THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND MOST COMPREHENSIVE SCOUTING ORGANIZATION
| 2,384 MLB PLAYERS | 15,805 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS
2,384 MLB PLAYERS | 15,805 MLB DRAFT SELECTIONS
Sign in Create Account
Sign in Create Account
Showcase  | Story | 7/15/2021

Kling out, but National still special

Jeff Dahn
Photo: Paxton Kling (Perfect Game)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It was unfortunate but elite 2022 outfielder Paxton Kling is wise enough to know it’s all part of the game when you choose to perform on one huge stage just a day before jumping on another huge stage – one a PG WWBA national championship tournament and the other the PG National Showcase.

Kling was playing all-out for the Canes National 17u in one of the semifinal games at the PG WWBA 17u National Championship up in Marietta, Ga., on Tuesday when he got hit by a pitch in his left foot. It was a misfire that may even have broken his big toe; he had not yet had it X-rayed on Wednesday. The Canes won that semi only to be beaten by the East Cobbs Astros, 6-4, in the blockbuster event’s championship game.



“It hit me square in the foot and it was [painful] but I kept playing,” Kling told PG Wednesday, speaking from a back room at Tropicana Field, the site of this year’s PG National and the home of the 2020 American League champion Tampa Bay Rays. “Then I took my sock off and it was all bruised and everything.”

It was serious enough that Kling was walking with a noticeable limp Wednesday morning when he arrived at The Trop. He was unable to participate in any of Wednesday morning’s four-team workout session and he and his dad, Craig Kling, decided to leave St. Petersburg a day early.

The Klings call Roaring Spring, Pa., home, a small burg that sits about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh. Paxton will be senior in the fall at Central High School and he’s bringing a lot of attention – not to mention a lot of interested scouts – to the school based on his No. 19 national ranking in the class of 2022.

A 6-foot-2, 195-pound outfielder (he’s ranked as the No. 5 OF prospect in the country} and a Louisiana State commit, Kling possesses elite athletic skills based on the 6.45-second 60-yard dash he turned in at the 2020 WWBA Workout Showcase to go with a 92 mph outfield velo and a 99 mph exit velo.

It’s a shame that Paxton Kling was unable to improve on those numbers inside domed, climate-controlled Tropicana Field on Wednesday but he was thrilled to be here all the same.

“It means a lot to me; all the hard work is starting to pay off and I’m not done yet,” Kling said of receiving the invitation to the PG National Showcase. “I get to travel all over the place for all this stuff, so that’s awesome. It’s just playing the game that I’ve loved right from the beginning.”

Craig Kling noted that his son is just one of those naturally born athletes who dabbled in football and played basketball until he got into high school when he decided to concentrate his efforts on the diamond. As his dad said, you could probably put something in Paxton’s hand that he no experience with and he’d take one look and figure out exactly what he’s supposed to do with it very quickly.

His dad couldn’t say for sure where Paxton’s innate love for the game of baseball came from. It wasn’t something that was forced upon him but something that came from inside and something he just couldn’t ever get enough of.

“[He’s] always striving to try to get better,” Craig told PG Wednesday. “This game is humbling and he knows it. There’s always something else that he needs to work on and strive to get better at and work through.”

Craig Kling recalled a time when Paxton was 6 or 7 years old and he was participating in a practice session with a little league team that featured kids who were five years older than his son. The coach called him over and told him to take a couple of swings, and afterwards that same coach called the team together and told them, hey guys, that’s the way you attack a baseball.

“I think that when you have one of those eye-opening events, it sort of started there,” Craig said. “For him, with travel baseball, he was always the top guy on the team. When is he not going to be the top guy on the team? It was always, ‘He’s not that good’ was kind of my thought.

“Then we finally got to the point about two years ago that, hey, he’s pretty good; we’ve kind of come to that realization,” he added. “We try to be humble about it and that’s what we try to teach him: be confident but be humble about it.”

Kling was rostered with the PG Gray Team at the National, a squad that boasts quite a bit of firepower in the dugout, even without Kling. While he is the highest ranked prospect at No. 19, he can count amongst his teammates the right-hander Cooper Dossett (No. 69-ranked, Arkansas commit); shortstop Cade McGarrh (No. 75, Texas Tech); right-hander Hunter Sloop (No. 76, Tennessee); shortstop Colby Shelton (No. 84, Clemson) and shortstop Travis Sanders (No. 88, Texas Tech) among the other top-100s.

“I think the most enjoyable part about it is just playing the game of baseball,” Kling said about his PG experiences. “We all started when we were younger and it’s still a game that I love and I’m going to continue to love and just keep playing it...

“You don’t stop learning in baseball,” he added. “You go through slumps, you go through injuries, you go through a bunch of stuff and you don’t stop learning how to be better.”

