GOODYEAR, Ariz. – The team members and coaching staffs arrived first, gathering in both the paved and carefully tended lawn areas that surround Cincinnati Reds practice field No. 6 at the Goodyear Ball Park Complex, a facility that serves as the spring training home for both the Reds and the Cleveland Indians.
Parents, other family members and friends also began to set up chairs umbrellas behind the backstop and in the open spaces late Saturday afternoon, at least a half-hour before one of the most eagerly anticipated matchups at this weekend’s 18u PG WWBA West Memorial Day Classic took place.
It was a head-to-head, pool-play meeting between Tucson-based BNL and Prospects 18u out of the West Valley community of Surprise. They are two squads with enough class of 2015 pitching talent on their respective rosters to grab the attention of baseball people everywhere, especially those who occupy the scouting departments of the 30 Major League Baseball franchises.
By the time the first pitch was thrown, there were more than two dozen interested parties standing behind home plate on Reds Field 6, most with radar guns and all with pen and paper, scribbling down notes and making observations. And this was a clean cross-section of the MLB scouting community, with scouting directors, cross-checkers and area scouts all sharing space and nodding their heads knowingly.
The attraction was the two starting pitchers. BNL – the program’s acronym stands for Baseball’s Next Level – was sending to the mound 2015 right-hander Javier Medina out of Tucson, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound electric bolt PG ranks No. 194 nationally and who has signed with the hometown Arizona Wildcats.
Medina’s nemesis on this sun-soaked and breezy late afternoon was another 2015 right-hander, the 6-foot-2, 180-pound Giovanni Lopez, a top-500 national prospect and Arizona State signee from right here in Goodyear. The sun shined, the breeze died downed, the pitchers pitched and, of course, the scouts salivated.
“It’s fun to watch good, clean baseball,” Prospects 18u general manager and head coach Derrin Ebert said at the conclusion of the contest. “I mean, that guy that (BNL) threw – Medina – is a top-notch guy. I’ve seen video of him before but this is the first time I’ve seen him live and his mechanics and everything are really clean.
“Me being a pitching coach, I kind of analyze things a little bit too much but whoever ends up getting that guy in the draft is going to have a guy that they can just teach to pitch and he’s going to fly.”
The final score of the game – very much secondary to the scouts in attendance – was BNL 1, Prospects 18u 0; the run was unearned. Medina allowed only one hit over five scoreless innings, striking out nine and walking three; his fastball sat 86-87 mph and topped-out at 89. Lopez allowed three hits and no earned runs over four innings, striking out eight and walking none; his fastball sat 86-89 and touched 91.
The scouts had gotten what they came to see, and with the 2015 MLB June Amateur Draft less than three weeks away, it could be said they saw it just in the nick of time. And if they had been in attendance on Friday and planned to stay through the rest of the long holiday weekend, they were going to see a lot more of the same anytime BNL and Prospects 18u took the field.
BNL CAME INTO EXISTENCE AFTER FORMER COLLEGIATE and professional player and current middle-school principal Bryan Huie spent the last several years devising a well thought-out plan of attack. He felt that he could put together a developmental program for kids and families that would be considerably less expensive than many of the other elite programs not only in Arizona but across the country.
“I’m going to give (the families) an honest opinion and I’m not going to sugarcoat things,” Huie said. “I grew up playing baseball … and I think there’s a wrong way and a right way to do things and I wanted to start this. This is our first tournament that we’ve been in and we’ll see how it goes this summer. If it goes well we’ll continue, and if it doesn’t then we won’t.”
BNL has two 14u, two 15u and two 16u teams, and a second 18u team that didn’t make the trip here this weekend under its organizational umbrella. Huie calls the team he has here the most talented group he’s seen in southern Arizona in the last 15 years. “They’re just great young men and they wanted to get after it a little bit more before they go off and play college baseball or professionally,” Huie said.
The BNL roster is brimming with highly regarded 2015 prospects, particularly with pitchers. In addition to Melina (all of these players are from Tucson unless noted), there is right-hander Saturnino Santa Cruz (Sahuarita, Ariz.), an Arizona signee ranked No. 209 nationally; right-hander Travis Howard (top-550, Santa Clara)
Left-hander Gabe Benavides from Oro Valley, Ariz., (top-600, Grand Canyon); left-hander Andrew Edwards (top-600, Central Arizona CC); righty Andres Hackman (top-600, Pima CC) and 2016 left-hander Austin Bryan (top-500, New Mexico State).
The top position players include catcher Cesar Salazar (No. 350, Arizona), third baseman Nick Ames (top-550, UNLV) and outfielder Erick Miqueles (top-500, New Mexico). Huie, who played collegiately at Lubbock (Texas) Christian University and one season of minor league ball in the Mariners’ organization and is the principal at Sahuarita Middle School, loves the talent he has assembled for this tournament and he expects a lot from his players.
