FORT MYERS, Fla. – There seems to be at least one or two legitimate instances each year in which a highly prized high school football recruit of the four- or five-star variety also begins generating all kinds of interest on the baseball field, just ahead of his senior season and the upcoming MLB June Amateur First-Year Player Draft.
Last year, it was Monte Harrison, a star wide-receiver who had signed with Nebraska but was also a Perfect Game All-American and assumed first-round baseball draft pick. The year before it was quarterback/right-handed pitcher Kohl Stewart who had signed with Texas A&M but was another PG All-American considered a can’t-miss baseball first-rounder.
And who will ever forget Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, yet another PG All-American and the only one of the three that eschewed baseball’s riches and chose to pursue college football (he did play baseball at FSU last spring after winning the Heisman Trophy in the fall of 2013).
This year’s addendum to that storyline appears to be 2015 Georgia outfielder Dexter “D.J.” Neal from Lithonia, Ga., a 6-foot-3, 210-pound senior at Stephenson High School who is a four-star wide receiver prospect that has signed with South Carolina, and is also a top baseball prospect.
And just to prove that he isn’t 100 percent certain that he wants to spend the next three or four years playing for head coach Steve Spurrier and the Gamecocks in the rugged college football world of the Southeastern Conference, Neal was here Saturday and Sunday performing in front of MLB and Perfect Game scouts at the Perfect Game World Showcase.
“He’s immediately impressive,” PG vice president of player personnel and scouting David Rawnsley said before the start of play at Terry Park Sunday morning. Rawnsley scouted Neal’s batting practice session and his first game action Saturday afternoon.
“You look at him and he’s 6-3, 210-pounds and he carries that 210-pounds like, well, a wide receiver,” he continued. “I don’t scout football, but he looks like that prototypical, 17-year-old wide receiver prospect. He’s long, he’s lean, he’s got long arms, and when you start to see him play he’s got very graceful movements.”
Rawnsley noted that a lot of football players, even wide receivers, have what he called “muscled-up” movements, but Neal’s are more fluid. He made a diving catch in centerfield during game action Saturday that Rawnsley likened to a receiver extending his body to catch a pass.
“You see those fluid, athletic actions and he’s easy to project,” Rawnsley said. “It was just really fun to watch him play yesterday.”
Most of the chatter surrounding Neal over the past year or so has involved his football career, and rightly so. He committed to South Carolina in May 2013 after collecting offers from 13 other schools in Power 5 conferences, including Michigan State, Clemson, Tennessee, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa State.
He was ranked in the top-100 among the nation’s wide receivers by several recruiting services, including No. 29 by Rivals, No. 54 by ESPN and No. 79 by 247 Sports. This past fall at Stephenson he caught passes that led to 17 touchdowns and more than 700 receiving yards.
Neal stood out during Saturday morning’s World Showcase workout session, running the 60-yard dash in 6.66-seconds (fourth-best time at the event) and throwing 94 mph from the outfield (tied for second-best velo), both personal bests at a PG showcase.
“Now that the (football) season is over I’ve just started working baseball, and since then I’ve just been fluid with it,” Neal told PG Sunday morning.
Neal never really left baseball behind during his final high school football season. He spent his Saturdays and Sundays taking swings in a batting cage and was even able to get out on the baseball field at Stephenson HS to run the bases, after getting the OK from the baseball coaching staff.
“I was going out, running the bases, running pole-to-pole and taking some cuts just to stay around the game,” he said. “That’s all I did this fall.”
Not only did Neal run and throw well here on Saturday, he also showed big-time potential at the plate, both during BP and game-action.
“The swing is a little long now … but he showed the power to centerfield, he hit some balls hard on the ground, he ran hard,” Rawnsley said. “You really didn’t see that football rawness and the lack of repetitions. Of course, the first guy I think about is Monte Harrison from last year’s class who was a high-level wide receiver and was a little bit more physical than D.J.”
Neal remembers getting serious about both baseball and football as 5-year-old playing in a local park near his home. His interest grew in both sports as time rolled along, culminating with a high school career in which he became a highly sought after prospect in both sports. Perfect Game ranks him the No. 116 overall prospect in the country (class of 2015) and the No. 26 outfield prospect.
“It’s really just athleticism,” Neal said when asked what he is able to transfer from sport to the next. “A lot of this stuff just comes naturally to me so I just work on it, take notes from other coaches and people above me, and then just (apply) it on the field.”
The PG World Showcase is the 18th Perfect Game event Neal has attended, most of them PG WWBA tournaments playing with the GBSA Blue Rays; he earned all-tournament recognition playing with the Blue Rays at last summer’s PG WWBA 17u National Championship and 17u Perfect Game-East Cobb Invitational. He played for the Texas Scout Team Yankees at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., during the last week in October.
He has his mentors and peers on the football field, of course, and to accept a scholarship offer in that sport speaks volumes for his love of the gridiron. But this is an athletic, extremely talented Georgia high school outfielder, an elite society that has produced as many as eight first or second round MLB draft picks since 2011, including Byron Buxton, Larry Greene, Clint Frazier, Austin Meadows, Terry McClure and Michael Gettys.
More could follow in those players’ footsteps in about six months. Georgia prep outfielders Daz Cameron, Jahmai Jones and Bryant Harris (who was also at the PG World Showcase this weekend) join Neal on that list.
“I watched those guys play all the time. All I can do is just look and watch and see what they do and try to get better after that,” Neal said.
“As I think back on some of the prototypical Georgia high school outfielders who have been picked in the top-three rounds, I’m not so sure just on this first look I don’t like D.J. Neal a lot better than some of those guys who I know were valued that highly in the draft,” PG’s Rawnsley said. “So he’s got a chance to really turn some heads this spring if he goes out and (does well) because the scouts are going to come out and see him.”
There is the possibility, of course, that Neal will end up in Columbia, S.C., leading the Gamecocks on both the football and baseball fields, much like Winston did at Florida State during the 2013-14 school athletic calendar.
Neal said South Carolina football defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward saw him playing at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter and approached the Gamecocks’ baseball coaching staff about the football staff’s willingness to allow Neal to play both sports.
“I was on my way back to Georgia when they called letting me know that I could play baseball at South Carolina, too,” Neal said. “That was good news for me.”
It should be noted that Stewart and Harrison chose professional baseball over college football primarily because of the dollars that MLB clubs were able to wave in their faces. Stewart, the fourth overall pick by the Minnesota Twins in the 2013 draft, accepted a $4.5 million signing bonus. Harrison agreed to an above-slot $1.8 million from the Milwaukee Brewers despite slipping into the second round. Those two players probably could have played both sports in college.
“Another scenario that could come up is he could be really, really good this spring and scouts could get excited about him and turn him into a Monte Harrison draft pick and sign,” Rawnsley noted. “Two-million dollars speaks pretty loudly, even against SEC football.”
But there is something more in the mix for Neal: The kid really loves baseball. During his Sunday morning conversation with PG he called it a “fun sport” noting that it’s “all fun and games when you’re hitting the ball and when you’re making nice plays in the outfield.” He also called it “humbling” and an endeavor that puts him to the test whenever he takes the field.
“Right now I’m just thinking about baseball and trying to get drafted. After that, I can just see where my talents take me,” he said. “I thought it was important I was out here this weekend because I’m trying to raise my stock in baseball. Plus, this is an opportunity to put more work in before the (high school) season so I thought I should be here to showcase my talent and see how it went.”