GLENDALE, Ariz. – Building a successful travel ball organization is no easy task, and Allan Dykstra wants to make sure he doesn’t cut any corners on what he hopes is his way to the top. This may still be a “what have you done for me lately” culture, but Dykstra isn’t going to rush things simply for the sake of rushing things.
It is with this outlook and game-plan that he came to the Valley of the Sun this weekend with his two teams, Dykstra Baseball 2021 and Dykstra Baseball 2022, to compete at the Perfect Game WWBA 16u and 14u West Memorial Day Classics, respectively.
The 18u WWBA WMDC is also being contested this weekend, with games being played at both the Camelback Ranch MLB spring training complex here and the Goodyear Ballpark complex not far away in Goodyear.
The Dykstra Baseball organization is only entering its second summer of play, and these are the two primary teams in the program. Dykstra said he was quite pleased with how the first year of the program’s existence played out, and he’s determined to keep moving forward at a deliberate, well-charted pace.
He wants to make sure everything is done correctly and with a measured approach, which means not expanding to double-digit teams anytime soon. Dykstra likes to be directly involved with each of his players, which enables him to talk with college recruiters with an informed opinion of a prospect’s strengths and weaknesses. The fact that he is at all the practices interacting with each one of his players is something that he has made a top priority.
“It’s been a slow process, but I think everything’s come together in the time that it’s supposed to,” Dykstra told PG Friday morning before the 2022s opened tournament play at sun-splashed Camelback Ranch. “I’m not really rushing it and getting in over my head. It’s just one step at a time and everything has been falling where it should be so far.”
Both of the Dykstra Baseball teams here for the weekend are young even for their age-groups. The roster for the squad competing at the 16u event consists almost exclusively of players who just finished their freshman year in high school; the players on the team competing at the 14u event just recently attended their eighth-grade graduation ceremonies.
Dykstra first started putting the DB 2022s – the eighth-graders – together last August, but took his time constructing the roster while making sure he got just the right type of player, the ones who looked to be the most projectable.
The group played together for the first time last fall in some local tournaments before Dykstra decided to throw them into the fire at the 2018 PG WWBA West MLK Freshman Championship held here in January.
The results were impressive considering the players rostered were only halfway through their eighth-grade year in middle school. The DB 2022s finished 3-1 at the event after suffering a loss in the quarterfinal round of the playoffs.
Nine players that were on the Freshman MLK roster are on this 2022 roster, including all-tournament selections Tyler Gough, Shea Lake, Ryan Shubert, Lucas Smith and Andrew Campbell.
“They were playing up against freshman and some kids that were almost 16 years old, and most of my kids were only 13,” Dykstra said. “We’ve been really pushing them, and they’ve been practicing a lot with my older boys, and that really pays dividends in the end.”
Campbell, Shubert and Smith all pitched for the 2022s Friday morning, a 1-0 loss to the B45 Flyers based in nearby Litchfield Park, Ariz. Campbell and Shubert, both 2022 right-handers, combined to pitch five, one-hit, shutout innings, striking out four and walking three.
One aspect of the 14u age division that Dykstra finds most interesting is the difference in the maturity level among the young players. There are players that have developed physically more quickly than some of the others who might be later bloomers.
“To me, it’s the hardest age (to get a handle on) but it’s also the most fun age for me because they’re really looking for information. They’re looking to grow, especially the ones that are physically ready,” he said. “They’re looking to compete at the high school level. They’re looking to go into their freshman year and their goal is to make varsity, which is against 18-year-olds.”
The Dykstra Baseball 2021 team that is playing in the 16u WMDC is also a talented group, led by 2020 shortstop Parker Welch from Riverside, Calif. Welch is a UC Santa Barbara commit who performed at the 2016 14u PG Select Baseball Festival in Fort Myers, Fla., and is the highest ranked national 2020 playing in the 16u tournament this week at No. 141.
The top 2021s on the roster include Maxwell Shor (No. 73, U. San Diego), Shane Stafford (No. 93, San Diego State) and Josiah Chavez (No. 100).
“I want to say that four or five of these kids played varsity as freshmen this year, and that experience is huge especially in terms of facing velocity,” Dykstra said. “That, to me, is the biggest jump between 14u and up is you start seeing kids with higher velocities. …
“Adjusting to that pitching at the higher levels and being able to compete against better pitching is huge, and they’re ready,” he added. “If you’re going to be a sophomore you need to compete with seniors, and it’s that kind of work ethic and drive that we try to build our program around.”
The DB 2021s opened play Friday with a resounding 12-2, five-inning win over Irvine, Calif.-based SB American Underclass. Eldridge Armstrong tripled, singled, drove in three runs and scored three, Nico Reyes tripled, singled drove in two runs and scored three and Andruw Householder singled twice and drove in two in the win.
Dykstra Baseball is based in Temecula, Calif., which happens to be the same city nationally prominent California Baseball Academy (CBA) calls home. The area Dykstra attracts his players from is sandwiched between Orange County to the north and San Diego to the south and the competition is fierce, but all of the top programs have found a way to not only co-exist but to thrive.
“There are very good players there but a lot of them have left the area; they’ve gone to San Diego or Orange County,” Dykstra said. “My goal in starting this was trying to keep as many kids locally as I could, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
It is very much both a balancing act and an ongoing battle. The people that build the most prominent and successful summer ball programs strive to be fair with their young players and try to avoid making promises about playing time that can’t be kept.
Allan Dykstra – no relation to former three-time MLB All-Star Lenny Dykstra, whose name keeps popping up in the news for all the wrong reasons these days – was drafted out of Rancho Bernardo High School in the 34th round of the 2005 MLB Amateur Draft decided to honor his commitment to Wake Forest University instead of signing. He was a Golden Spikes Award finalist while playing at Wake in 2007 and became a first-round pick (23rd overall) of the San Diego Padres in 2008.
Dykstra played in the minor leagues through the 2014 season and was signed by the Tampa Bay Rays as a free agent in 2015. He made his major league debut with the Rays in April 2015 and played 13 big-league games in his career.
Still a young man at age 31, Dykstra feels like he’s able to relate to his teenaged players while also being able to pass a lot of knowledge their way based on his own baseball experiences at the high school, travel ball, college, minor league and major league levels. He’s also trying to surround them with other quality coaches who can pass on their own lessons and experiences.
“I think it’s important for the kids to see different aspects of the game and have different eyes with different opinions on them all the time,” Dykstra said. “For me growing up, it wasn’t just one coach that molded me into the player I became, but I do think it is beneficial for me being younger to speak with them about academics and how all of this might play out.”
Because both Dykstra Baseball teams at the PG WWBA WMDC this weekend have experience playing high-profile PG WWBA tournaments heading into this summer, Dykstra is confident that any stomach butterflies that come from facing the unknown are long gone.
Even those these young players still have their entire high school baseball careers in front of them, they’ve already been asked to perform in situations that put them slightly out of their comfort zone.
“Coming into this Memorial Day tournament, to me, is like a kickoff to the summer where it’s your time to really show everybody what you’ve got for the next two months,” Dykstra said. “All their hard work in the fall and the spring has really come down to this and I think they’re ready. Obviously, it’s a good experience playing on (MLB) spring training fields and I know they’re excited to get it kicked off.”