EMERSON, Ga. – Team Elite has been further cementing their
name as a premier baseball organization over the past five years, winning many
tournaments at the high school age ranks. Not only have they known for their
development at the older age levels, they have also been making a name for
themselves in travel baseball at the younger levels, adding a youth program
five years ago. Team Elite 14u Nation, comprised of talented individuals from
all over the country, is certainly a stop-and-watch team in the 14u WWBA
National Championship at LakePoint.
“This is a very talented group of young men that we were
able to assemble this year. We’ve got a pretty good national group, we have
several different states represented, Virginia, North Carolina,” said head
coach Mitch Pittman. “A lot of local Georgia guys make up the core and we were
able to just take a very talented group we had last year and put some pieces
around it and build a pretty competitive team this year.”
Pittman has been with the organization for seven years as a
coach and realizes that even though winning is nice, the focus at the end of
the day is development. For Team Elite, the focus on development has attracted
some of the best players from the south, and winning is often a byproduct of
that talent. He said that his team stands out for their physical nature that is
not seen in most 14-year-olds, as 10 of their players stand at 6-foot or taller.
“Physicality for one. A lot of these guys are really big and
strong guys. Obviously, they have a lot of baseball talents as well, so you
combine the two in youth baseball and it gives you a pretty good chance to win,”
Pittman said.
Two players headline the team’s roster, Grant Taylor and
Brady House, who are ranked as the No. 4 and No. 12 overall prospects in the
class of 2021 respectively. Taylor and House are both very physical presences
on the team, but bring a lot of baseball talent as well.
Taylor, a right-handed pitcher and corner infielder, runs
his fastball up to 91 mph at the age of 15. Due Alabama’s high school sports
rule of no restrictions on eighth-graders playing varsity without losing
eligibility, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Taylor pitched this past spring for
Florence High School in Alabama as an eighth grader, something that he and
Pittman said helped him grow as a pitcher.
“It helped this year that he was able to pitch varsity
baseball in Alabama,” Pittman said. “That helped him grow up quick, pitching in
high stress innings against 17 and 18-year-olds.”
“I think it made me more mature, because I knew I was
playing against 17 and 18-year-olds, and I knew I had to step my game up and
compete,” Taylor said.”
Competing is something that Taylor knows a lot about, having
grown up with two older brothers that have had success in their baseball
careers. His oldest brother Collin played this past year at Walters State
Community College, while his other brother Evan will be a senior at Florence
next season and is ranked as the No. 500 player in the class of 2018. He says
that both of his brothers have provided an example for him to follow.
“I’ve always been competitive with them, wanting to be
better. That’s really helped me to see what they’ve done then replicate it or
make it my own to be better,” Taylor said.
On the other end of the spectrum, House is 13u eligible, and
just turned 14 years old in the past month. Although he is younger, he displays
a fastball that has been clocked as fast at 87 mph from the mound. In the
Perfect Game-East Cobb Invitational at the beginning of June, House took home
the MV-Pitcher award after going 10 innings, giving up just three hits and two
earned runs, while striking out nine hitters.
“I’m working on my pitching right now, my off-speed stuff,
trying to get that working a little bit more when I’m in an 0-2 count,” House
said.
Offensively, House displays an advanced approach at the
plate, and produces line drives all over the field. In the game against the
East Coast Bombers on Sunday, House tripled to right field, displaying his
power and speed.
“He’s just got an advanced offensive approach for his age,
and then obviously he’s grown a lot in the past two years, which really has
helped him transition from having that natural ability to just put the barrel
on the baseball to just really really driving the baseball,” Pittman said.
House Joined the squad last year as a 12-year-old, and said
that he has already improved in multiple aspects of his game due to the
development approach that the Team Elite coaches offer. Although he has the
natural ability, it is the work ethic that Pittman said House possesses that
sets him apart and has helped him grow in his ability over the past year.
“He works really really hard every single day to try to get
better,” Pittman said. “I think that’s what separates him from some of the
other players in the country is his work ethic. Yesterday, we got rained out,
and Brady texted me on the way down, ‘Hey can we go hit in the facility,’ so
rather than taking the day off, the dude wanted to focus on getting better, so he’s
just got a natural ability to put the barrel on the baseball.”
The team was able to play on Sunday after the rainout
Saturday and is 2-0 so far in the 14u WWBA National Championship tournament,
which is made up of 17 pools, totaling 138 teams from all over the country.
This tournament offers the best talent, and Pittman is excited for the
opportunity that it will provide for his players.
“It provides a lot of exposure and a lot of competition against
top teams in the country,” Pittman said. “You don’t get better playing against
guys that you go out and you constantly slam every single day, you’ve got to
get these guys against guys that can compete and make them get better at the
game. You’ve got to have good live reps against good quality competition to get
better.”
In their first game, the team scored 14 runs to run-rule the
643 DP Cougars 13u. House started that game, going three innings, surrendering
no hits, and one walk. Matthew Buchanan was the catalyst at the plate, going
2-for-2 with three RBIs out of the No. 5 spot in the lineup. Their second game
was a nail biter, with the team scratching out a walkoff win in the bottom of
the seventh to score the only run of the game. Taylor started the game, but
didn’t have his best command, walking four in just 2 1/3 innings. With five
games left in pool play, Pittman offered what he needs to see from his team
moving forward.
“You’ve just got to compete. It’s a long tournament, I think
you’ve got to win 11 games, 12 games, depending on if you get the play-in game
to win the thing, so consistency is key,” Pittman said. “14-year-old baseball
players, they can play like college kids one day and play like 14-year-olds the
next day, so that’s going to be the key, is being consistently good throughout
the rest of this tournament and then, obviously, going into the 14u BCS right
after this.”