FORT MYERS, Fla. – This is a very talented team that Ontario Blue Jays director of baseball operations and head coach Dan Bleiwas has brought to this week’s 18u Perfect Game BCS Finals, but a quick look at the pre-tournament roster does prompt a couple of “what if” questions.
What if four of those roster spots were filled not just with the names of prospects selected in last month’s MLB First-Year Player Draft but with their actual bodies? What if those four – Canadians Josh Naylor, J.D. Williams, Isaac Anesty and Darren Shed – had decided to play another summer with their beloved Blue Jays instead of either starting or mulling their professional careers? Just how good with this group be then?
It’s something to ponder but not to dwell on. This isn’t, after all, a game of what-ifs. Even without those four drafted players, this Ontario Blue Jays team features a roster filled with at least 11 players from the class of 2015 whose abilities on a baseball field will help pay for at least some their college educations over the next four years, and that’s a number certain to rise.
These guys are here to compete at the highest level and return to their base of operations in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, with an 18u PG BCS Finals national championship trophy while waiting impatiently for their individual PG national championship rings to arrive.
“Coming down here to Florida is always a great experience and especially with Perfect Game, they do a great job with their tournaments – it’s great competition and just great ball,” Blue Jays’ 2015 middle-infielder and Michigan State signee Royce Ando said early Monday morning from the already sweaty JetBlue Player Development Complex. “We’re from Canada and we don’t get this kind of weather so it did take us a few days to adapt to it, but now we’re all on a roll and we’re all good.”
It would be impossible to overstate those words “on a roll” and “we’re all good” three days into the week-long tournament.
The Blue Jays won their first three pool-play games Saturday, Sunday and Monday all by shutout. Four 2015 Ontario right-handers – Nathan Arruda from Brampton, R.J. Freure from Burlington, Cole White from Barrie and Justin DiTaranto from Richmond Hill – combined to throw 18 shutout innings, giving up nine hits while striking out 22 and walking six.
Arruda, who has signed with Odessa (Texas) College, threw seven innings in his Monday start, allowing five hits, striking out eight and walking one; Freure threw 5 1/3 innings of three-hit ball, with 10 strikeouts and three walks; White, who will attend Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., went four innings and allowed only one hit with four K’s and a walk, and DiTaranto pitched 1 2/3 hitless innings in relief of Freure.
The Jays also scored 20 runs on 26 hits in those first three games, with 2015 catcher Tony Hrynkiw from Brampton smacking a grand slam, collecting three singles and driving in five runs in two games and six at-bats. If the Jays can continue this pace over their final two pool-play games, they will be the playoffs’ No. 1 seed.
This team was loaded up on their touring bus and hauled to Southwest Florida for very obvious reasons: discover, engage and (ideally) conquer the best 18u competition in the land. Bleiwas goes out of his way to get his teams to the highest level Perfect Game tournaments because he knows that’s where the top competition can be found. That requires trips south of the border – the Canadian border – but that makes it all the more fun.
“I do get excited and when I don’t, I won’t do it anymore,” Bleiwas said of his feelings every time he climbs on the team bus for one of these trips. “You get to come down to places like this, and we’re putting together our fall college schedule which we look forward to. It’s exciting that so many (college) teams want to play us and when you look at the College World Series there were a handful of teams that were there that are going to be our opponents (this fall).”
Everyone associated with the Ontario Blue Jays organization is still riding high following the results of the 2015 MLB June Amateur Draft. The powerful Naylor was selected by the Miami Marlins with the 12th overall pick of the first-round, which made him the highest selection ever for a Canadian position player; he received a reported $2.25 million signing bonus.
“They know he’s going to hit, plus he’s a very good defender in two spots – the outfield and at first base – and I think they saw that,” Bleiwas said of the Marlins’ decision to use their first-round pick on the 6-foot-1, 225-pound left-handed swinging slugger and 2014 Perfect Game All-American. “They don’t care what the body looks like; that can always get better and change and be effective.”
