1. What player(s) really stood out as being MVP type of players this summer?
’21 Tam Bellefuil (Yakima) had an outstanding high school and summer season – finishing 1st team all metro and all state definitely validated his strong summer – leading the team in offense with 9 triples as a catcher and throwing out 10 base runners was what we expected and he delivered and more.
’22 Gunnar Shiotani who split the catching duties with Bellefuil earns honorable mention as there was never a ‘step down’ when Shiotani caught – he was right there with the all state catcher and was an offensive threat all year.
’23 Evan Hjort, despite being the 2nd youngest and smallest sized player on the roster moved into the starting short stop role for us mid June and only committed 1 error in the new position rest of the summer and also batted .300 for us.
2. What pitcher(s) led the team and were your Cy Young winners?
’22 Zaid Flynn led us on the mound this year with the most innings pitched and some were against some of our toughest opponents all year. There were a couple games where he flat out dominated with a fastball sitting 81-83 with a big curveball. The righty finished with 64 innings, striking out 87, and only walking 30 and giving up 28 earned runs.
’23 Logan Anderson really blossomed in his first year of real select baseball and high school ball. The young righty mostly worked out of the bullpen with 46 innings striking out 73 with a 85-86 fastball and developing offspeed.
Our lone senior pitcher ’21 Alex Culver (Olympic) delivered for us with 55.2 innings and led the team with just a 1.6 ERA without dominating stuff.
3. What were some key moments in the summer for the team?
There was a lot of on field success – finishing 4th in the Seattle Elite League playoffs, top 16 in the Centralia Showcase and top 6 in the Lee Johnson. We picked up two ’23s that really delivered and gave us some extra life for all the success – ’23 LHP Blake Gettmann from Shorewood and ’23 OF Max Sevier from Ballard. Gettmann was clutch in key moments on the mound and Max instantly slotted into a RBI driving machine.
4. Your biggest take away from the 2021 season?
There was a ton of improvement – we started the season in March before half the roster even played a single high school game in their lives and the growing pains quickly went away by May and June. The learning curve was huge but credit to all the guys, they worked their butts off, learned from embarrassingly tough losses early on, and never repeated the same mistakes.
5. The outlook for the 2022 season.
We only graduated 5 seniors, with only one of them being a pitcher. We’re set up for a really strong 2022 with some key pick ups. The guys are already so hungry to start some fall ball and our weight lifting program, it’ll be really exciting to see how much stronger and better they’re going to be in a few months.