look to be more than capable of, well, stepping up to the plate. It’s a group led by 6-foot-3, 205-pound outfielder Tristen Lutz, a prospect Perfect Game ranks No. 62 nationally (No. 4 Texas) in the class of 2017, and who has signed with the Texas Longhorns.
“I have always been a UT fan and wanted to attend and play sports at UT for as long as I can remember,” Lutz told texassports.com on Nov. 19 after he had signed his letter-of-intent. “I chose (Texas) because of the history of the program (and) UT is providing me with the (opportunity) to play for the best baseball program in the country.”
The Longhorns’ coaches were impressed with Lutz after watching him perform both at Martin during the spring season and at selected events during the summer. “He is physical and he can run. He can do multiple things on the field,” head coach David Pierce said.
Assistant coach Sean Allen added: “Tristen is arguably the best outfielder in the state of Texas and is a top-100 player in the country. He is your prototypical corner-outfielder; he has a big, physical body, can flat out hit and can also steal bases. He really has the chance to impact our team in a major way once he arrives on campus.”
Shortstop Kurt Wilson (ranked Nos. 318/23) and left-hander Kenneth Waller (top-500/126) have both signed with Texas Tech, right-hander Maddux Miller (t-500/83) signed with Baylor and right-hander/first baseman Spencer Johnson signed with Frank Phillips College in Borger, Texas. Tech head coach Tim Tadlock commented on both Wilson and Waller on national signing day:
“Kenneth is a guy we feel like has a chance to come in and compete right away with his ability to command his secondary stuff,” he said of Waller; he then had this to say about Wilson: “Kurt has the ability to play in the middle of the field and could possibly end up on the mound.”
Having Wilson available this spring has put an added bounce in Culbertson’s step – Wilson would have been his starting shortstop in 2016 but missed the entire season with an injury. The same goes for second baseman Zack McJilton, another likely starter last season had he not been hurt.
“Losing both of those kids a week before the season started, that was tough on those two kids and it was tough on our team, too,” Culbertson said. “With those two coming back healthy, we are definitely stronger up the middle. … We have (a lot of players) back and we have a really strong core of kids that have come back. What we lost was four senior pitchers; that was our biggest graduation.”
The 2017 season is about to begin with this new group of seniors and underclassmen ready to step in and fill those shoes. And it won’t be long before the crowds start to gather around the Martin High School Baseball Field.
With four of the other seven teams in 6A District 4 also located right in Arlington and the other three in nearby Fort Worth and Weatherford, Martin certainly isn’t lacking for natural rivals. Culbertson reports that the school’s student body is very supportive of the program, although, as would be expected, the opponent most like determines the size of the spectating audience.
Welcome to life in D-FW Metroplex high school baseball, the 2017 edition.
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GOOD YOUNG BALLPLAYERS CONTINUE TO COME THROUGH MARTIN year-after-year and it’s not by accident. Culbertson runs a pair of weeklong summer camps – the first for the eighth- and ninth-graders and the second for the older players – and if those camps continue to be productive, he feels like the program will continue to function at the same high level it has functioned at in the past.
In the years 15 years Culbertson has been at Martin – he was an assistant coach in 2003-04 and became the head coach in 2005 – only the 2004 season failed to produce a noteworthy accomplishment.
The Warriors reached varying levels of success during those other 14 seasons, such as district champions, area finalists, regional finalists, regional quarterfinalists and the bi-district playoffs. They were Texas state semifinalists in both 2012 and ’13 and reached the state finals in 2015, just two seasons; Culbertson was named district coach of the year seven times: 2006, ’07, ’08, ’10, ’12, ’13 and ’15.
“The program never really was off-track; we just had to fix a few things to get it back running like it was,” Culbertson said regarding the situation before he became head coach in 2005 (Martin won its only state championship in 1993). “It’s a good, competitive program with a good culture here; I feel like that’s the hardest thing to maintain, is that hard-playing, hard-competing culture.
“We’re going to have the kids – we’re going to have some athletic baseball kids – it’s just maintaining that attitude; that’s one of the toughest things.”
