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Tournaments  | Story | 7/23/2020

Lonestar BC 2024 finds ways to win

Jeff Dahn
Photo: Theo Gillen (Perfect Game)

SANFORD, Fla. – Lonestar Baseball Club 2024 Sanders is a tough nut to crack, the proverbial riddle wrapped inside an enigma.

Make no mistake, this is an extremely talented team with one of the best players from the class of 2024 hitting at the top of the order, but these guys never seem to make things easy for themselves. They’re capable of scoring a ton of runs, which they do on a regular basis, but then they surrender a lot of runs, too.



So here they are this week at the 28-team Perfect Game 14U World Series national championship doing what they do best: scoring runs, eking out wins and winning a pool championship while hoping this time they can make a run into the elusive final four of bracket play.

“Our mindset coming in was that we want to play our game and not worry about what other people are doing,” Lonestar BC 2024 head coach Josh Sanders told PG on Thursday, speaking from the BOOMBAH Sports Complex where the PG 14U WS is being played.

“With this tournament being a smaller event, every team is good here; some of the top national contenders, including ourselves, are here. We just really wanted to come in and not worry about what we’re doing and let the chips fall where they may.”

The chips have fallen and they fell the right way, albeit quite dramatically, during Lonestar’s 3-0-0 march to its pool championship, earning it a top 7 seed in the Gold Bracket playoffs which get underway Friday.

All three of its victories were of the hold-your-breath, fasten-your-seatbelt variety. In a 7-6 win over FTB Select 14U Resmondo on Tuesday, the LBC 2024's led by that score after four and were able to shutout FTB Select over the final three innings to make it hold up. They led 5 Star National 14U 3-1 after three on Wednesday and held on for a 3-2 win.

And on Thursday, they trailed Canes American 14U 6-3 after four and 7-4 after five, only to rally for four runs in the bottom of the sixth for an 8-7 walk-off, time-limit win.

All this drama comes after the Lonestars won their pool championship at the PG BCS 14U National Championship in Fort Myers, Fla., earlier this month and then were eliminated in the quarterfinal-round of the playoffs. They were pool champs again at the PG WWBA 14U National Championship in Hoover, Ala., a little over a week ago, and this time lost in the playoffs’ first round. Their overall record at those two tournaments was a noteworthy 11-3-1 but somehow that just wasn’t enough.

“Our mindset is that definitely we’ve got to win this tournament because we went out in the BCS against the Elite Squad and then we lost at the WWBA in the (playoffs’) first round, unfortunately,” top 2024 prospect Theodore Gillen told PG Thursday. “We definitely came in here just wanting to compete really hard every pitch and just play the game.”

The one thing the Lonestar BC 2024s have a shown a knack for doing in these high-profile PG national championship tournaments is score runs. In six pool-play games at the BCS 14U NC they totaled 56 runs (21 against) and in seven pool-play games at the WWBA 14U NC they pushed across 65 (16 against); they went 6-0-0 at the BCS and 6-1-0 at the WWBA in those games.

“We’ve got to be one of the best hitting teams in the country, for sure,” Sanders said. “When you see us get beat it’s usually a 2-1, 3-2 type of affair and balls just don’t fall for us. That happens in this game sometimes … but for the most part you’re going to see this team be one of the most consistent and one of the best hitting teams in the country.”

There is no denying the fact that this offensive attack really does begin with Gillen. A 6-2, 184 pounds, left-handed hitting shortstop out of Austin, Texas, where the Lonestar Baseball Club is also based, Gillen is the No. 2-ranked overall national prospect from the class of 2024.

In the 18 games when he’s stepped to the plate so far at the three PG 14U national championships, Gillen slashed .490/.544/.776 with seven doubles, two triples, a home run, 21 runs and 12 RBI.

Gillen was named the MV Player at last year’s PG WWBA 14U World Championship played in West Palm Beach, FL, despite the fact that Lonestar BC didn’t play in the championship game. He hit .800 (12 for 15) with two doubles, two triples, six walks (.857 OBP), 12 runs and eight RBI at that elite event.

“He’s a phenomenal player,” Sanders said. “As far as affecting the game by himself, particularly on the offensive side of the ball, there’s not a player in the country that affects the game individually as much as he does. … He is the most mature and most advanced hitter in the country by a long shot."

“He can be a gritty lead-off that hits a two-strike line drive and makes contact and gets on base and he can be a guy who should be hitting 4-hole that can really lay into it and hit home runs. And he understands when the right time is to be those hitters.”

Other guys in the order can hit, as well. Reagan Chomel and Matthew Scott II (an Oklahoma commit) are hitting .425 and .417 while playing in 17 and 18 of those games, respectively. Carson Smith (.382), Davin Brazzle and Joshua Atomanczyk (.326) have also been collecting hits. Scott (19), Chomel (14), Brazzle (13), Smith (12) and Atomanczyk (11) have been RBI machines.

“We have good chemistry,” Gillen said, noting that he’s been playing with four or five of his Lonestar teammates since they were in elementary school and many of the others for the last two or three years. “We’ve been playing together for a long time and you can just feel that there’s a different kind of energy when you play with us.

“I think this is the best team that we’ve had since we were 8 (years old),” he added. “We compete every pitch and there are a lot less strikeouts in our lineup than we’ve had in our previous years, so we’ve been looking pretty good this year.”

Here this week, the Lonestar Baseball Club 2024 – ranked No. 6 nationally at the 14U level – was grouped in Pool E with the nationally prominent 5 Star National 14U, the FTB Select 14U Resmondo and the Canes American 14U. The numbers among that group as far as how many runs each of the four scored and how many they gave up was uncanny.

Lonestar (3-0-0) outscored its opponents, 18-15; 5 Star (2-1-0) outscored its foes, 10-6; FTB was outscored 17-13; Canes American was outscored 13-10. That’s parity in its purest form, but as Sanders pointed out at a mega-event like the WWBA National Championship, there’s a wider dispersion of talent amongst the participating teams.

The top teams and programs will generally have a gimme here or there during pool play on their way to bracket play whereas here, it’s not uncommon for two or three teams in each pool to be nationally ranked. Sanders, however, wouldn’t trade his collection of top 2024 prospects for any other roster at the 14U World Series.

“This team is just gritty; just tough kids,” Sanders said. “We’ve got kind of a blue-collar, workmanlike mentality, and we come to the park every day and step into the box and compete pitch-by-pitch. … We go up and down the order with guys that just get in there and compete and swing the bat and know their role and know how to play the game.”

He had more ccolades to toss Gillen’s way, as well, saying he could go on and on about the top talent who is still two months short of his 15th birthday:

“He’s a very mature young man both physically and mentally and he’s just a great leader,” Sanders said. “He’s not a big rah-rah guy, he’s just a ballplayer. He’s even-keeled, he’s going to lead by example and he’s what I’m going to call ‘quietly encouraging.’”

Gillen made it clear early during his short conversation with PG on Thursday that he and his Lonestar Baseball Club 2024 Sanders teammates will be disappointed with anything less than taking home a championship banner from the PG 14U World Series.

They’re back in the playoffs at yet another PG national championship tournament for the third time in three weeks, and they’ll have the opportunity to rinse out of their mouths any bad taste that might linger from coming up short at the previous two.

“You have to learn from your disappointments, you learn from your failures, and anybody that’s played this game knows there’s a lot of failure involved in this game,” Sanders concluded. “We talk about it; we’re open about it. It’s not something we harp on from a negative aspect but we talk about it so we can learn and grow.”
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