A look inside Perfect Game’s 13u Preseason National Top 100

On January 13th, Perfect Game published what now appears to be their annual preseason rankings for the 13u age group. 6 teams from North Carolina were ranked in the top 100, which is the same number of teams that were included in the final rankings this past summer. In addition, the same 6 teams - SBA Futures, Canes Baseball Eastern NC, Canes Baseball NC - Simpson, Five Star Carolina - Neyra, Mission Vipers Gold, and Dirtbags Legends - were included in both rankings. While Perfect Game does a fairly decent job at putting these rankings together, here we offer some thoughts about the rankings as it relates to North Carolina and the states in our region.

North Carolina Representation
The SBA Futures were the highest ranked team from North Carolina, coming in at #14.

6 teams from North Carolina made Perfect Game's Preseason National Top 100 in the 13u age group. This included our #1 team, SBA Futures, who came in at #14, our #4 Canes Baseball Eastern NC (#31), our #2 Canes Baseball NC - Simpson (#74), our #7 Five Star Carolina - Neyra (#97), our #5 Mission Vipers Gold (#98), and our #9 Dirtbags Legends (#100). That's a strong showing from North Carolina in the 13u age group, and it could be argued several deserving teams - #3 Five Star Carolina Champions and #6 Concord Athletics -Barbee, to name two - were left out. Perhaps suspiciously, these were the same 6 teams who finished ranked in the End-of-Summer rankings in 2019.

Beyond North Carolina

No teams from Virginia were ranked in the preseason, consistent with the End-of-Summer rankings for this age group from 6 months ago. South Carolina again had 1 team ranked, our #1 team Rawlings Stars National, who came in at #30, which was up from #6 in the End-of-Summer rankings in 2019.

 

 

What Perfect Game got right

The SBA Futures have proven they belong in consideration among the top teams in the United States and they have consistently been ranked among the top 20 teams since these rankings first appeared a year ago. Wins over national #16 Gulf Coast Monarchs (FL), #74 Canes - Simpson, #98 Mission Vipers Gold, and #100 Dirtbags Legends have helped solidify their spot in the top 20 nationally. We also agree with the inclusion of a handful of North Carolina teams, as several of these teams have shown they are very close to the Futures when it comes to talent and performance.

What Perfect Game got wrong

One of the negatives when doing national rankings at this age is that it's extremely difficult to figure out who is who and stay up-to-date with performance, unless you follow a state and age group extremely closely. We have trouble keeping it with just North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Not including a team such as Five Star Champions suggests they didn't follow the fall season closely. This is a new team so we understand it, but they went 15-3-1 this fall with a win over national #31 Canes Baseball Eastern NC, who may have been a questionable inclusion in the top 100 given their fall performance. Mission Vipers Gold are a team we expected to see higher than #98 after they notched wins over #14 SBA Futures, #97 Five Star Carolina - Neyra, and #100 Dirtbags Legends already this past fall. Virginia Venom National was another team who appears to have been overlooked in the preseason rankings. We were also a bit surprised to see Canes - Simpson all the way down at #74 after they went 15-4-1 this fall with wins over #30 Rawlings Stars National and #100 Dirtbags Legends.