Little League team with Mariners ties makes WS

This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SEATTLE -- A local team going all the way to the Little League World Series can ignite and rally a community in ways that simply can’t be matched. The youth, ambition and potential for all that lies ahead triggers an extra sense of inspiration at this time of year.

That’s precisely what’s been underway in recent days in the Puget Sound region, after Pullayup-based South Hill stormed back from trailing 6-5 in the sixth inning then putting up an eight-spot -- all with two outs --in the final inning of their victory in the Northwest Regionals over Idaho’s West Valley team on Thursday, punching their ticket to Williamsport, Pa., in the process.

After the score went final, and during the Mariners’ miraculous comeback vs. the Tigers, the results were plastered on the jumbotron at T-Mobile Park, evoking a loud roar, with some players halting to applaud. That momentum will continue this Friday, when South Hill plays in its first LLWS game.

“We probably got 10 or 11 pictures of people who were at the game,” said Justin Stolmeier, father of Easton, who plays for South Hill. “Then the boys had their big comeback, and then the Mariners had their big comeback. So it was really fun, and pretty inspiring for the boys to see it all.”

Stolmeier is also the Mariners’ senior director of engineering and development, a key behind-the-scenes cog whose imprint has spanned just about every department in the organization. He’s had a whopping seven titles since joining the Mariners in 2003.

The résumé begins with Stolmeier bridging customers to the sales department through integrating ticketing and service systems. He later built technology for the club’s photographers to better disseminate images, whether it be for corporate events or action shots. He also built a system for Mariners employees to request, fulfill and distribute complimentary tickets internally. When HR needed help allocating scheduling for their event staff that spans hundreds of part-time employees, Stolmeier built a portal that helped organize it all.

On a deeper level, Stolmeier has been in the thick of the Mariners’ baseball operations technologies, too. He was at the forefront of the club’s efforts to bring most of the applications in-house rather than use third parties, under former general manager Jack Zduriencik.

Specifically, in the years since, Stolmeier and his staff have leveraged tracking and other tech of roughly 30-35 sources of information from MLB and funneled it into their own proprietary, custom-built applications.

“When I first started, there weren’t analysts,” Stolmeier said. “We didn’t have Statcast. ... But now, we’re able to support all of the analysts that have grown kind of Moneyball-style in the baseball department, and that group now, just recently, grew again and branched out and has become kind of its own thing.”

It’s not uncommon to see employees in baseball remain in the industry for much, if not all, of their career -- even in today’s cyclical economy. But the versatility of Stolmeier’s work on the club’s IT side speaks to what keeps him going.

“You know in the movies, like in Mission: Impossible, I'm kind of like the guy in the van,” Stolmeier said. “I'm not the guy who's out front. I'm not the one who's out there talking with people. I'm usually the guy in the van helping make it happen from the backside.”

Above all, though, family is Stolmeier’s driving force.

A former ballplayer at Walla Walla Community College and Washington State University, Stolmeier passed his passion for the game along to Easton and his daughter Kenzie, a rising senior in high school. Easton, he says, drew his inspiration from watching Kenzie’s athletic growth.

“When we went to the field, he [Easton] would come out with his ball, his little wiffle ball and bat and go hit,” Stolmeier said. “And actually, early on, he didn't know the difference between hitting left or right.”

The pandemic trimmed Stolmeier’s in-person demands to where he’s now working at the ballpark roughly three days per week. That revised schedule, coupled with the schedules for Easton and Kenzie, prompted the family to move from Sammamish to Puyallup, closer to the amateur action.

“He [Easton] always loved being a team-oriented kid,” Stolmeier said. “He just loves being a part of it and competing as a squad. So it's been a pretty natural, natural fit.”

During his upbringing, Easton wore No. 23 as a nod to former Mariners icon Nelson Cruz, whom he met as a youngster, and because he felt “that he was the ultimate teammate on and off the field, and because he had an incredible work ethic.”

He and the rest of South Hill will bring that mentality into Williamsport -- and with the support of an entire region.