GOODYEAR, Ariz. – When Jeff Sullivan and a couple of the higher-ups at North East Baseball assemble a roster for a high-profile tournament like this weekend’s Perfect Game WWBA Upperclass Fall National Championship Protected by G-Force, they’re looking for players who have a habit of putting the hammer down right from the get-go.
Finding a spot in the win column on a tournament’s first day of pool-play can set the tone for the remainder of the weekend and allow the NEB players to settle-in while they’re still going through a bit of the “getting to know you” stage of team-building.
And, my-oh-my, did this year’s NEB squad answer the bell early and often in its 13-1, four-inning victory over the Gameday 18u out of Castle Rock, Colo., on Friday. The fighting NEB’s scored their 13 runs on 12 hits while a pair of 2018 right-handers – Tristan Lively and Reid McLaughlin – combined on an eight-strikeout one-hitter.
Offensive stars were as abundant as the desert sunshine. Brett Baty and Adam Schwartz each singled twice and drove in a pair of runs; Kyler Fedko doubled and drove in two; Justin Dunlap and Hudson Haskin both singled twice and drove in a run, and Dunlap scored three times; Max Marusak doubled, singled and stole two bases. It was a statement game before anyone had been asked to speak.
“That is certainly the kind of performance that we hope for,” North East Baseball national recruiting coordinator/head coach Jeff Sullivan told PG Saturday morning before he sent his NEB players out for their second pool-play game of the tournament. This one was against the Dana Point, Calif.-based Trosky Redbirds Blue on the Reds’ side of the Goodyear Ballpark Sports Complex.
“With a roster with 15 D-I commits – and everyone is going to be a high-level player at the next level – the toughest thing is always game-one,” he said. “I have 16 new guys that have never played with us before, so you’ve got to put the best lineup out there first just because winning game-one is everything. If you lose game-one with a bunch of new kids, it’s not a good start.”
But that lop-sided win was a good start and Sullivan noticed a new-found comfort level among the players right away Saturday morning. After meeting each other for the first time Friday morning, they went out and kicked some butt and then spent Friday night hanging out with each other. When Saturday rolled around, they were talking more and showing signs that they were rapidly coming together as a team.
And that’s what Sullivan likes the most about putting these talented rosters together. While there is a core group of players that wear the North East uniform on a regular basis, these other guys play for their own travel-ball teams during the summer; those teams, however, are not at the PG WWBA Upperclass Fall National Championship this weekend.
And that gives these top-tier players the opportunity to join NEB for what is hoped to be four days of play in at MLB spring training complexes in the west Phoenix suburbs.
“We mix-and-match the high-level guys and get them together and have a fun weekend,” Sullivan said. “Hopefully we can make a run – and if not that’s completely fine – but obviously the goal is to keep winning and keep advancing.”
As pool-play continued, it became glaringly obvious this edition of mix-and-match was going to present a sizable mismatch for many of the other teams at the PG WWBA Upper West. As Sullivan noted, 15 roster spots are filled by NCAA Division I recruits and 14 prospects listed are ranked as top-500s nationally, including five in the top-369 from both the classes of 2018 and 2019.
Of the players named from that game-one rout, 2018s Marusak (Texas Tech) is ranked No. 74, Haskin (Tulane) is No. 369 and Dunlap (Rice), Fedko (UConn), Schwartz (UConn), Lively (uncommitted) and McLaughlin (Brigham Young) are all top-500s; 2019 Baty (Texas) is ranked No. 231 in his class.
NEB enjoyed the services of Marusak on Friday but by Saturday morning Sullivan had put on him on a plane heading back to his hometown of Amarillo, Texas. Marusak, who was the highest-ranked national 2018 at the event at No. 74, was running out a routine groundball to shortstop – he ran a 6.37-second 60-yard dash at the 2016 PG South Underclass Showcase – and tripped over first base and fell awkwardly on his wrist.
Sullivan described the injury as minor but didn’t want to send him back out there to play again on Saturday. So, he drove the top prospect to the airport Saturday morning with a ticket back to Texas.
“That kid is going to be the real deal,” Sullivan said. “He’s going to be a high-round (MLB Draft) pick and he’s an unbelievable kid, a great kid; he’s awesome.”