PG’s Smith concurred: “Martin has been a historically strong program for years and years. I know a lot of ex-Texas Rangers’ kids grew up and played at that high school … and they’ve had just a long run of talent. The facilities are – and always have been – unbelievable and it’s a place where kids in that area look at it as a badge of honor to get to play there.”
Former big-leaguers Ben Grieve, Todd Van Poppel and Matt Blank, and current Seattle Mariners right-hander Nate Karns are among the players that have been proud to wear that Martin badge of honor.
Culbertson and his coaching staff don’t feel the need to sit down each new incoming group and discuss the program’s past successes at length, saying only that “we talk about it a little bit (but) we don’t have to talk about it a lot.”
Those past accomplishments are recorded on the Martin Baseball Field outfield fence and there are postings on the concession stand, according to Culbertson; there is also a “Wall of History.” When a player becomes a part of the program, the chances are good that he is fully aware of the world he is entering and what will be required of him.
“It’s pretty high expectations from the way you act, to the way you play, the way you practice,” Culbertson said. “So, we don’t have to talk about that much, we just have to find the right kids and put them in the right place. Which, of course, is what everybody else is trying to do.”
Welcome to life in D-FW Metroplex high school baseball, the 2017 edition.
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PG’S SMITH SAID THE QUALITY OF COACHING THE YOUNG PLAYERS are receiving at their respective high schools across the Metroplex has certainly risen over the last generation, and that’s been beneficial to everyone. That’s not to say the coaching was poor in the past – it most definitely was not – it’s just that today’s coaches have taken the job of growing the game to heart.
A prospect playing at Martin or Dallas Jesuit or Coppell or Flower Mound learns how to play the game the right way and how to take care of his body so he can then, in turn, continue to play injury-free throughout the summer and fall.
“Just the amount of baseball kids are playing now, to me I really think it makes a big difference,” Smith said. “In the 20-years I was coaching college in Texas you saw the Metroplex grow in leaps-and-bounds talent-wise and in depth of talent.”
While Culbertson certainly takes a lot of pride in the number of his players that move onto college – regardless if they play baseball or not – he doesn’t go into each new season looking to see how many kids he can get there. He feels that if he’s doing his job and he’s putting the type of young man out on the field that he’s looking for in the first-place, college will take care of itself.
“Our job is to bring these kids in as ninth-graders and turn them into young men that can go live and survive on their own,” Culbertson said. “If I can help turn these guys into strong young men with some character and some values and some discipline, if can help on that end and at the same time work with them on their baseball skills, we will continue to put kids into college and from there even higher.”
The Martin Warriors are only two years removed from an appearance in the Texas UIL Class 6A state championship game where they were beaten by Cypress Ranch, 3-0, and came up just short of winning the school’s first state championship since 1993; Tristen Lutz was the starting right-fielder and hit No. 5 in the Warriors’ lineup as a sophomore on that Texas state runner-up team.
Now a senior, Lutz will be counted on heavily to be a leader of this 2017 team as it tries to make a return trip to the Class 6A state championship game. In his breakdown of the PG HS Texahoma Region top prospects, PG Vice President of Player Personnel David Rawnsley wrote:
“On an all-region team that stands out for impressive looking athletes, Lutz might just be the strongest and most imposing; (he) looks like he could easily be developed in a Big 12 linebacker prospect, with his solid big league average speed on the baseball field. With his strength and speed, he’s a multi-faceted offensive prospect with a notably short swing for his size and a mature approach at the plate that enables him to drive the ball to all fields.”
Those are exactly the type of attributes a player needs to possess to lead his team through the difficult maze of competition in the Metroplex and what might lay beyond in the UIL Class 6A playoffs. Martin had to beat Odessa, Monterey, Abilene, Carroll and Keller just to reach the state championship game in 2015.
“The expectations here are still very high for the kids that … go through this program,” Culbertson said. “And they know the expectations are high, they know what’s expected, they know that they’re supposed to act and play a certain way. We talk to them about how to handle it, how they should go about dealing with these types of pressures that maybe some other kids don’t have to deal with.”
Welcome to life in D-FW Metroplex high school baseball, the 2017 edition.