Paxton Kling kicked-off his travel ball career playing with the Irwin, Pa.-based Flood City Elite, a team with which he earned three PG all-tournament selections in 2019-20. He joined the Canes National 17u in 2020 where he’s earned all-tournament recognition four more times – and counting – in 2020-21; he has also been a part of two PG WWBA championship teams with the Canes in the last two years.

“He had the skill set and he had a coach [at Flood City] that was very good at teaching him the mental side of the game; the Flood City group that he was with was very instrumental on helping him develop,” Craig said. “But when he went to the Canes he was now playing with 25 other guys who are at the same level playing in almost a college atmosphere already. It allowed him to develop all-around as a player/person.”

And what a roster this Canes National 17u boasts with other highly-ranked 2022s like left-hander Jackson Ferris (No. 6), righty Brock Porter (No. 7), middle-infielder Cole Young (No. 11) and lefty Tristan Smith (No.12) among a sizable group that is also here at the National Showcase this week.

Paxton cherishes the time he gets to spend with the Canes and there will be more to come this summer. He called the environment surrounding the program “just different” and although the roster is stacked with talented individuals who will either play in college or professionally post-high school, they can still manage to play as a team in pursuit of PG WWBA and PG World Series national championships.

“It makes everyone play at the next level; it makes everyone work harder and be better,” Kling said. “Everyone’s competitive on the team so they want to be ‘the guy’. The thing is we all play team baseball. We’ll do our job and we’ll do everything [we’re asked]; we all want to do the best.”

Kling has the commitment to LSU and even with a coaching change in Baton Rouge brought about by the retirement of Hall of Famer Paul Mainieri and the hiring of Jay Johnson from Arizona, he doesn’t expect anything to change on that front.

“I’ve talked with Coach Johnson a couple of times,” Kling said. “I really loved Coach Mainieri and I really loved Coach [Nolan] Cain when I went down there – they were my guys – but I just have to figure everything out and just move onto the next step.”

Slipping on the “dad cap” one more time, Craig Kling said he and his family – which includes wife Beth, daughter McKayla and another son Lleyton – have always tried to be super supportive of Paxton’s pursuits.

Craig laughed and said he just tries to stay out of the way, sometimes shaking his head at the heights Paxton has already achieved. He is, as might be expected on his prospect ranking alone, a strong contender for an East Team roster spot at next month’s PG All-American Classic at Petco Park in San Diego.

It kind of boggles the mind, this small-town Pennsylvania kid reaching these heights. Craig remembers thinking early in the process that it was always “Very difficult to get there, probably not going to get there” type of thing but Paxton just kept working and is achieving what was once the unthinkable.

Paxton Kling isn’t alone when it comes to producing somewhat surprising results, as a detailed look at some of the performances during Wednesday’s workout session with just four teams – eight more will follow in the coming days – tells you.

Somewhat unheralded Gavin Turley, an Oregon State commit out of Chandler, Ariz., is likely to see his ranking rise from its current position at No. 110 after he ran a blazing 6.29-second 60 and threw 97 mph from the outfield, both top-two efforts on the day.

Dominic Hellman, while certainly not under the radar as the No. 31-ranked prospect in the ’22 class and an Oregon State commit, put on a batting practice display that had the scouts and just about everyone else in attendance buzzing throughout the afternoon.

“This ’22 class I think is a special class; there’s a lot of very special individuals in it,” Craig Kling said. “[Paxton has] always been the one that he’d go to the field, he’d walk off the field and he’d probably know three or four guys from the other team – all the time even from when he was little...

“It’s really special just to see how these guys support each other and I think just enjoy being on the field and interacting with each other.”

Craig Kling said the road traveled just to get to the PG National Showcase has provided an enjoyable ride even if his son was unable to perform as he had hoped here this week. Craig admitted that it can get a little intense and even tiresome at times with all the travel, noting that some of these young guys haven’t enjoyed a home-cooked meal in more than a month.

It’s a grind, he said, but it’s something many of them might want to start getting used to. It might just become a part of their everyday life once their high school careers are over.

