FORT MYERS, Fla. – Just three innings into their opener at the Perfect Game WWBA World Championship Thursday afternoon, the San Diego Show already held a 7-0 lead over the Hunter Pence Baseball Academy.
Many observers probably looked at that early score and shrugged, knowing that the Show had come into this blockbuster PG national championship event regarded as one of the top offensive squads in the 90-team field. A 7-0 lead after three? Not really all that surprising given the Show’s propensity for collecting hits and scoring runs.
A closer examination, however, revealed that the Show had scored their seven runs without the benefit of a base hit. Walks, hit batters, errors, wild pitches and passed balls had led to the avalanche of runs – six in the third inning alone – but it is also important to note that the Show hitters had barreled-up many pitches that just didn’t fall in on this particular day.
The Show did finally collect a couple of hits in the bottom of the fourth – a lead-off single from Gabe D'Arcy followed by an RBI double from PG All-American Marcelo Mayer – and when Zack Torres brought Mayer home with an RBI fielder’s groundout to make it a 9-0 ballgame, PG's run-rule kicked in and the game was over.
But there’s no denying that a line score of nine runs on just two hits is a head-scratcher.
“That last inning just showed that we’re dialed-in from the first pitch to the last pitch,” Mayer told PG postgame, speaking from the Lee County Player Development 5-Plex on a hot and dry day near downtown Fort Myers. “Our team knows what we need to do and we’re putting up as many runs as we can; we don’t (let-up on) the gas pedal.”
Consider the San Diego Show’s opening salvo in this very unconventional manner a glimpse of things to come at this weekend at the 22nd annual PG WWBA World Championship. The Show seemed primed to put on a show over the next four days if they can find a way to win their way into Monday.
“Any PG event we attend we know that we’re in for high-caliber baseball,” SD Show head coach Luis Lorenzana told PG on Thursday. “Every one of these other respective teams, they bring out the best in us and that’s why we come. We’ve been coming to Georgia (WWBA national championships) for a long time and this is just another one that we’ve put on our radar. For sure, this is one that we definitely don’t want to miss.”
And it really looks like this group has the goods to make the cross-country trip all the more worthwhile. With Mayer, an elite 2021 PGAA shortstop and Southern California commit ranked No. 9 overall nationally, and the 2021 outfielder D’Arcy, an Arkansas commit ranked No. 237 nationally, hitting at the top of the order, if the Show can get into a groove their run into bracket-play promises to be a deep one.
It’s a team that is at once both veteran and young. D’Arcy, Mayer and right-hander Ray Cebulski (t-500, Long Beach State) represent the 2021s who were with the Show at last year’s WWBA WC in Jupiter; elite infielder Mikey Romero (No. 49, Arizona) and right-hander David Horn (No. 158, UCLA) are 2022s who were also at last year’s Jupiter event.
This year’s Show squad has a nice blend of high school seniors (2021s) and underclassmen (2022s, 2023s), a roster composition that helps build valuable experience and should serve the program well down the road.
“We’re not senior-heavy, I would say, so it’s a great balance,” Lorenzana said. “Those underclassmen that have come out here, they’ve always played above their level so they know what they’re in for; they’ve been at these big events.”
Top-500 uncommitted outfielders LeTrey McCollum and Zack Torres; catcher/infielder Ariel Armas (HF, San Diego), middle-infielder Ali Camarillo (t-1000, Cal State Northridge) and infielder Shun Sakaino (t-500, Cal State Northridge) stand among the other top 2021 position players, joining Mayer, D’Arcy and Cebulski.
“With Marcelo Mayer being one of the focal points, we’ve built around him,” Lorenzana said. “He sets the tone; he’s a leader on the field and everyone kind of feeds off that. Gabe D'Arcy, who’s our leadoff guy and he (also) sets the tone. He’s a very intense player that goes all-out all the time and everyone just kind of follows him as planned. …
“Obviously, we feel comfortable with the lineup we have out there, even with the people that are coming off the bench; in this type of tournament it takes the whole group to succeed.”
Youth is served well by Romero, third baseman Ryan Ward (No. 75, Arizona) and outfielder/first baseman Bryan Martinez (No. 351, Long Beach State) from the class of 2022, and 2023 outfielder Dean West (No. 34, UCLA).