Fedko is one of the non-newcomers to the program, having played with NEB in eight PG WWBA tournaments since July 2016. He was named the Most Valuable Player at the 2017 PG MLK Upperclass National Championship played here in January; NEB won the tournament championship.
A 6-foot-2, 200-pound 2018 middle-infielder from Gibsonia, Pa., Fedko is one of three prospects on the NEB roster – Tim Pfaffenbichler and Schwartz are the others – that have committed to the University of Connecticut (UConn). In fact, the trio just made their official visits to the Storrs, Conn., school last week.
His experiences as a part of the NEB program have been nothing but positive, and he enjoys getting to meet and know new players when they show up to play in a tournament like this one.
“Every kid that they bring in is a D-I kid or a high uncommitted and every kid can play; there aren’t any weak spots on the bench, either,” Fedko said Saturday. “We have three or four core players and the atmosphere that Sully creates – it’s kind of loose – makes it easy to get to know the other kids. You just get to know everyone with Sully around.”
The Massachusetts-based North East Baseball organization operates under the guidance of owner/director Scott Patterson and general manager Matt Kruger; both also coach teams within the program. It’s mission statement is direct and to the point, and it reads in part:
“We believe that all dreams are achievable with a tireless work ethic and the proper exposure. We as an organization seek only players who have the desire to play baseball at the next level, either college or professional.”
The North East Baseball team that will play at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., will have a much greater sense of familiarity then the one that is here this weekend. Sullivan told PG that 18 of the players on that 22-man roster have played with NEB at past tournaments and are familiar with not only the coaching staff but with each other, as well.
The North East Baseball Rays is the program’s top summer team, and half of that roster will be in Jupiter, Sullivan said. There will be five or six players from this team and several more from the NEB team that finished 3-3-0 at the 17u PG World Series played here in late July.
Sullivan doesn’t deliver any profound message to the players before they take the field together for the first time – far from it, in fact. He simply tells them to go out, stay loose, play with confidence and have fun. He doesn’t use signs or do a lot of the other things field managers might do during the course of a game, opting instead to just let the players go out there and play in a relaxed manner. It seems like everyone benefits when they’re playing free and easy in a very competitive environment.
“Playing with better kids makes you better as a player,” Fedko said. “It’s kind of like, if some kid gets a hit in front of you it makes you want to go up there and get a hit next; if he makes a diving play (defensively) it makes you want to make a diving play, too. It’s kind of like a revolving door. If one player is the star of a game, it makes you want to step up and be the next star.”
NEB continued its onslaught of its pool-play opponents Saturday morning, blasting the Trosky Redbirds Blue, 15-3, in a complete seven-inning game; NEB scored six of its runs in the top of the seventh. The lineup produced 14 hits this time, with Dunlap, Baty and McLaughlin each rapping our two apiece; Dunlap, Haskin, Fedko and Jake Kapers each drove in two runs apiece.
Finally, late Saturday afternoon, those fighting NEB’s clinched their pool championship with another incredibly over-powering performance; this time it was a 14-2, four-inning shellacking of Los Angeles-based GBG Marucci 2019 Blue. North East Baseball scored all 14 of its runs in the bottom of the third inning and ended up outscoring its three pool opponents by a combined 42-6. That was good enough to earn the playoffs' No. 10 seed and avoid a first-round game Sunday morning.
Fedko, Dunlap and John Cristino each contributed two hits apiece to NEB’s 13-hit attack in the win over GBG; Fedko belted a three-run triple and a two-run double in that wild, wild west third inning.
“Every tournament, we play to win it all. That’s it, that’s the one goal,” he said. “But we have fun in the process, too. You’re going to have fun if you play for North East; it’s a blast. Every tournament with Perfect Game and with Sully is fun for us.”
Sullivan said the thing he enjoys the most about his job is bringing kids together from across the country and then watching them forge friendships they may possibly keep for life, since many of them will be following the same baseball path.
“That’s really the goal of it all,” he concluded. “If we win, that’s awesome; if we lose today and we have to play a consolation, that’s fine, too. “
There wasn’t any way that was going to happen. Not after NEB won that tournament-opener on Friday, anyway.