Nick Poulos, a pitcher on the Palisades High baseball team, played in the USA Baseball and Major League Baseball-sponsored Breakthrough Series Tournament in North Carolina. July 26-29. Selected by MLB Urban Youth Academy, run by former Angels catcher Daryl Miller, Poulos played on the White Sox team coached by scouts of the Chicago-based major league organization. Poulos made two relief appearances in the tournament. In his team’s first game at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Carey, North Carolina, he entered in the eighth inning against the MVP team with the score tied 7-7 under international tiebreaker rules, when each inning starts with two runners on base. After intentionally walking a batter to load the bases, Poulos ended the inning with a strikeout after runs had scored on a passed ball and two groundouts. The White Sox scored three runs in the bottom of the inning to win, 10-9. The final games of the tournament were played at Durham Bull’s Baseball Park, the home stadium of the minor league organization affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays. Again pitching against the MVP team, Poulos took the mound with the White Sox leading 6-3 in the fifth inning. He struck out three batters, allowing no runs on two hits over the final two frames. This past spring, Poulos, a 5′ 10′ right-hander, pitched three shutouts, beat Bell in the first round of the City Division I playoffs and made the All-Western League First Team. The MLB started the Breakthrough Series in 2008 and held it for two years at the Urban Youth Academy in Compton. USA Baseball took a greater administrative role this year and relocated the series to the North Carolina Triangle, where it has its headquarters. ’We’re pleasantly surprised by the talent here,’ USA Baseball CEO Paul Seiler said. ‘There are some guys who are going to get an opportunity [in the Big Leagues] someday because of this exposure and this event.’ The Breakthrough Series, designed to showcase rising high school juniors and seniors around the country, consists of 80 players selected by the Major league Scouting Bureau, the MLB Urban Youth Academy, the Atlanta-based organization Mentoring Viable Prospects, the Chicago White Sox and USA Baseball.
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