“More than just baseball, I want kids to become better young men and good citizens,” he said. “Every one of the coaches that are in our program have either played collegiately or played professionally or are still current college coaches. It’s just a great experience for the kids and we try to value basic fundamentals of the game and hopefully do it with respect.”
OVER IN OTHER DUGOUT, EBERT HAD ALSO ASSEMBLED a pretty good group, to say the least. In addition to Lopez, Ebert’s pitching staff included top-500 prospects like 2015 right-hander Grant Smith (Litchfield Park, Ariz., a Utah signee), 2014 left-hander Kody Jones (Dewey, Ariz., New Mexico Military Institute) and 2016 lefty Cooper Williams (Gilbert, Ariz., uncommitted). 2015 shortstop Josh Arndt (Phoenix, Cornell) ranks among Prospect 18u’s top position players.
Ebert started the Prospects Baseball Academy in 2011 when this current group of high school seniors were high school freshmen. He has enjoyed the experiences of working with the youngsters and plans to play a limited schedule of four or five tournaments this summer and another one or two in the fall.
“We have one team at each (age) level and the reason for that is so we can spend more time with them and actually invest in their progress and be able to have a little bit more one-on-one and teach them the proper way to play the game,” he said. “That just kind of overflows onto the field once they actually take the field.”
Ebert is currently the minor league pitching coach for the Cincinnati Reds and immediately after June’s draft will start working with the newly minted rookies while determinations are made as to where each one will end up. He likens the experience of working with the new professional players to that of working with the high-schoolers on Prospects 18u.
“The biggest thing for us is character,” Ebert said when asked how he selects the players he wants to be part of the program. “We like kids that want to learn and want to work. We provide them with some top-notch instruction, with all our hitting coaches and pitching coaches and strength coaches with the Reds working with them on a weekly basis. They realize that they’re very fortunate to have those guys around all the time and we just ask for their respect and that they work hard.”
The Atlanta Braves selected Ebert, a left-handed pitcher, in the 18th round of the 1994 June amateur draft right out Hesperia (Calif.) High School. He wound up spending all or parts of 11 seasons pitching in the minor leagues and pitched in five games for the Braves in 1999.
He remembered fondly that as he stood on the mound while the Braves’ infielders were throwing the ball around, it was Chipper Jones who finally walked up and handed it to Ebert. “I’d really like all of these guys to experience something like that someday,” he said.
BEFORE THESE TWO TEAMS MET LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, both used impressive pitching performances to open play at the 18u WWBA WMDC with victories on Friday. Those outcomes shouldn’t have, and most likely did not, surprised anyone.
BNL 2015 right-hander Bradley Gonzales (Tucson) and 2016 righty Carter Kahn (Canyon Del Oro) combined on a two-hitter, striking out 11 and walking three without allowing an earned run in a 6-1 victory over JG Baseball Black 17u (Ontario, Calif.). Prospects 18u had Jones, Williams and 2016 righty Zachary Bain combine on a three-hitter with 12 strikeouts and no walks in an 8-0 win over the AZ Angels Scout Red 2015 from Phoenix.
Later Saturday night, Santa Cruz allowed two earned runs on four hits while striking out eight and walking one over five innings of work in BNL’s 2-2 tie with the AGBC Wizards out of Gilbert, Ariz.
Only the five 18u PG WWBA West Memorial Day Classic pool champions advance to Monday’s playoff round so only one of these two teams will be playing for the championship on Memorial Day. Heading into Sunday’s pool-play action, BNL stood 2-0-1 and Prospects 18u was at 1-1.
Before his BNL squad escaped with that cleanly played 1-0 victory over Prospect 18u, Huie looked over at the large contingent of scouts on hand and smiled when though about how the situation was a win-win.
“We knew there were going to be a lot of pro guys here watching them tonight,” Huie said. “Baseball is a lot of fun and everybody wants to win and I’d be lying if I didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’d like to win this tournament.’ That’s the great thing about Perfect Game and we came here to hopefully try to win us a little championship this first tournament out of the chute, and hopefully continue that with Perfect Game.”
Ebert loves to win, of course, but it was never his intention to come here leave with a championship trophy. He looks at the event as an opportunity for the prep prospects to showcase themselves and either get college scholarship offers or get drafted in the upcoming MLB June Amateur Draft.
“The most important thing is that these guys get out in front of all those scouts standing behind home plate,” he said. “This is going to be a special draft class,” he concluded. “This is kind of like our core kids that we really started with and it’s going to be fun. Whatever they decide to do – if they decide to not sign and go to college – we just tell them to sit down with their family and find out what’s the right decision, pray on it and God willing everything will work out in the end.”