2015 Perfect Game High School Baseball Preview Index
No. 4 Huntington Beach Oilers (Huntington Beach, Calif.)
State Association/League: California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section/Sunset League
Head Coach: Benjamin Mendure (15th season as head coach)
2014 Results: 22-5 overall record; 13-2 Sunset League Champion; CIF Southern Section Division 1 2nd-Round Playoffs
Key Losses: INF Jesse Kuet (Stanford); INF Jake Brodt (Santa Clara); OF/P Sean O’Toole (St. Mary’s); OF Clint Jack; P Ryan Abady
Top Returning Players: Sr. RHP Noah Davis (UC Santa Barbara); Sr. INF/C Cooper Moore (Utah); Sr. OF Daniel Amaral (UCLA); Sr. C Tyler Murray; Jr. INF Logan Pouelsen (UCLA); Jr. OF Dominic Abbadessa (Long Beach St.); So. RHP Hagen Danner (UCLA)
Notable Matchups: March 17 at J Serra (DH); March 25-28 at National High School Invitational, Cary, N.C.; April 6-9 at Boras Baseball Classic, Los Angeles; April 15-May 14 vs. Sunset League play
THE TWO RIGHT-HANDED ARMS, ONE BELONGING TO a 6-foot-2, 185-pound high school senior who will celebrate his 18th birthday in April, and the other to a 6-foot-1, 175-pound 16-year-old sophomore, tell a lot of the tale-of-the-tape for the 2015 Huntington Beach (Calif.) High School Oilers.
The senior, top-500 national prospect and UC Santa Barbara signee Noah Davis, stands out as the portrait of a mentor, a proven winner who helped the Oilers reach the second-round of the CIF Southern Section playoffs in 2014 and was responsible for half of his team’s victories.
The sophomore, Perfect Game’s No. 2-ranked national prospect in the class of 2017 and UCLA commit Hagen Danner, is the protégé. Danner is an intriguing two-way prospect – he also catches – that will take over a completely different role for the Oilers this season as he teams with an experienced group of seniors and juniors as they attempt to make a deep run into the CIF playoffs.
The two strong-armed pitchers are good – very good – but they aren’t the only reason that Huntington Beach HS debuts today in the No. 4 spot in the 2015 Perfect Game Preseason National High School Top-50 Rankings. The Oilers are a top-5 team because of the experience they return from a team that finished 22-5 last spring.
“It’s a combination of power and speed with good pitching and good defense mixed in there,” 15th-year head coach Benjamin Medure said of his roster during a recent telephone conversation. “Our frontline guys on the mound are exceptional – I think they could go toe-to-toe with anyone in the nation – but I think our team speed is what’s going to really be the second thing that people notice about us.”
The Oilers graduated at least three players – Jesse Kuet (Stanford), Jake Brodt (Santa Clara) and Sean O’Toole (St. Mary’s, Calif.) – that moved on to NCAA Division I programs this year. But it is the return of four standout seniors, two juniors and the sophomore Danner that have the Oilers’ faithful thinking just about anything might be possible this year, including a PG High School National Championship.
Outfielder Daniel Amaral (UCLA), infielder/catcher Cooper Moore (Utah) and catcher Tyler Murray are all top-500 or top-1,000 prospects, and join Davis as the top returning seniors. Infielder Logan Pouelsen (No. 83, UCLA) and outfielder Dominic Abbadessa (Long Beach State) are the leading juniors.
Amaral hit .406 (26-for-64) last season with a home run, six doubles, 15 RBI, 15 runs scored and 10 stolen bases. Moore hit .350 (21-for-60) and Pouelsen clubbed a team-high five home runs.
Medure said the upward movement his program is experiencing really gained traction in 2012 with a talented senior class and a bunch of young kids waiting in the wings – those younger players that were freshmen on the varsity back then are now seniors.
“That’s the core group that we have coming back, and they’re really tough and they’re battle-tested,” he said. “We feel like we can go into games and we know what we’re going to get and we’re not really afraid of what’s going to happen. I definitely do not have a bunch of nervous-nellies out on the field.
“I have some experienced guys that have been in tough spots I think that’s what’s going to separate us from most teams in our area.”
The Oilers are also welcoming top junior outfielder Landon Silver, a move-in from Miami, Fla. Silver is a UC Santa Barbara commit ranked the No. 299 top national prospect in his class (No. 39 outfielder) and who played the last two summers with the South Florida Elite Squad. He was named to the Top Prospect Team at both the 2014 Perfect Game Junior National Showcase and the 2014 PG Underclass All-American Games.
