After taking a break for Tuesday's Independence Day holiday, the 14U National Team Championships Arizona returned on Wednesday for the first day of the final playoff bracket. The 32 teams that qualified earlier in the week all came into today looking to survive and advance for another day, but when it was all said and done, only eight managed to secure a coveted spot in the quarterfinals. Check out the most notable headlines from a very entertaining day that was:
New Level 14U Notches Shutouts Over Total Vipers Baseball Navy, Stacked Baseball in First Two Playoff Games
New Level 14U impressed all throughout the first few days of pool play en route to earning the No. 1 overall seed in the playoff bracket, and in its first taste of the knockout stage on Wednesday, it continued its hot start by shutting out both Total Vipers Baseball Navy and Stacked Baseball and earning a berth to the quarterfinals.
New Level handed the ball to William Ross in its first game against the former this morning, and the young arm put together a masterful performance on the hill all throughout the contest. Ross went the distance on 92 pitches and blanked the Vipers, giving up just three hits and a lone walk while striking out eight opposing hitters. Featured in this was a run of nine consecutive hitters retired after allowing the first two of the game to reach base, and with a pair of runners on with two outs in the seventh, he induced a harmless fly ball to secure the win and advance his team on to the next round.
After Ross's masterpiece started off the day, Xzyyvn Martinez took the bump next against Stacked Baseball and arguably pitched even better. The righty struck out 10 in his five innings of work, doing so on just 77 pitches while only giving up a pair of hits and walks. Martinez went on a run of seven straight punchouts between the second and fourth innings, and by the time New Level had secured its 8-0 run-rule victory, he had sat down exactly half of the batters he faced via the strikeout.
On the offensive end, New Level got contributions all over the field. To start, Ross and Martinez both helped themselves out in a big way, with the former going 3-6 with two runs scored and the latter going 2-2 with two walks and two RBIs. Beyond them, Logan Scott went a perfect 4-4 with two RBIs, and Preston Bolam, Keagen Solize, and Wyatt Plier all recorded multi-hit games.
BPA Black Bats Stay Red Hot in Consecutive Run-Rule Victories
The BPA Black hitters continued their torrid start to the tournament on Wednesday, following up a 45-run outburst in pool play with 23 more in their first two games of the playoff bracket to pick up a pair of comfortable victories.
The team matched up with CBA Victus San Diego in its first game of the day and cruised to a 10-2 win thanks to an early onslaught of offense, scoring a lone run in the first followed by three in both the second and third. Numerous different BPA Black hitters had excellent showings at the plate in this one, the best of which came from Logan Schmidt and Lukas Waite, who both notched a pair of hits and RBIs throughout the contest. Beyond those two, Zion Martinez also recorded a multi-hit day, and five other hitters picked up at least one RBI of their own.
This momentum in the box carried into BPA Black's next game against Arenado Baseball Club, where it picked up an even bigger 13-3 victory largely on the back of a nine-run fourth inning. Seven of the first nine hitters in the frame reached base via a walk or a hit-by-pitch -- a stretch that put four up on the scoreboard all by itself -- and immediately following this, singles by Schmidt and Waite and a triple by Martinez helped bring the game to its early conclusion.
The offense in this game was largely powered by Martinez, Schmidt, and Will Brick, who combined to go 6-7 with four walks, six runs scored, and five RBIs at the top of the order. Waite also pitched in with a pair of runs driven in of his own, and five additional hitters notched one apiece throughout.
Prime Comes From Behind in Both Wins to Stay Alive
After cruising through pool play to the tune of a +29 run differential through four games, Prime prevailed in two separate late-inning thrillers during the knockout stage, clinching a spot in the round of eight by the thinnest of margins.
Prime first found itself with its back against the wall in its first game of the day against the Top Tier Dudes, as despite a four-run second inning, the team still found itself trailing by a pair late in the game thanks to some early offense by its opponents. Its comeback effort came together quickly in the bottom of the fifth, though, with a pair of productive outs from Michael Aleman and Calvin McField followed by a costly two-out error putting it on top for the first time all morning.
Prime didn't stop there either, bursting the floodgates open in the sixth with five more runs to essentially put the game out of reach. Two walks and a single loaded the bases with no outs, and Cody Joyce immediately cashed in on his golden opportunity to get things going again, punching a base hit into right field to score two. Directly after this, the team put two more up on the board thanks to wild pitches in back-to-back plate appearances, and a sacrifice fly off the bat of Benjamin Mazariegos brought home the final run in its eventual 13-7 victory.
This put Prime through to the round of 16, where it again had to come up clutch in the late innings against the Placentia Mustangs. After jumping out to a seven-run lead through just two innings, the team gradually saw this advantage get whittled away until a four-run sixth inning by the Mustangs wiped it all out and left it trailing by one. This had Prime needing to score a run in the bottom of the frame to knot things back up, which they managed to do thanks to an important error that brought Aleman home from third.
A scoreless seventh brought about international tiebreaker rules in the eighth, where Prime reliever Troy Galindo pulled a rabbit out of the hat and kept the score tied by stranding the two free runners with a pop fly followed by a pair of groundouts. This put Prime back in control for the first time in a while, and after a passed ball moved both of its runners over, Joyce played the hero and walked it off with a sacrifice fly that just narrowly pushed his team on to tomorrow.
San Diego Show Pull Off Back-To-Back Higher-Seeded Upsets
While the rest of the quarterfinals bracket ended up entirely composed of the seven top-ranked seeds, the lone underdog to sneak into the party was the San Diego Show, who managed to knock off two higher-ranked teams to continue their run at Champs AZ.
The Show's first upset of the day was over the No. 8 seeded Rebels Gold, who came into the bracket having not lost a game throughout the first three days of pool play. Despite this seeding discrepancy, though, the two teams played each other close, working to a 3-3 tie through the first four innings.
From this point on, San Diego started to get things clicking. The Show scratched across one run in the fifth on a triple by Aiden Sun, and the next inning, they broke open the floodgates with a five spot. This outburst was started by a single off the bat of Aaron Joe Corona, and it continued on through doubles by Kyle Montgomery, Zowen Watson, and Sun that brought the team's lead all the way up to six. This advantage was almost squandered when Rebels Gold put up five of their own in the last inning and brought the tying run to third base, but reliever Ethan Shi helped avoid disaster by inducing a pop up with two outs to end things.
After escaping the first game by the skin of their teeth, the Show kept their momentum going into their next contest against the No. 24 seeded ZT Prospects. The San Diego bats exploded for six runs in the first inning, a stretch started by a bases-loaded walk by Shi and continued by hits from Guillermo MacFarland, Montgomery, and Parker Reese -- the latter of which being a triple that brought home three all at once.
After this, San Diego was able to make it to the finish line relatively comfortably. ZT managed to put seven runs of its own on the board by the end of things, but some further offense by San Diego helped add the insurance runs necessary to take home the 11-7 win and crash the party on Thursday.
