MESA, Ariz. – Earlier this summer, the Midwest Elite out of Norman, Okla., got their feet wet by playing in a pair of Perfect Game Baseball Association (PGBA) regional tournaments, and even finished as runner-up at the PGBA NXT Memorial Day Classic 18u in Flower Mound, Texas; a loss in the championship game left the Elite 17u’s with a 4-1-0 record.
Looking to up the ante considerably in terms of facing a more national – and much, much more competitive – tournament field, their next stop was at the mega-17u PG WWBA National Championship, played a couple of weeks ago in the north Atlanta suburbs. The Elites made some serious hay out there in LakePoint Country, finishing 6-1-0 after a loss to the eventual runner-up Texas Twelve Maroon in the playoffs’ round-of-16.
This weekend, the talented team of promising Oklahoma prep prospects is enjoying its stay in the East Valley of the Sun, testing its mettle against 29 of the top 17u teams from across the country at the 17u Perfect Game World Series national championship. Four games into it at the Cubs Park Riverview spring training complex, it’s a test the Elite have aced even if they might be the only ones who saw it coming.
“We always expect to win; that’s our mindset,” Midwest Elite head coach Rich Hills told PG when asked about his squad’s mindset. “We don’t go anywhere expecting to lose, I promise you that.”
But the 17u PG World Series is a different animal. It’s the most elite and exclusive 17u WWBA tournament PG puts on – this year it features 30 teams, more than 130 top-300 prospects from the classes of 2018 and 2019, and hundreds of scouts in attendance – and every player on the Midwest Elite roster arrived here fully aware of what they were getting themselves into.
“We came into this event knowing that everybody is going to be as good or better than us,” 2018 top-500 catcher/right-hander Cayden Aldridge said. “We just kind of came in trying to do what we can do and play as hard as we can 100 percent of the time, and just do the best that we can do.”
With those words Aldridge conveyed a fool-proof recipe for success. The Midwest Elite wrapped-up pool-play with a 4-0-0 record which, it turned out, was unmatched. They were the only pool champion in the field to finish undefeated and untied, and as a result they earned the playoffs’ No. 1 seed and a bye into Sunday afternoon’s quarterfinals.
The playoffs’ other top seeds with first-round byes are the No. 2 Game On Stealth (3-0-1; Albany, Ga.), the No. 3 So Cal Birds (3-1-0; Corona, Calif.) and the No. 4 San Diego Show (3-1-0; San Diego). That’s a grand quartet to be a part of, and gaining membership required ample amounts of push and perseverance.
“We’ve played pretty sound baseball,” Hills said. “We’ve made some mistakes here and there but that’s going to happen – they’re 17 (years old). Obviously, Brayden Lloyd threw a great game for us against EvoShield … and we were able to capitalize on some opportunities and they weren’t. We ended up shutting them down and winning the game.”
Looking back, the game Hills referred to may have been the Elite’s deal-closer. They were considered an underdog against the powerful EvoShield Canes – the Canes rostered five 2017 PG All-Americans – but Lloyd was masterful in pitching Midwest to the 4-0 victory.
A 6-foot-1, 170-pound right-hander from Owasso, Okla., the No. 334-ranked and uncommitted Lloyd threw 5 2/3 shutout, four-hit innings at the mighty Canes, striking out six and walking four. That was the Midwest Elite’s second game at the tournament and they managed to do an excellent job of announcing their arrival; more importantly, they kept it going.
All told, the Elite scored 26 runs in the four games (6.5 per game) and pushed those runs across on the strength of just 27 hits (6.75 per game); 23 of those hits were singles, four were doubles. Braxton Bohrofen, Kade Self and Mason Carrier each drove in four runs on a combined nine hits; two of Self’s three safeties were doubles.
Hills has been coaching this team since they were playing at the 15u level, and many of them have been playing with one another since they were 10 or 11 years old. There’s a familiarity amongst the players that doesn’t really require any detailed explanation other than the fact they’re all Oklahomans.
This isn’t a particularly deep Midwest Elite roster, however. Hills used 13 players in the four games with 10 of them getting at least four plate appearances and seven of them pitching between 1 1/3 and 5 2/3 innings (27 total innings).
Ten of the 13 players used attend separate high schools with Ryan Harris, Braden Hill and Carrier being classmates and baseball teammates at Edmond North HS.
Self is from Shawnee and attends Shawnee HS, the school that in June was named the 2017 PG High School National Champion after winning the OSSAA Class 5A state championship with a 40-0 record. A 6-foot-2, 215-pound, uncommitted and top 500-ranked catcher, Self slashed .522/.629/.947 with 22 doubles, six triples, five home runs, 55 RBI and 43 runs scored during his memorable junior season.