It’s the senior and the sophomore on the mound who will draw the most attention this spring, and Medure readily accepts that reality. It starts with Davis, who finished 11-1 with a 1.27 ERA, allowing 10 earned runs on 36 hits and 21 walks while striking out 41 in 55 1/3 innings. His innings were a third as many as anyone else on last year’s staff.
“It really means something to the rest of the guys knowing that you have a great chance of winning when you have somebody like him on the mound,” Medure said of his ace, who was the MV Pitcher at the 2013 PG WWBA 16u West Memorial Day Classic in Goodyear, Ariz. “It allows our guys to play a little more ‘free’ – they don’t feel like if they make an error or if they screw up that it’s going to ruin our chances of winning.
“We feel like we could make a couple of mistakes and we can still pull it out because he’s going to keep the score relatively low on the other side,” he continued. “We just try to simplify things and play free when he’s on the mound and that brings a really calm feeling to our guys and allows them to get after it like they can.”
Danner served as the Oilers’ set-up man during his freshman season in 2014 and wound up working 15 1/3 innings in 13 appearances, finishing 1-0 with two saves. He gave up five earned runs in those innings (2.28 ERA), scattering 11 hits while striking out 17 and walking 10.
Danner spent the summer pitching for emerging national power BPA DeMarini Elite and excelled pitching against the country’s best juniors and seniors.
He won the Most Valuable Pitcher Award at the PG WWBA 16u National Championship in Emerson, Ga., and earned spots on the all-tournament teams at both the PG/EvoShield National Championship (Upperclass) in Goodyear, Ariz., and the PG California World Series (Upperclass) in Los Angeles.
By the time PG’s fall season was concluded Danner had climbed to No. 2 in PG’s class of 2017 national prospect rankings.
Medure said he wanted to use the freshman Danner in some tight situations last spring to see how he would handle them, and Danner aced every test. This spring, Medure wants to send the sophomore out there for 60 or 70 innings and noted that during his preseason workouts that started about a month ago, Danner’s fastball was sitting around 92-93 mph and topped out at 95.
“He locates well and it’s downhill and it’s pretty fun to watch,” Medure said. “I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of it but it’s pretty fun to watch from my side and it’s kind of the same that that Noah (Davis) brings – that calm feeling that we don’t have to do too much because we know (the opponent) is not going to score a lot of runs.”
During his previous 14 years at HBHS, Medure has had the pleasure of coaching some guys who moved on to play at the NCAA Division I level, but they never showed up in bunches. That changed dramatically with this group with six D-I’s holding spots on the talented roster.
“You just don’t really see that very often, and having that, it’s very gratifying; that’s our goal as a coaching staff,” Medure said. “We love to win, don’t get me wrong; it’s important. But at the same time we’re just trying to get guys to move on to play at the next level, whether it’s at UCLA or Point Loma, our goal is to get every senior to move on and play college baseball.
“It’s a really tight group and there’s a really good bond with everybody on the team,” he continued. “Everybody really pulls for each other and they trust the coaches and the coaches trust the kids so it’s a good situation.”
Playing in the CIF Southern Section Sunset League can be challenging enough, but Medure also front-loaded the non-conference portion of the schedule.
The Oilers will participate at the USA Baseball National High School Invitational (NHSI) in Cary, N.C., March 25-28 with 15 other highly regarded programs from across the country, including Lambert (Suwannee, Ga.), Farragut (Knoxville, Tenn.), De Soto Central (Southaven, Miss.), Puyallup (Puyallup, Wash.), College Station (Texas) and JSerra Catholic (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.).
They will also play in the Southern California-based Boras Baseball Classic, in which JSerra Catholic and Mater Dei are the host schools. The schedule is designed with the popular mantra of playing the best if you want to be the best, and Medure thinks his team has the talent to be considered among the country’s best.
“We just need to stay humble more than anything,” Medure said. “We can’t get ahead of ourselves and just kind of take it one day, one step at a time. We’ve been preaching that for a long time – you can’t get to the top of the ladder by jumping rungs. The way our guys compete every day at practice … we’re trying to convince them that every day is the most important day.
“They’re buying into that and if they do that for the next 100 days I think we’ll be able to look back at the end and feel pretty good about ourselves.”