[MAW] Offseason News & Notes #3: Spring Training Day Edition!

RED ADDS TO HIS ARSENAL

How do you spend the winter after winning a Mid Atlantic and National Championship? Celebrate? Rest? Go to Disney World?

If you’re Chris Sarnowski, you work tirelessly on perfecting both a knuckleball and a super curve to add to what is already an impressive and proven arsenal.

On Saturday, Red came out tossing fluttering knuckle balls and 12 to 6 curveballs at unsuspecting hitters. By his own admission, he concentrated his entire offseason work on developing those two offerings and the work has seemingly paid off. It would be understandable if – four weeks from the Opening Day Tournament – Red was still ironing out the kinks on the new pitches, but both looked to be tournament-ready. The knuckler was a good fast pitch knuckleball, with enough velocity as to not negate the advantage of its unpredictable movement. Red’s super curve was very impressive at times. When he threw it for a strike, the pitch started well above the batter’s head and dipped to the bottom portion of the strike zone. The curve had more velocity behind it than most super curves do. It got to the plate quickly and dipped downward very sharply, ending up somewhere between an insane power sinker and a more traditional off speed super curveball.

While Red shifted towards his traditional arsenal later in the tournament, he also continued to pepper in the new pitches. When paired with his existing riser, screwball, and drop, the knuckleball and super curve give the 2021 Mid Atlantic MVP a potential embarrassment of riches to use against opposing hitters this upcoming season.

ON THE COMEBACK TRAIL

Several players appeared at the Spring Training event after a significant fast pitch layoff.

2018 Mid Atlantic Rookie of the Year Blake Hoffman was back playing competitively for the first time in two years.  Blake – who was added to the Dinos roster for the summer – looked good while throwing the bulk of the innings for the Brice Clark-drafted club. His stuff was sharp and after some concern about a year ago that his arm was damaged to the point of Wiffle®Ball retirement, he appeared to be fully healthy. Blake added and subtracted throughout the tournament, but when going full throttle his velocity was as good as it has been.  Most importantly, Blake appeared comfortable and focused on the rubber. Hoffman will face a lot of excellent hitters who weren’t in MAW the last time he played, so there might be some bumps in the road early on, but there was nothing but positives to take away from his draft tournament outing.

Jim Quartuccio cut his teeth in competitive Wiffle®Ball in the mid-2000’s competing in Wiffle Up tournaments, the Fast Plastic New Jersey region, New Jersey Wiffle®Ball Association tournaments, among others. In addition, he competed in the GSWL PA region for the first couple of years of the 2010’s. While Jim did play in GAUL this past fall, it has been a decade since he competed in an unrestricted fast pitch environment. The New Jersey native was taken by the Noah Silverman drafted team and was afforded an opportunity to pitch in his team’s second game. He fared well, pounding the strike zone with Yard speed to slightly above offerings, all with quality movement. Jim showed a solid approach at the plate, even if he ultimately had little to show for it. Quartuccio already has at least an offer in hand for the Opening Day Tournament and by press time, there is a good chance that will be a done deal.

A MEMORABLE DEBUT

Before arriving at the Spring Training Day tournament and making his competitive debut, 15-year-old Jake Bannon was already such a big Wiffle®Ball fan that he converted his family’s Maryland backyard into a Wiffle®Ball field and helped turn the post-season pizza party for his summer travel baseball team into an impromptu Wiffle® party. Looking to take the next step and get involved in the competitive action he had only previously watched in MLW and MAW videos, Jake signed up for the Training Day Draft Tournament.

Jake was drafted onto the Connor Young led team, which proved to be a great fit with the likes of Sean Bingnear, Gino Joseph, and Dennis Donegan there to offer advice, along with Andrew Montero, who has some recent experience with younger teammates as a membeer of the Texas-based squad Can’t Touch This for United Wifflle®Ball. It was, however, a hour-long bullpen session with veteran teammate Dan Potter that really paid dividends. Bannon possessed only a passing knowledge of Wiffle®Ball grips, pitches, and arm angles prior to the tournament, but you would have never known that after he was done working with Potter.

Jake was handed the ball to start his team’s third and final game. Young was prepared to bring in a reliever if Jake struggled to find the zone, rather than hang him out to try. As it turned out, that backup plan was unnecessary. Although Bannon certainly benefited from a couple of outs ricocheting off the roof and and chases out of the zone, he was around the target the entire 7-inning outing and showed off a riser and screwball that have definite upside. With his family looking on, Bannon wrapped up a 7-inning complete game victory to help his team to a tournament best 2-0-1 record. While pitching in a tournament with real stakes is different than throwing in a pre-season draft event, Jake showed nice command and tremendous poise the entire outing. He certainly has a bright Wiffle®Ball future ahead of him.