Bleiwas is an area scout for the Cincinnati Reds, and the Reds drafted Williams in the 17th-round, Anesty in the 18th-round and Shred in the 22nd-round; none of the three has yet signed. Naylor, Williams and Shred all attended the 2014 Perfect Game National Showcase, which was held here at JetBlue Park.
For a player like Ando with his coveted scholarship to Michigan State, just the experience of being around the drafted players and his other Blue Jays’ teammates with college scholarships has been especially rewarding. He speaks respectfully of his contemporaries Naylor, Williams, Anesty and Shred and wishes them nothing but the best while also realizing the route he and the others are taking is equally admirable.
“For us, it’s more like an inspirational kind of thing and shows us that there’s a chance to (achieve that); it keeps the dream alive,” Ando said. “Most of us now are off to school, and from there, hopefully, we can make our dreams come true.”
Almost all of the players on the 18u BCS roster were with the Ontario Blue Jays team that finished 3-2-0 at last year’s PG WBBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., and that includes Naylor, Williams, Shred and Anesty.
The bulk of the Ontario Blue Jays team that will be in Jupiter, Fla., at the end of October this year is competing at the 17u PG WWBA National Championship in Emerson, Ga., this week. There are at least four players with that 17u group – Owen Jansen, Cooper Lamb, Ryan Rijo and Noah Skirrow – that were with these guys in Jupiter a year ago as underclassmen.
Bleiwas hopes those young players can follow a path similar to the one Naylor is on – although being the No. 12 overall selection in the draft might be too lofty of a goal – and also said the organization feels a strong sense of satisfaction when it sees these young player reach such heights.
“We feel real good about it knowing that a player like Josh took advantage of the tools we were able to provide,” he said. “The kids do the work and we provide them with the tools and it’s really up to them to take advantage of that, and Josh did. His work ethic was always strong, and this offseason he worked on things he needed to fix; he cleaned up the body and worked on agility and things like that.”
Ando wants to do the same thing, and he praised the Jays’ coaching staff, the state-of-the art indoor facility the organization provides and the travel to places like Southwest Florida, which brings coveted exposure to the Canadian prospects. All of that is very important to a young player on the rise.
“If you’re a student of the game, you’ll learn everything (being with the Blue Jays),” he said. “You take in what works for you and you can leave some things out, but that all continues your development; you just grow as a player.”
The Ontario Blue Jays organization continues to grow in and of itself under Bleiwas’ leadership; he is in his 16th year with the organization. The group is in the process of building a new 53,000 square-foot indoor facility in Mississauga, just west of Toronto, which should open as early as Nov. 1.
An indoor facility is crucial to the Blue Jays because of the Ontario climate and the buildings have continued to get bigger and better. According to Bleiwas, the first one that opened 12 years ago covered 6,000 square-feet; that grew initially to 14,000 square-feet, then to 23,000 and now 53,000.
“Every time we’ve made one of those jumps we’ve seen it payoff on the field, just with the amount of (additional) work we could get done,” Bleiwas said. “One of the things we identified that we weren’t doing a great job at is working with our infielders on defensive stuff during the offseason, so that’s why we’re going to the bigger facility.”
The Blue Jays participate in American Amateur Baseball Congress (AABC) tournaments in addition to the Perfect Game schedule, and will spend the rest of July playing in regional tournaments in an effort to qualify for the Connie Mack World Series July 31-Aug. 7 in Farmington, N.M. The 18u PG BCS Finals was an important stop in terms of their summer scheduling.
“For us, it’s just about keeping prepared, playing as much as we can and staying as competitive as we can,” Bleiwas said. “In Canada we don’t get the highest level of competition since we have most of the top players on our squad, so it’s important that we get on the road.
“It’s also good to get these guys away from home so they can focus on some things,” he continued. “We got them through 12th grade and graduation and prom and all that stuff that we’ve had to deal with the last month or so, and now those distractions are all gone and we’re here together.”
And make no mistake, there is nothing these young ballplayers enjoy more than climbing on that bus, even there are four noticeable empty seats.
“We all look forward to it so much,” Ando said. “Coming together as a team and playing in these tournaments – that’s what we live for.”