There was so much talent among the roughly 1,600 players that were gathered in Jupiter, Fla., for last weekend’s World Wood Bat Association fall championship that one could conceivably do dozens of different Top 10 lists: By position, by class, by region, by performance, by everything imaginable.
The Perfect Game staff will come out with an extensive top prospect list, by class, from the event once all the information and scouting notes have been sifted through, organized and analyzed back in Iowa. Those lists will eventually appear on PG Crosschecker.
As part of my duties in Jupiter, I went through every game sheet as part of the process of entering scores into the system and doing game wraps on the WWBA website. Those sheets contain scouting notes and performance reports on every player. Perfect Game also had two of its own scouts at every field for every game, and most made a point of coming through the tower to make sure everyone knew which players they liked.
From the tower in the center of the blue quad, you can always see four different games going on from 8 a.m. each day to well after dark. There are also opportunities to wander through the crowds of scouts, coaches and agents gathered, and ask, “What are you seeing?”
So even if it wasn’t possible to see every player in Jupiter, I still got plenty of input. Instead of rehashing the same familiar names you can read about elsewhere on this site, I thought I would offer a slightly different spin on a Top 10 list of players from Jupiter.
I have chosen to identify 10 players—not necessarily the 10 best players—who left me with the strongest impressions from five days of competition. Some are top prospects and well-known to scouts and recruiters, some are not necessarily either. But they all stood out in their own way.
1. Dylan Covey, rhp, Marantha HS, Pasadena, Calif. (2010)
The 6-foot-2, 195-pound Covey’s first pitch was 94 mph and his last pitch, seven innings later, was 94—and there were lots of nasty fastballs and 78-80 mph hammer curves in between. A very good team (the Kansas City Royals Scout Team) had no chance, absolutely no chance, to hit him when he got in a groove and he gave up just one hit, a wind-blown triple, while striking out 17. |