Other Midwest Elite players hail from Oklahoma cities and towns like Oklahoma City, Midwest City, Owasso and Park Hill. It’s a region that is somewhat far-flung, but Oklahoma high school baseball is like one big, tight community and these players all know of and about one another based on their interactions during the state’s spring high school season.
And those interactions never really take a break. Most of these guys are included on a group text that is shared throughout the school year, even though several of them are involved in other sports when it’s not baseball season. Once you’re hooked in with the Midwest Elite, it seems, it’s difficult to sever the connection.
“They’re all very close and good friends,” Hills said. “They’re all from within the same state, they’re all from within the same region, they all go to (the) Area Code (Games) together and all these other tryouts. They’re all familiar with each other, which makes a huge difference.”
Aldridge agrees with his coach’s assessment: “Most of us on this team have been playing together since we were 11 years old … and we play each other all the time (during the high school season),” he said. “It’s always fun out there because it seems like you’re always facing (a Midwest Elite) teammate, and you’re going to have to give each other (grief), and all that. But, yeah, we’re really familiar with each other out here.”
Three of the Elite’s rostered 2018 prospects that have played this weekend have committed to the University of Oklahoma in Norman: Aldrich (t-500), Bohrofen (t-500) and Austin Lambert. Seven Elites that played in one of the first four games here in the desert over the last three days – Self, Carrier, Harris, Hill, Dalen Hall, Hunter Freese and DeClaudio Irvin – were named to the 17u PG WWBA all-tournament team.
The Midwest Elite Baseball program fields 15 teams from the 12u through the 18u age-group levels. The Midwest Elite 15u finished 10-1-0 after a loss in the semifinal round of the playoffs at the 15u PG WWBA National Championship in Emerson, Ga., a couple of weeks ago.
It is definitely an organization on the upswing, one that has been able to gain commitments from some of the state of Oklahoma’s top prospects. They are ballplayers that not only want to play the game at the highest level but want to do it while being a part of quality program.
“Obviously, our roster size isn’t as big as some of these other teams out here, but our chemistry is very good and, for me, I think chemistry goes a long way,” Hills said. “They know what to do in certain situations and they know what I expect of them.
“We’re going to play hard every pitch and they know that’s how our program works,” he continued. “If you’re not going to play hard every pitch then we might need to find something else. That’s one of our deals; we just get after people.”
An elite-level 17u team needs players with that “get after people” mindset if it hopes to secure the No. 1 playoff seed at an exclusive Perfect Game national championship tournament like the 17u PG World Series.
As Aldridge said at the outset, this is a tournament the Midwest Elite have been eyeing since they left Georgia. While they will continue to get after it and go f8ull-throttle hard with a business-like approach here in the desert until scoreboard tells them go home – win or lose – that doesn’t mean they need to put the “fun factor” on hold.
Championship-caliber teams and their players never stop enjoying themselves while playing the game that means so much to them. And with the playoffs at the 17u PG World Series looming late Sunday afternoon, the Midwest Elite haven’t lost sight of that fact.
“We all try to have fun with it and we do a lot of laughing around, that’s for sure,” Aldridge said. “We’re actually just a really cool team in general, laughing about everything, joking around, and just playing ball and getting it done.”
Semifinal pairings set at 17u PG World Series
MESA, Ariz. – The top-seeded Midwest Elite were among the four teams that advanced out of Sunday afternoon’s quarterfinals and into Monday morning’s semifinals at the 17u PG World Series at the Cubs Park-Mesa Riverview spring training complex.
No. 1 Midwest Elite (5-0-0) out of Norman, Okla., got past No. 9 Temecula, Calif.-based CBA Marucci (3-1-2) in its quarterfinal by a 7-5 count, and will face Los Angeles-based GBG Marucci (6-1-0) in one of Monday’s semis. GBG beat the No. 4 San Diego Show (3-2-0) 6-2 in the quarters.
The other semifinal pits the Corona, Calif.-based and No. 3-seeded So Cal Birds (4-1-0) against the No. 7 Coast Titans (5-1-0) out of Mobile, Ala. The Birds snuck past the Tomball, Texas-based Banditos Scout Team (4-2-0) by a 5-4 score; the Titans were an 8-1 winner over the No. 2 Game On Stealth (3-1-1) out of Albany, Ga.
The 17u PG World Series semifinals are scheduled for 8 a.m. on back-fields 3 and 5 at the Riverview complex; the championship game is slated for 11 a.m. at Sloan Park stadium at the complex.