Post 21 baseball team aiming high this summer

Just before the turn of the decade barely five years ago, it would have been tough to imagine the Burke County Post 21 American Legion baseball team entering a season with realistic expectations of making its first N.C. Area IV semifinal series since 2009.

Yet that’s where things stand today as Post 21 enters its 66th season all-time, the club’s 57th consecutive summer with a team not counting the nationwide COVID cancellation of 2020.

Post 21 opens the season on Wednesday, May 28, against Hickory Post 48 in a contest slated for Morganton’s Shuey Field at 7 p.m.

Hopes are high because Post 21 has enjoyed recent postseason success and features a veteran roster that is deep with pitching this summer.

Post 21 won first-round playoff series in 2021, 2022, and 2024 after having suffered through the previous 10 years with just one total playoff series win.

Each year until this summer, a first-round series win advanced teams only to the Area IV quarterfinals. But Area IV is down to 10 teams in 2025 after having as many as 18 teams in the late 2010s and still as many as seven teams in the West Division alone as recently as two summers ago.

The East and West divisions were dissolved prior to last summer, and unlike last year when all 11 teams received playoff berths this year, only the top eight get in.

That makes first-round opponents tougher, but it also means one playoff series win lifts a team to within another playoff series win of a trip to the state tournament in Cherryville starting July 26.

It has been 31 years since Post 21’s lone state tournament appearance.

“The expectation is definitely to be in the top eight,” Post 21 third-year head coach Matt Baker said. “I think it’ll be top-heavy with Asheville (Post 70), Cherryville (Post 100), and Shelby (Post 82), and from the middle of the pack down, everybody will be similar in my opinion. If we can find our way into the middle of the pack, that’s where I’d kind of want to be going into the playoffs to have a realistic chance to win first round. We won in the first round last year, so we’d like to get at least to the second round this year and see what we can do.”

In addition to those three teams, Rutherford County Post 423 tied for the Area IV regular-season title last summer, and Gaston County Post 144-266 finished one game back.

Post 21 was 8-20 and finished ninth place in 2024 but highlighted its season with a thrilling first-round playoff series win over border rival Caldwell County Post 29 in five games.

This year’s team features a pair of third-year returning players in Patton’s Aaron Duncan and Freedom’s Zach Carson as well as second-year players Cohen Christian, Brady Davis, Landry Duvall, and Wyatt Hullette of Patton, Maddox Mosteller, Mason Mosteller, and Austin Reynolds of East Burke, and Jacob Davis and Zeb Koone of McDowell.

(Davis played in 2023 and returns after missing last summer with an injury.)

The rest of the 18-man roster includes Laine Barrier of Patton, Rhett Houston and college commits Cannon Morrison and Barger Shook, all from East Burke, Kyle Self and Brooks Snipes of Freedom, and Cayden Barker of Draughn.

Each season so far under Baker, Post 21’s roster has featured at least one player from each of the five high school programs in its drawing area spanning Burke and McDowell counties. That hadn’t happened at all in the dozen years prior, since Baker was a player on that ’09 team that won a pair of playoff series and reached the Area IV semis.

“I feel like we’ve got a really good team this year,” Baker said. “I think we pulled some of the better kids from the county, which we haven’t done in the past few years. We’ve still got help from McDowell, which is good.”

Baker said the top five candidates for starting pitching spots appear to be Barrier, Christian, Self, Brady Davis, and Mason Mosteller, though 12 total players will all be expected to eat up innings from the mound at some point.

Notably, Jacob Davis, who threw a no-hitter at Rutherford in 2023, will start the year in relief according to Baker but may be able to start games on the mound later in the season “hopefully down the road and into the playoffs.”

Shook will serve as the team’s closer after a spring high school season in which he finished with a spotless ERA in the same role for the Cavaliers.

Baker also has a familiar face back to work with the pitchers in 2025. He this summer welcomes back assistant coach Jonathan Browning for a third straight year and adds Tony Grady to the staff as pitching coach. It will be Grady’s third stint in a role that he’s held for Post 21 for more than a decade and a half altogether.

“We’re a bit heavier on pitching than we have been,” Baker said. “And I think we’re going to be really good defensively. It’s a matter of how well we hit it, and we do have some pretty good hitting. I’m optimistic for the season for sure.”

After Post 21’s opener against Hickory, the dates for the next two games have been changed. Cherryville now comes to Shuey the following night, May 29, before Caldwell visits town on June 7. Those games previously had been slated for May 30 and June 6.

The addition of Wilkes County Post 31 — which Post 21 hosts in its fourth game on June 9 — shrinks travel some with two Charlotte-area teams gone from Area IV.

As it stands now, the team’s busiest road stretch comes June 25-28 near the end of the regular season with a game at Caldwell followed by trips on consecutive days to face Shelby and Wilkes.