MESA, Ariz. – Many of the teams competing at this weekend’s exclusive, 30-team 17u Perfect Game World Series boast rosters speckled with the names of power pitchers, the guys that reach the mid-90s with their fastball; the guys hundreds of Major League Baseball scouts turn out to see.

The Albany, Ga.-based Game On Stealth don’t have one of those guys on their roster. There is not a Perfect Game All-American anywhere to be found among the members of pitching staff or anywhere in the lineup, for that matter.

But armed with what appears to be an abundance of sturdy – if not necessarily spectacular – predominantly right-handed pitchers, the Stealth efficiently and resolutely worked their way to three pool-play victories Thursday and Friday at this PG national championship tournament being played at the Cubs Park Riverview Cactus League spring training complex.

The manner in which Game On Stealth head coach Derrick Simon managed his pitching staff is what makes the 3-0-0 start noteworthy. Simon has been adamant about not over-using his pitchers on this team, and that was certainly evident in those three wins when he used three pitchers – one of them twice – in all three games.

Those eight pitchers allowed only three runs in their 21 innings of work with the Stealth winning by scores of 3-1 (Mountain West), 9-1 (Tri-State Arsenal 17u Prime) and 4-1 (Baseball Northwest).

“(Simon) always tries to keep it where they can come back, because with this tournament format you’re going to have a short turn-around; he’s been that way all season,” top assistant coach David Spalinger, speaking in place of Simon, told PG Friday morning. “He tends not to go too long with anybody. He’s got confidence in all of our pitchers to get the job done when they’re called (upon).”

2018 left-hander Aidan McAllister and 2018 right-handers Steve Reid Hanson and William Spalinger combined on an eight-strikeout, seven-hitter in the win over Mountain West; 2017 righty Chase Patrick, 2018 righty Hunter Goodwin and 2019 right-hander Brian Myler combined for a six-strikeout, three-hitter against Tri-State; 2018 righty Parker Dean, Hanson and 2018 righty Jalon Long teamed for a six-strikeout, four-hitter against Baseball Northwest.

The collective efforts stood as an appropriate monument to efficiency, teamwork and just the flat-out ability to be able to get the job done.

“(Simon) will let us go (deep) sometimes but he always tries to keep us under a certain amount of pitches,” Goodwin said Friday. “I think it’s effective because (the hitters) can’t really get their timing down on one pitcher.”

Goodwin is listed at 6-foot-5, 215-pounds and is the No. 252-ranked overall national prospect in the class of 2018; he has committed to Georgia. Of the other seven pitchers who threw for the Stealth in those first three games, only Long is both ranked (No. 324) and committed (Samford) and he is a primary outfielder.

There are other prospects on Game On’s roster that are ranked and/or committed but they didn’t pitch Thursday or Friday. They include Bowen Bock (t-500, Kennesaw State), T.J. Reeves (t-500, Alabama), and David “Tater” Goodson (t-1,000, The Citadel); Tyler Simon and Malik Spratling have committed to Kennesaw State, and Alerick Soularie to San Jacinto CC but all three are unranked.

Spratling and Reeves were the Stealth’s top-two hitters through the first three games with Spratling going 7-for-9 (.778) with two doubles, a triple and four RBI, and Reeves batting 4-for-9 (.444) with a double, a home run and an RBI.

“We have a lot of chemistry and we know how to play with each other,” Reeves, who is from Birmingham, Ala., said Friday. “We already know what everybody does and what everybody (doesn’t) do, and that really helps us a lot.”

There is a core group on this Stealth 17u team has been playing together since they were 7 years old, and others that came on board as 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds. It’s a team has always seemed to play at a high level within their age-group, and have annually cracked Perfect Game’s top-20 in the national travel team rankings. The invitation to the 17u PG World Series validates those indications of national relevance.

“We’re not a big high-profile program,” Spalinger said. “We’ve just got kids that kind of play blue-collar baseball and who have to scratch and claw for everything they get; we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The roster is top-heavy with Georgia class of 2018 prospects, which in 2017 isn’t all that unusual. But what does set it apart is that most of these Georgia high school seniors come from communities well south of the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, cities and towns like Albany, Leesburg, Sylvester and Savannah. Spots are also filled by prospects from the Florida Panhandle towns of Panama City and Lynn Haven.

They’re young prospects who admittingly play with a bit of a chip on their collective shoulders. They sometimes feel like they’ve been overlooked by the national baseball community while going to work every day far from Atlanta and its baseball-crazy suburbs.

But, in fact, high school baseball is played at a high level in Georgia, from east to west and north to south. Spalinger was quick to point out that former PG All-American and current San Francisco Giant All-Star Buster Posey is a product of Lee County High School in Leesburg; that’s the same school Stealth players Hanson, Spratling, Myler and Simon attend.

The Game On Stealth did just play up in the north Atlanta suburbs at the 17u PG WWBA National Championship along with about 390 other teams, and finished 4-2-0 after advancing to the playoffs’ round-of-32. They skipped last week’s 17u PG BCS National Championship in Fort Myers, Fla., to prepare for this trip out west.

It was during this past winter that the Stealth organization made the decision to accept the invitation to the 17u PG World Series and it did it to provide this core group of dedicated 17u players with one last hurrah before they part ways.

The thought was that coming out to Arizona for this exclusive tournament would provide a very special treat for the players, both in terms of the change of scenery and the elite competition they would be facing.

“My mom, she made drink about a gallon of water every day for about two weeks,’ Reeves said with a smile when asked how he prepared to play baseball in the desert in late July when temperatures sky above the 100-degree mark. “I was excited to play out here, though, because I hadn’t ever been out west before.”

“It’s always a good experience getting out and seeing different places,” Goodwin added. “You’ve got to deal with the heat if you’re going to play baseball so we might as well do it out here. I like coming out and competing against the best people in the country and seeing just how good we can do against them.

“We know there’s a bunch of good teams out here and we know we’ve got to prepare ourselves and we know we’ve got to play our best.”

Reeves told PG that Coach Simon’s mantra is “Refuse to lose” and the team adopts that mindset before every game. The team not only wants to win a PG national championship at the 17u PG World Series, its members won’t be satisfied with anything less.

They’ve been taught “since day-one” that if they go out and play hard and go about their business on the field in the right way, good things will ultimately come their way. Simon and Spalinger and the other coaches tell them to forget about the more highly regarded and touted prospects wearing the opposing team’s jersey and just do their thing.

So here they are. They may not be part of the most high-profile roster at this year’s 17u PG World Series, but that’s irrelevant. The Game On Stealth players know they’ve been given a tremendous opportunity to prove themselves on one of Perfect Game’s most prominent national stages and this is, after all, the last time they’ll be playing together wearing those “Stealth” jerseys.

“We want them to go out and play – win or lose – and then be able to say that you’ve been to Mesa, Arizona, and the Cubs’ complex and played against the best,” Spalinger said. “This was just kind of like their parents’ big gift to them; that last game we play together will probably be very emotional one at the end of it.”

And if the “pitching by committee” formula continues to reap dividends, that last game might be played deeper into the playoffs than most could have imagined on Thursday.