If
you have a question you would like answered please send Patrick Ebert
an email at pebert@perfectgame.org
or send him a Tweet @PGPatrickEbert.
Based
on the amount of phone calls and emails we received there's a good
chance you received, or at least read, the release last week
pertaining to the dates of our 2015 Jr. National Showcase (June
14-16, Fort Myers, Fla.), National Showcase (June 17-22, Fort Myers,
Fla.) and PG All-American Classic (August 16, San Diego, Calif.). It
should be noted that this release was to announce the dates for these
events and not serve as an official invitation.
The
invitations for the 2015 Jr. National (classes of 2017 and 2018) and
National (class of 2016) Showcases should be sent out via snail mail
and email in the coming weeks, while the players for the Perfect Game
All-American Classic are selected by our scouting staff based on
observations made between now and early July, with most of the
decisions being made during and at the conclusion of the National
Showcase.
If
you don't receive an invitation for the Jr. National and National
events there are some steps you can take to do so:
• For the Jr. National Showcase, visit the event page on the Perfect Game site and click on the “Request an Invite” graphic. We do not offer or accept invitation requests for the National Showcase, as all invites for that event are determined internally.
• Not
all requests are granted, at least not immediately. Quite often our
scouting staff will need to see the players requesting an invitation
prior to extending one. The best way to be seen by our staff is to
attend one of our events leading up to the Jr. National and National
Showcases.
• The
best events to be evaluated are at one of our Sunshine Showcases, but
there are other events late this winter and into the spring that
would provide the opportunity for players to be evaluated and
considered for invitation. Those events include:
Pitcher/Catcher Indoor Showcase, Feb. 7-8, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
National Indoor Showcase, Feb. 21, Bridgeton, Mo.
Northeast Indoor Showcase, Feb. 28, Farmingdale, N.J.
Spring Top Prospect Showcase, April 18-19, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Sunshine East Showcase, May 16-17, Fort Myers, Fla.
Rocky Mountain Showcase, May 23-24, Greenwood Village, Colo.
National Academic Showcase, May 30-31, Emerson, Ga.
Sunshine Southeast Showcase, May 30-31, Emerson, Ga.
Sunshine Northeast Showcase, June 6-7, location TBD
Sunshine South Showcase, June 6-7, Tomball, Texas
Sunshine West Showcase, June 13-14, Chula Vista, Calif.
To
view the entire 2015 Perfect Game showcase schedule please visit this
link:
https://www.perfectgame.org/Schedule/Default.aspx?Type=Showcases
If
you have any questions pertaining to individual events, please call
our main office at 319-298-2923 and select 'Showcases' when prompted.
This
question somewhat relates to the release of our 2015 showcase
schedule as noted above. Attending any one of our showcase events
immediately gives any player additional exposure, not only to
professional scouts, but to college recruiters. If the player in
question is a high-level student that gets good grades, has a high
GPA and has scored high on his ACTs and/or SATs, the National
Academic Showcase in particular is tailored specifically to gain
exposure for such students in front of schools that have elevated
admission standards.
Affiliating
yourself with a travel ball organization for the summer is also an
important step for exposure. Thousands of teams travel to numerous
Perfect Game tournament events over the summer to not only seek
exposure, but to compete, giving all players a better gauge at what
they need to do to improve their games by playing with and against
the best players in the country.
Our
largest tournament events are held in Emerson, Ga., home to the WWBA
National Championships (wood bats). Fort Myers, Fla. is the home to
our BCS Finals (composite bats) series, but there are plenty of other
events a player could attend.
To
view the full tournament schedule for 2015, please visit this link:
https://www.perfectgame.org/Schedule/Default.aspx?Type=Tournaments
Being a junior in high school is a critical time for a player to gain exposure, so the more things one can do to potentially further one's aspiring baseball career the better. The summer before a player's senior year in high school, referred to as the summer scouting circuit, can often be more critical than the spring of the player's senior year.
If you are uncommitted looking for additional exposure during your senior year in high school, we do have a few designated uncommitted events in the late fall and early winter, including the recently completed World Uncommitted Showcase held in Fort Myers, Fla., that go a long way to help players make connections to colleges.
And
as mentioned above, if you have any other questions, don't hesitate
to pick up the phone and call our main office. Our scouting staff and
tournament directors will provide helpful tips ranging from the best
events to attend in addition to providing direction on some of the
top travel ball organizations in your area.
All-Tournament
Teams
This
afternoon we released our All-Tournament teams from the 14u,
16u and 18u Perfect Game MLK Championships held last weekend at
Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Ariz. Every time such a feature is
released we receive a significant amount of feedback from players,
parents and coaches pertaining to why a certain player was left off
the list.
One
of the most frequent questions I receive asks how the teams are assembled. For the most part the selection process has to do with a
player's statistical performance. The hitters are filtered by batting
average, but that is not the only category used for selection.
Category leaders in the prominent run-producing categories, since
these are team-based events, are given significant consideration,
especially to players that play for the teams that advance to the
playoffs. First-hand observations from our scouting staff are also
weighed.
And
there have been instances in which players that don't fare
particularly well at the plate are included for their defensive
merits, and/or players who have only one hit (or a small handful of
them), but that hit was crucial in their team's success in that
particular event.
At
the top of each All-Tournament feature I list the cutoffs for
consideration. And the comment “to qualify for consideration” is
especially noteworthy since that only means that players that reach
those thresholds aren't automatically included on the team. Those
thresholds have to be put in place for the honor of being selected to
hold value. Depending on the size of the tournament, 10 to 20 percent
of all players that participate are selected to the All-Tournament
team. The larger the tournament, the lower the percentage given the
sheer volume of players in attendance.
Without
a doubt tough decisions have to be made, and we do recognize how
important the players, parents and coaches take these honors. This
will likely be a recurring topic in this notebook over the course of
the summer.
2015
MLB Draft order nearly set
With
the Washington Nationals eye-popping signing of free agent starter
Max Scherzer, only one free agent remains that could effect the 2015
MLB Draft order, James Shields. Now that Shields is the biggest name
remaining on the market it shouldn't take long for the 2015 draft
order to become official.
The
past few years the official draft order wasn't known until
essentially the time of the draft as free agents such as Stephen Drew
and Kendrys Morales went unsigned through the entire process since no
team was willing to part with an early draft pick for either player.
To
view the current order, where it was when the 2014 season ended, who
signed where and how those signings effected the changes, please
visit this link:
https://www.perfectgame.org/Articles/View.aspx?article=10586