The pitching staff boasts the talents of veteran 2021s like Cebulski, t-500 left-handers Kaeden Moeller (Long Beach State) and Gavin Nalu (Stanford), and t-500 righties Kadin Muckley and Carson Olsen.
The underclass hurlers don’t take a backseat, either. The 2022 right-hander Horn got the start Thursday and while he did allow four hits in his two innings of work, he didn’t allow a run. Righty Ryan Ellis (t-500, New Mexico) is another top 2022 and the real gem of the staff might be 2023 righty Duke Ekstrom, an early Vanderbilt commit ranked No. 69 nationally.
“It is a very good mixture of righty-lefty combinations,” Lorenzana said. “They compete, they throw strikes and they’re ready to get after it. … It’s good to see from an organizational perspective how they’ve developed and how they’ve matured. We build the environment and the competition from within is definitely something that brings out the best in all of them.”
Just watching how this tournament unfolds for the many California teams in attendance – nationally prominent BPA 2021, CBA Marucci, GBG Navy 2021 and Trosky National 2021 among them – will be fascinating, to say the least.
With the entire state under a lockdown throughout the spring and into the summer due to the coronavirus pandemic, this Show team wasn’t really able to do much of anything until late June. The primary focus of team officials was, obviously, the health and safety of the players and their families first and foremost and continues to be so.
They were finally able to get going with individual workouts and gradually moved forward into intrasquad scrimmages while always keeping the players’ health and safety at the forefront. The Show didn’t make their first trip out-of-state until late August when they traveled east into Arizona for a non-PG event.
It was during a return trip to the Grand Canyon State in mid-September when they were really able to show their mettle. They marched into the PG Upperclass Fall National Championship and very loudly vanquished opponent after opponent, winning their three pool-play games by a combined score of 25-3 before heading into bracket-play.
The Show’s collective foot never touched the brakes in the playoffs, either, outscoring four foes by a combined 27-5, a count that included a 10-1 win over TB SoCal Easton in the championship game. Lorenzana and his staff were able to learn a lot about the high level at which this team is capable of operating during that impressive championship run.
“That was a great event and one that we played well in,“ Lorenzana said. “It got us into a rhythm to attend this (event) here. … A lot of the kids here have been in our program for a lot of years and the practices have been just like they always are, very intense. They’re paying attention to details so they’re fully prepared for any event.
“But the way they played in Arizona was great to see just as a way to kind of get us clicking at the right time as we were looking forward to this one.”
D’Arcy was named the tournament MV Player and he feels like he and his teammates made a rather loud statement in regard to how this team should be viewed coming into the WWBA WC:
“It goes to show that we’re the best team on the West Coast and we’re ready to play against these big boys from the East Coast, for sure,” he said. “We’ve been ready for this all summer. We’ve been talking about this since June and it’s the same mindset: Just go out and play baseball, play our game and we think we’re going to end up just fine.”
The West Coast is fairly well represented here this weekend, and that’s a good thing. Even if the quantity of teams can’t match the numbers from other parts of the country, primarily the Southeast, the quality is second to none.
Lorenzana is confident his team will represent their region of the country with unbridled excellence and will walk away with their heads held high. At least one PG scout has picked the Show to win the whole thing down here this weekend and every player and coach on the team embraces those high expectations.
“We know what they are,” he said, speaking of those expectations. “With the amount of years we’ve been doing this and coming out this way, I would say that we’re a well-respected ballclub and we’re going to give everyone our best. …
“We’re not going to let-up on anyone; we respect every opponent,” he added. “I wouldn’t say the expectation is to come out here and win a championship but I think it’s a goal and it’s something they’ve been working hard to do.”
Mayer, who is projected to be an early round pick in the 2021 MLB June Amateur Draft, said it’s no secret to anyone – and why should it be – that this Show team takes the field every time out with the intent of leaving it after seven innings with another win in its pocket.
“We got to show everyone what our team’s all about and that we’re not here to mess around, and that we really have a good chance to win this tournament,” he said. “We’re going to take it game-by-game and I think with our team we’re good enough to come out on top.”
And that opener on Thursday? The game when the pitches the Show were seeing were mostly out of the zone and just not good enough to swing at? A game that was won 9-0 with the benefit of only two hits? Well, that showed more of what this team is capable of rather than the other way around.
“This group is prepared for anything,” D’Arcy said. “We’ve kind of had everything thrown at us this summer with the COVID and not being able to play baseball in California, so this was just another game; we were locked-in from that start.”