SANFORD, Fla. – In Ostingers Baseball Academy 2022’s tournament-opener at the Perfect Game 16U World Series late Saturday afternoon, head coach Chris Wilken tipped his hand on how he plans to approach each game at this prestigious 30 team PG national championship event.
Facing the Top Tier Roos 2022 American, he sent out 2022 righthander and Stetson commit Jack Owens, the No. 359 ranked overall prospect in his class, to start the game and let him work 2 1/3 innings. Wilken then went to ’22 righty Ryan Fry, a Miami commit ranked No. 422 overall nationally, who gave him two scoreless innings.
Ethan Petry, a primary third baseman and South Carolina commit ranked No. 225, and Evan Chrest – both also 2022 righties – finished out the game, which Ostingers won, 2-1. It was a great way for the Stingers 2022 to kick things off at the 16U World Series and proof positive that Wilken fully understands the high level of competition his squad is going to see here all week.
“With our pool, and really the whole tournament being what it is, you’ve just got to play every game for what it is and I think you saw that with my pitching decisions there,” Wilken told PG after the win against Top Tier on Saturday.
“I’m not willing to take too many chances and we’re going to go out and put the right guys in the right opportunities to get guys out. So that was the message, let’s win today and we’ll worry about tomorrow when it gets here.”
Wilken is fortunate, of course, to have such a deep well of talent on the pitching side of things from which to draw; it doesn’t end with those guys. Sean Hermann, a top-500 2021 righty and South Florida commit, and Caden Kok, a top-500 2022 righthander, are also highly regarded and will be called upon frequently this week.
The Stingers BA 2022 can show quality depth in their batting order, as well, and they will need every bit of it with the high-end arms they’ll be facing over the next several days. Colby Shelton, a lefthanded hitting shortstop and a Clemson commit ranked No. 66 overall nationally in the 2022 class, is capable of being the guy the offense revolves around, and he came into this event ready to take his swings.
“With all the great competition down here, every team you’re playing is legit; every kid can swing it, every kid can throw it,” Shelton told PG. “All of the games could come down to one play so you have to be your best every pitch; you can’t take any (pitch) off.”
Some of the other top guys include 2022 outfielder/second baseman/righthander Owens, 2022 catcher/corner-infielder Brody Donay (No. 458), 2022 catcher/outfielder Mason Jantomaso (t-1,000), 2022 utility Paul Osting (t-1,000) and 2022 middle-infielder Adrian Arroyo.
“This is great; I love it here,” said Petry, the highly regarded South Carolina recruit. “We play as a team … and we’re all local and we practice as a team, play as a team.”
The Stingers BA 2022 are much more a neighborhood squad than some sort of national scout team. The neighborhood in this case is the Tampa-St. Petersburg area and many of the players attend the same high schools. Five of them, in fact, are classmates at Bloomington High School in Valrico, FL.
“We’re tightly bonded,” Shelton said. “When we don’t have baseball we all hang out together so we’re pretty well strung together; we’re a good team. … We just want to play as a team and do all the good team stuff together. We obviously want to win and playing against all this (great) competition will make us better.”
Wilken has known all along that he is putting a quality product out on the field with this group but if he needed any more proof of that he got it when Ostingers Baseball Academy 2022 competed at the PG WWBA 16U National Championship in Marietta, Ga., two weeks ago.
The Stingers 2022 played lights-out at the mega-event, winning their pool with a 5-0-0 record and advancing to quarterfinals where they were sidelined by the Team Elite 16U Scout Team in a 7-6 ballgame to finish 7-1-0.
They left the Atlanta area feeling pretty good about what they were capable of accomplishing and very comfortable with taking a seat at the table at the PG 16U World Series shoulder-to-shoulder with programs that enjoy a more national brand.
That’s because Ostingers BA 2022 has just as much talent on its roster as the teams associated with the more national brands and the Stingers just won’t back down. Nor should they.
“You’ve got to start with our pitching. We’ve got some pretty good arms on the mound and they catch a lot of people’s eye,” Wilken said. “With this group in particular, they’ve gotten better all summer. They’ve learned the power of energy and when everybody brings energy in the dugout and on the field that can happen.
“That worked out for us,” he added. “We played really well in Atlanta and hopefully we can do that again this week.”
Added Petry: “We had a lot of momentum coming in here. We were still the underdogs but we still had momentum and a lot of respect from other teams that we beat.”
After the opening day victory over the Tampa-based Top Tier Roos American 2022 on Saturday, the Stingers BA 2020 arrived at the BOOMBAH Sports Complex Sunday morning looking at playing back-to-back games as pool play continued.
First up was the Sunshine State Elite Academy out of Kissimmee, FL. Ostingers enjoyed an 8-2 lead after 5½ innings but in the bottom of the sixth their knuckles got white when Sunshine State rallied for five runs to close within 8-7. That was the score when the inning ended and, as it turned out, the game was ended, too, because of the two-hour time limit rule.
2022 righties Aidan Kelley and Kohl Wise were solid for Ostingers through the first five innings allowing two runs on two hits with eight strikeouts and five walks. A third reliever gave up the five runs on three hits with three walks but, hey, no harm no foul.
Petry and Shelton wielded the hot bats in this one with Petry collecting a triple and a single and driving in four runs; Shelton doubled and drove in a run.
Ostingers ran into a bit of buzz-saw in its next game when it faced the Cannons Baseball Academy 2022 American and their ace 2022 righthander, Miami commit David Rossow. The 124th-ranked Rossow worked 3 2/3 hitless, scoreless innings, striking out five while also walking four.
The Cannons had built a 3-0 lead with Rossow on the hill but Ostingers finally scored in the bottom of the fourth on an RBI triple from Oscar Fernandez; he added a single in the sixth to account for the Stingers’ only two hits in the game.
All of the players were disappointed with the game’s outcome but perhaps none more so than Petry. The 6-foot-3, 205-pounder is a presence both on the field and in the dugout and he took some personal responsibility.
“I feel like we’re not bringing enough energy to the table like we did at the WWBA recently; we’re just fighting to get out of holes constantly,” he told PG. “This game should have been a different story – we should have won. (I need to) be a leader … just try to bring them up in the dugout and get hits, big hits, clutch hits.”
One loss in three games at this event is in no way a deal-breaker. The 30 teams in attendance are slotted into five six-team pools which means each will play five pool play games; the top 2 seeded teams from each pool advance into the 10 team Gold Bracket for the playoffs.
The Stingers BA 2022 play a single game Monday against US Elite 16U National, which also won its first two pool play games of the tournament. Their approach won’t change because as Petry said, “We’re always ready to go.”
“We’re trying to win every game we play regardless of who we play,” Wilken said. “You understand that there’s probably not going to be a blowout that happens either way so it’s going to be a tight game, it’s going to be a play here, a play there, a pitch there, a pitch here; that’s what it’s going to be.”