CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Over the last half of the Perfect Game WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship’s 14-year run, few teams have been as dominant at the event as the Hartford, Wis.-based Reds Midwest Scout Team under the direction Cincinnati Reds area scouting supervisor Andy Stack.
It’s a program that won three championships (2009, ’11, ’14) and finished as runner-up five time (2006, ’08, ’10, ’12) at the Kernels Championship in the last 11 years, and more often than not uses the momentum gained from those successes to make a strong showing at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., a couple of weeks later.
“This is always one of my favorite tournaments,” Stack said late Saturday afternoon while watching his team take BP in the indoor batting cage behind the first base dugout at Perfect Game Field-Veterans Memorial Stadium. “You never know what’s going to happen at the Kernels – anybody can beat anybody. Typically, all the teams are competitive and bring their best guys and you see a lot of guys’ best efforts.”
This year’s PG WWBA Kernels Foundation Championship – which serves as a qualifier for the PG WWBA World Championship in that the champion receives a paid invitation to the Jupiter event – was pushed back a week because of flooding in the Cedar Rapids area, and the number of participating teams dipped to 36.
That didn’t keep most of the tournament favorites from attending – although some arrived with depleted rosters for a variety of reasons – and with as many as seven 2017s and another three 2018s on the Reds’ roster ranked in the top-500 nationally in their respective classes, the Midwest Scout Team had found a chair at the favorites’ table.
Heading the list of prospects was the 2017 Arizona State commit Brendan Murphy, a left-hander from Mundelein, Ill., ranked No. 99 nationally; No. 213-ranked 2017 corner-infielder/right-hander Jimmy Ramsey, a 6-foot-7, 230-pound left-handed swinging Oregon commit from Tonka Bay, Minn., and Mark Vierling, a 2017 infielder from St. Louis who has committed to Missouri.
There was also No. 330-ranked 2017 first baseman/outfielder Bobby Seymour, a Wake Forest recruit from Saint John, Ind.; top-500 left-hander/first baseman and Texas Christian commit Ryan Eiermann out of Naperville, Ill., and top 2018 right-hander/third baseman Connor Van Scoyoc, an uncommitted prospect from Cedar Rapids ranked No. 148 in his national class.
“This is one of the biggest (tournaments) in the fall and we look to try to win it,” Ramsey said. “It’s pretty much leading up to Jupiter where you want to do well, but you always want to win this tournament first just to get some momentum for going into (the PG WWBA World).”
Stack said this Reds Midwest Scout Team squad played a somewhat abbreviated schedule this fall due to weather and other factors involving player commitments, so its games here this weekend really served almost as a “getting to know you” coming-out party.
That unfamiliarity might have played a role in the Reds’ somewhat sluggish 6-5 victory over the Pro Player W4rriors (McHenry, Ill.) in their opener Saturday morning, a game in which they trailed, 5-3, after 3½ innings.
“Give credit to Pro Player, their teams are always tough and well coached; they played well,” Stack said. “And now with these new pitching rules, I’m kind of trying to stretch pitching and trying to figure out when to bring a guy in, and we kind of let the wheels come off there a little bit in (a five-run) fourth inning.”
The lug-nuts on those same wheels were locked firmly in place in the Scout Team’s second pool-play game on Saturday, thanks to the efforts of Eiermann and Ramsey. Eiermann, the 6-foot, 185-pound 2017 left-handed TCU recruit, threw 6 1/3 four-hit innings, and allowed one earned run with 14 strikeouts and three walks, and Ramsey singled three times and drove in four runs in their 6-1 victory over the Top Tier Americans 17u (McCook, Ill.).
“It’s really a lot of fun being with this team; I love it,” Eiermann said. “The guys are really good, really talented, and it’s just a fun group to be around. You don’t have to pitch to try to strikeout guys. You can basically pitch to contact and get a strikeout here and there, and then you can trust the guys behind you to get outs and keep the pitch-count low.”
Even before his team moved to 2-0-0 in pool-play, Stack was feeling pretty good about what he was seeing on the field, even though his time with the group had been limited:
“We play good team defense. We have some speed and we hit better than we did last year,” he said. “We have some very interesting prospects with guys on the mound and we’re probably better balanced than we were last year. I don’t know if we’ll have that superstar guy that will go on and win the MVP of the tournament or anything, but you never know – guys step up and things happen.”
Once 36 teams had committed to being in attendance this weekend, Perfect Game officials placed them in nine, four-team pools with only the pool champions advancing to the nine-team bracket-play. The Nos. 8 and 9 seeds would duke-it out in a play-in game with the winner joining the other seven teams in the quarterfinals. The format left no room for error.
“When I first started doing this I was looking at the run differential and all that and now it’s like, ‘Just win your pool,’” Stack said. “You’ve just got to get through it and whatever seed you end up with, that’s where you end up. And then you hopefully play well enough in the playoff game that you make it to Monday.”
The Reds Midwest Scout Team was the only squad in its pool to start 2-0-0 and needed to beat the Nebraska Prospects 2018-Kenny (1-1-0) on Sunday morning to win the pool championship (the Nebraska Prospects had lost to the Top Tier Americans 17u). It was not to be.
Unheralded, unranked and uncommitted Omaha left-hander Kyle Perry allowed only one unearned run on three hits while striking out eight and walking two in six extremely efficient innings, and the Nebraska Prospects skated to a 6-1 victory; they won the pool championship on tie-breaker criteria.
Stack’s prophetic words are worth repeating: “You never know what’s going to happen at the Kernels – anybody can beat anybody. Typically, all the teams are competitive and bring their best guys and you see a lot of guys’ best efforts.”
By mid-afternoon Sunday, the bracket had been set and Hitters Baseball White (3-0-0; Racine, Wis.) grabbed the No. 1 seed and would play the winner of the No. 9 Iowa Select Navy (2-1-0; Cedar Rapids) and No. 8 Hitters Baseball Navy (1-0-2; Racine).
The other quarterfinal matchups were: No. 5 Minnesota Blizzard Blue (2-0-1; Vadnais Heights, Minn.) vs. No. 4 GRB Rays Green (3-0-0; Madison, Wis.); No. 3 Iowa Select Black (3-0-0; Cedar Rapids) vss. No. 6 Cangelosi 2017 Black (2-0-1; Lockport, Ill.) and No. 7 Nebraska Prospects 2018-Kenny (2-1-0; Omaha) vs. No. 2 Lakeville Legends (3-0-0; Gurnee, Ill.).