Anthony Meo, the former Cranston West All-Stater, is one of the leaders of Auburn Post 20.

Journal / Glenn Osmundson

The American Legion baseball season is well under way, and nobody is taking the defending state champion, Warwick’s Shields Post 43, lightly.

It doesn’t matter that Post 43 got off to a slow start (1-2) or that six 19-year-olds, including Pete Mastors and Garrett Stenhouse, two of the team’s top hitters, and Paul Vatter, the team’s top pitcher, are gone from last year’s championship team.

Manager Jim Foster’s club has a history of peaking late in the season, and it has a good mix of solid returning players, as well as talented newcomers who are ready to fill the void left by the loss of last year’s stars.

Shields got off to a slow start last year and then shocked the state by coming out of the loser’s bracket and winning the state title.

Shields is 5-3, and Foster said his team is already finding its groove, as evidenced by winning of four of its last five games. Shields also won the six-day Coca-Cola American Legion tournament June 27 through Monday, beating Albuquerque, N.M., 11-6, in the championship game.

“We played very well,” Foster said of the tournament, which featured teams from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. “We only lost one game in the tournament. It was a good experience for the kids. They are coming along and doing a good job.”

Foster said the Shields lineup racked up 18 hits in the nine-inning championship game against New Mexico, including a 4-for-5 (2 triples, 2 doubles, 4 RBI) performance by Mark Melchiori, who recently graduated from Pilgrim.

Starting pitcher Sean Furney, a junior at Pilgrim who had been hurt for most of the summer, started the championship game and threw five strong innings, Foster said.

That’s good news for Post 43’s bullpen, which is led by ace Dave Krasnowiecki, who plays at North Carolina Wesleyan. The left-hander tossed a one-hitter in a 10-0 win over Upper Deck earlier this season.

Eric Blanchard, a 2007 Pilgrim graduate who played a big role last season; Mike Moise, a recent graduate of La Salle Academy; Pat Lavey, a newcomer to the team who plays at Cranston East; Tyler Baum, a Cranston East graduate, and James Rodriguez, who plays for Warwick High, will also be called upon to pitch strong games this season.

At the plate, Foster will rely on Anthony Dupre, a former All-Stater from Pilgrim who plays for CCRI and who Foster calls the best catcher in the state, along with Kevin Stenhouse (Pilgrim), Jeremy Ladas (Cranston East), Chris Valerio (Cranston East), Mike Nadiger (Pilgrim grad) and Donnie McGuirl (St. Sebastian’s School in Needham, Mass.) to help power Post 43’s offense.

“I think we have gotten better since the start of the season,” said Foster, who gives a lot of credit to the team’s success to his assistant coaches Ray Lang, Jim Morrison and Brian Tucker.

“I’m happy because we lost a lot of kids from last year. We have a good mix of new kids coming in and some returners and they are playing together now. We have steadily gotten better as the season has gone along, and hopefully we can put it together at the end like we did last year.”

The team to beat?

Foster said that Gershkoff Auto Body/Auburn Post 20 is the team to beat this year.

“They are head-and-shoulders above everyone else,” Foster said. “They are undefeated and are handling everyone. We beat them in the finals last year, but they are a very good team this year. They have a lot of talent over there. They look like the team to beat.”

Auburn Post 20, which beat Shields, 7-2, earlier this season, has two current college baseball players on its roster: Dan Lovejoy (Cranston West, hit .368 this spring for CCRI) and Ryan Raleigh (All-State shortstop at Cranston West who hit .254 for Division III Worcester State last spring), and four more who will play for a Division I school next year, including Cranston West All-Staters Anthony Meo (pitcher, Coastal Carolina University, drafted by the Washington Nationals in the 43rd round) and Chris Famigletti (Division I-West Outstanding Player of the Year, will play for Texas A&M).Cranston West graduate Dan Hopkins (a second-team All-State selection) will play for UMass-Amherst, as will La Salle graduate Brent Hopkins (first team All-State, Division I-North Outstanding Player of the Year).

“They are going to be tough to beat,” Foster said.

Playoffs start July 25

The Rhode Island American Legion playoffs are slated to begin on July 25 with preliminary-round action. The final four and championship rounds will be held from Aug. 2-6 at Rhode Island College.

The Northeast Regional Tournament will be played in Bristol, Conn., from Aug. 14-18, with the American Legion World Series scheduled for Aug. 21-25 in Shelby, N.C.

roblee@projo.com