VETERAN PITCHERS (MOSTLY) TAKE IT EASY

For the most part, the more experienced pitchers in Saturday’s tournament choose to throw just a few innings or none at all. Neither McElrath touched the ball. Connor Young threw just a couple of innings in relief for his team. Noah Silverman did not pitch himself at all, while Brice Clark inserted himself into a game just to face his two Stompers’ teammates (Nate Cruz and Sean Ryan), whom he promptly struck out. Other pitchers including Sean Bingnear, Cam Farro, Colin Prentiss, Dave Capobianco, and Grant Miller threw a normal game (five innings) or less for their teams as a means of loosening up before the start of the season in four weeks.

Even some less experienced pitchers wisely held back some during the pre-season event. Goon Squad teammates Andrius Fink and Steven Simcox each worked just an inning in a relief. Fink and Simcox were scheduled to be two of their team’s three pitchers on Sunday in the Maryland Chesapeake Wiffle®Ball League and wisely backed off on Saturday.

As expected, it was the younger pitchers or pitchers coming back after a long layoff that threw the most with Blake Hoffman, Dougie Baker, and Jake Bannon all working six or more innings during the tournament.

The one exception to the rule was Red, who threw 15 innings – two complete games and a relief appearance – for his team. With only Baker and the McElraths as viable pitching options on the team he drafted, Red bit the bullet and ate most of his team’s innings. The work was not all in vain, however, as it afforded him an opportunity to test out his new pitches against a variety of different hitters.

HERE AND THERE

Throughout the day, we asked players to name the team that improved the most over the winter months. One oft-repeated response was that the New School Risers – thanks to the addition of Jimmy Cole – have gone from a mid-tier team to a potential perennial tournament contender . . . Although no members of the Voodoo roster were present at the event, they weren’t entirely “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” either. Several players mentioned Voodoo as an improved team and a favorite in 2022, while a veteran MAW player also listed Voodoo’s David Wood among his three current toughest pitchers in the sport . . . The size of the field at Spooky Nook – 125 feet down the lines, 150 to center – and a support beam in right-field made home runs hard to come by, even with the modified rule where any ball hitting the fence in the air was considered a home run. There was only one home run hit on the day – a blast by Colin Pollag off Sarnowski that traveled an estimated distance of 130-135 feet . . . There is a baseball truism that hitters lag behind pitchers in the early days of Spring Training. That was also the case in Lancaster on Saturday where fresh arms and an abundance of pitchers on most teams led to a rough day for many hitters . . . Getting together for the first time since they won the National title last October, the four principal members of the Juggernauts spent Friday evening having a well deserved and long overdue team celebration . . . The addition of a 5th fielder and the bigger field dimensions led to a few more defensive gems than you usually see at a MAW tournament and many more loud outs. In particular, Dennis Donegan was robbed of what would have been a no-doubter anywhere else and a potential triple on this field, but was instead caught at the wall for an out by Adam Milsted . . . Just days north of one month since undergoing Tommy John surgery, Ben Stant didn’t participate in the tournament but did take a few swings while using only his left arm and the results were surprisingly strong. While nobody should expect to see Stant swinging one-handed in a regular season tournament, the mere fact that it is not an impossibility is impressive . . . Stant is targeting the June 18th tournament in York for his return, but in a designated hitter capacity only . . . The only other injury news of note is that Great Lakes’ Ethan Winer continued to lay off his right arm at the tournament, although he reports that it is feeling better than it did at the end of the 2021 season. In the meantime, Ethan continues to experiment throwing with his non-dominant hand . . . Dougie Baker had a good day, pitching well in a 2-0 loss in his team’s first game and getting in a lot of reps at the plate. Meanwhile, his Goon Squad teammates spoke very highly of him and the impact they expect him to have on the team in 2022 . . . Connor Young saw a lot of himself in Jake Bannon from a physical perspective. Both players are tall and lanky and the ERL captain believes that Jake will be able to add some significant zip on his pitches once he figures out how to use his frame to his advantage, something Connor had to figure out for himself earlier in his career . . . Not that he doesn’t usually throw hard, but Ridley Park Magic’s Cam Farro came out firing on a different level against the first hitters he faced on Saturday. Cam was throwing hard enough that his Magic teammates shouted at him to pull back some, but the scary part is the pitches didn’t even look like they were delivered with max effort . . . Have the Longballs found themselves a new arm in Dylan Harshaw to make up for the losses of Tommy Loftus and Sean Bingnear? Probably not, but Dylan looked solid throwing four quality innings over two games while primarily using a screwball that he was able to consistently throw for a strike . . . 18 of the 28 participants pitched at least one inning in the tournament . . . The most active player outside of games was easily the Stompers’ Brice Clark. Clark could be found hitting golf sized plastic balls with a skinny bat, throwing a baseball, or pitching on the side almost the entire time he wasn’t actively playing in a game.