Paxton Kling wouldn’t have it any other way:

“What I’ve taken away from [the experiences] is just loving the game and respecting it,” he said. “Once you respect the game it will respect you back and you’ll just keep playing well...I try not to look too far ahead; I’m just trying to play my game now and just do my thing now. I’ve still got high school ball next year and I’m just going to focus on that. Whatever happens after that happens.”
Give us your feedback
Showcase | Story | 2/20/2026

PG ID Camps Help Build Baseball Resume
Jim Salisbury
Article Image
PG ID Camps Help Youngsters Build a Baseball Resume There was still snow on the ground in a lot of places last weekend, but that didn’t stop more than 200 young players from going indoors to participate in the first round of Perfect Game Select Fest ID Camps for the 2026 season. John McAdams, PG’s national crosschecker and Northeast scouting director, ran the event in Farmingdale, New Jersey, and was impressed with his group’s energy and desire to improve at the game. “We’re giving young players the opportunity to build their baseball resumes and chart their growth and progress over a span of years,” he said. In addition to New Jersey, Select Fest ID Camps were held in Lake St. Louis, Missouri; Rossford, Ohio; Marietta, Georgia; and Kent, Washington. The ID camps debuted in 2025. Twenty-two of them were held around the country with nearly 700 young...
Read More
College | Recruiting | 3/23/2026

Recruiting Notebook: March 23

Ryan Miller
Article Image
High speed look at the FF-SL from '27 SS/RHP Harry Chubb Jones Jr. (GA)... #BeastoftheEast @PG_Uncommitted @PG_Georgia https://t.co/zXWgDJjU0y pic.twitter.com/GUIUN4tWmw — Perfect Game Scout (@PG_Scouting) June 25, 2025 Harry Chubb Jones Jr., RHP/SS, Class of 2027 Commitment: Alabama Jones recently flipped his commitment from Clemson to Alabama, landing Rob Vaughn and staff a high-end two-way talent in the ’27 class. The Georgia native possesses tremendous upside on the mound, working from a long and lean right-handed frame that displays projection and athleticism. Jones starts over the face before working to the belt and into a higher pronounced leg lift. He fires down the mound via a standard-length arm action and high three-quarters slot. Chubb’s fastball/slider combination and feel for the zone, with the heater showcasing run/ride traits and power into the high-90s....
Read More
College | Rankings | 3/22/2026

College Top 25: March 23

Vincent Cervino
Article Image
Time flies when you are having fun and the fact that we are almost to the halfway point of the 2026 season, proves just how entertaining things have been to this point. In what was an ultra-impactful week on the national landscape, there are some clubs fading out of the limelight while others are emerging from the shadows and showing they are a force to be reconned with. Conference play always makes the big picture come into view and we are now getting a feel for who the true contenders may be as the grind begins. The UCLA Bruins (21-2) keep their stranglehold on the top spot in the land as they remain unchallenged since the start of Big Ten play and finished the week with a (4-0) record. The Texas Longhorns (20-3) did lose back-to-back games this week but showed their resilience by winning an intense road series against now No. 7 Auburn (19-4). Georgia Tech (19-5) also had a (2-2) week...
Read More
Draft | Rankings | 3/20/2026

2026 Draft Board: Top 300

Vincent Cervino
Article Image
The 2026 MLB Draft class is shaping up to be one of the better in recent memory and, potentially, the best class in the last decade. It’s led by UCLA superstar shortstop Roch Cholowsky, a true five-tool prospect who’s the early favorite for 1:1. One of the most popular pieces of industry feedback when constructing this list was some variation of “Roch is too low” or “go up on Roch” and he’s the best college prospect since 2019 when Adley Rutschman (Oregon State, Orioles) was the consensus No. 1 prospect. Similarly to 2019, there’s a superstar Texas prep shortstop at No. 2, in 2019 it was Bobby Witt Jr. (Colleyville Heritage, Royals) and this year it’s Grady Emerson. Both Emerson and Alabama’s Justin Lebron would have been solid 1:1 candidates in years where Roch Cholowsky is not eligible and both have All-Star potential....
Read More
High School | General | 3/23/2026

High School Notebook: March 23

Perfect Game Staff
Article Image
Talon Brown (‘29 CA) showing some intriguing stuff over 2.1 IP running the FB up to 89, living 86-88 while mixing in a BB at 77. FB heavy on the day w/ a limited pitch count. 6-4, 205-lb w/ an athletic operation working down the bump #PGHS pic.twitter.com/HkLmJHrB1W — Perfect Game California (@California_PG) March 14, 2026 Talon Brown 2029 RHP, Christian Brown features an advanced 6-foot-4, 205-pound, athletic, projectable frame.  The freshman has made two appearances on the young season working four-innings without allowing a hit or run and has struck out seven opposing hitters.  It’s an easy, downhill operation and the ball jumps out of the hand, using the four-seam often that has ride through the zone, sitting 85-88 and topping out at 89.  The breaking ball showed 11-5 shape with depth spinning it at 1900 RPM+.  Brown features an athletic...
Read More
Press Release | Press Release | 3/19/2026

