2017 14u Perfect Game Select Baseball Festival event page
FORT MYERS, Fla. – Perfect Game showcase officials have announced the inaugural PG 14u National Showcase will be held Aug. 5-6, 2017, at the JetBlue Park Player Development Complex.
Players who will graduate from high school in the class of 2021 or younger, or were born after May 1, 2002, are eligible to request an invitation to the first-of-its-kind event. Perfect Game has put on showcases for high school-aged prospects for more than 20 years but this is the first one directed at this specific age group.
The PG 14u National Showcase will be staged one month before the 2nd annual 14u Perfect Game Select Baseball Festival is held at JetBlue Park Sept. 1-3, 2017. Following its debut over the 2016 Labor Day Weekend, the 14u PG Select Baseball Festival was immediately recognized as youth baseball’s premier event at the 14u level; it is nationally televised on FOX Sports and streamed on MLB.com.
Forty of the top age-eligible 14u players were brought together for that inaugural Festival in 2016, and a similar number is expected over this Labor Day Weekend.
Last year’s participants were selected primarily on what the PG scouting department witnessed while the young prospects were playing in PG 14u tournaments. The PG 14u National Showcase is designed to provide one more stage on which the most elite of the age-group prospects can perform while trying to catch the eye of PG scouts and earn an invitation to the 14u Festival.
PG showcase officials also cited the changing nature of college recruiting for their decision to create the PG 14u National Showcase, which is expected to draw the attention of college recruiters from across the country.
Players are making college commitments at increasingly younger ages, as evidenced by PG’s national prospect rankings. In the just-released class of 2021 rankings – this year’s eight-graders – six of the top-10 ranked prospects have already made a commitment.
They include No. 1 Nick Bitsko (Doylestown, Pa., Virginia), No. 2 Blaze Jordan (Southaven, Miss., Mississippi State), No. 3 Carlos Rodriguez (Miami, Fla., U. of Miami) and No. 4 Ethan Wood (Lebanon, Ky., Louisville).