PG Teams Up with OZ Ball Tournaments PTY

Perfect Game Staff
Article Image
  667 Progress Way | Sanford, FL 32771 | 319-298-2923 www.perfectgame.org | facebook.com/perfectgameusa | @PerfectGameUSA     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   PERFECT GAME NAMES OZ BALL TOURNAMENTS PTY AS OFFICIAL AREA DIRECTOR IN AUSTRALIA, EXPANDING GLOBAL FOOTPRINT   Sanford, Florida (Thursday, March 19, 2026) - Perfect Game, the world’s largest youth baseball and softball platform and scouting service, today announced that it has entered into a new international partnership with Oz Ball Tournaments Pty, naming the organization as an official Perfect Game Area Director in Australia. The agreement establishes Perfect Game-licensed tournaments and showcases across major Australian markets, including Sydney, Brisbane/Gold Coast, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.     Australian events will operate under the Perfect Game brand, delivering the same...
Read More
Press Release | Press Release | 3/18/2026

PG Introduces Individual Player Entry

Perfect Game Staff
Article Image
  667 Progress Way | Sanford, FL 32771 | 319-298-2923 www.perfectgame.org | facebook.com/perfectgameusa | @PerfectGameUSA     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   PERFECT GAME INTRODUCES INDIVIDUAL PLAYER ENTRY, EXPANDING ACCESS TO ELITE NATIONAL EVENTS   Athletes Can Now Compete in Select National Tournaments Through Structured ‘Team PG’ Rosters   Sanford, Florida (Wednesday, March 18, 2026) - Perfect Game, the world’s largest youth baseball and softball platform and scouting service, today announced the launch of Individual Player Entry, a new initiative designed to provide athletes the opportunity to compete in select national events even if their primary team is not attending.   Through the program, players can now register individually and be placed on a structured “Team PG” roster, allowing them to participate fully in...
Read More
Juco | Rankings | 3/18/2026

JUCO Top 25: March 18

Blaine Peterson
Article Image
This week brings a new top team to the rankings as Johnson County (KS), on the strength of 10 consecutive wins and a 26-2 record, claims the overall number 1 spot. The Cavaliers have made 3 consecutive trips to the JUCO World Series and have the talent to make it back there again this spring. Florida Southwestern and Chipola have seemingly separated themselves as the most consistent teams in Florida. Welcome to the top 5 to the Gaston Rhinos who will be one of the first teams to 30 wins this spring. Pearl River stays as the top NJCAA D2 team and Fresno City stays as the top Juco team in California; both are coming off undefeated 2 week stretches. Welcome back to the top 25 to John A. Logan who is now 20-7 overall and have played one of the toughest schedules of anyone. And for the first time in several years welcome to the top 25 to the College of Southern Idaho, the Golden Eagles have...
Read More
High School | General | 3/18/2026

Class of 2026: Preseason HS All-Americans

Perfect Game Staff
Article Image
Read More
College | Rankings | 3/18/2026

DII/DIII/NAIA Rankings Update: March 18

Nick Herfordt
Article Image
In every major sport, the championship is decided in the postseason. You can lose games all year, get hot at the right time, and walk away with the hardware. The regular season is a rehearsal. The playoffs are the show.  The championship belt changes that. Borrowed from professional wrestling, boxing and ultimate fighting, the belt travels the moment the holder loses — no brackets, no seeding, no second chances. A random Tuesday non-conference game in Milledgeville, Georgia  becomes a title fight. A spring trip to Florida becomes a gauntlet. The defending national champion can lose the belt before February is over.  We’re tracking three belts this season — NCAA Division II, NAIA, and NCAA Division III — each starting with the defending national champion. The results have been exactly as chaotic as you’d expect.  Worth noting along the...
Read More
High School | Rankings | 3/17/2026

High School Top 50 Update: March 17

Tyler Russo
Article Image
We have another update to the National Top-50 after two weeks of even more games being played in the southern states along with seasons just starting to kick off across the country. We’re quickly approaching another stellar high school event, the NHSI in Cary, and with that will come even more movement in these rankings. St. John Bosco (CA) continues to hold firm at the No. 1 position after a 4-0 start to their season. Venice (FL) has been rolling throughout the early portion of the year and jumps up to No. 2 in the country. One of the biggest movers in this update is The Bennett School (TX) jumping from unranked to No. 8 in the country after beating a handful of top ranked programs to start the year. Some other big movers inside the top-10 are Barbe (LA), who jumps from No. 18 to No. 5 in this update as well as Aledo (TX) who jumps from No. 20 to No. 9. The rest of the top-10...
Read More
Loading more articles...
About Perfect Game :: Contact us :: Terms of Use :: Privacy Policy :: Testimonials :: Job Opportunities
Copyright 1994-2026 by Perfect Game. All rights reserved. No portion of this information may be reprinted or reproduced without the written consent of Perfect Game.