LATEST PG SHOWCASE REPORT
2004 National Academic Showcase
Shawn Novak is a 2005 who lives in Japan with his military father and Japanese mother and competes against older competition regularly. We saw Novak at Sunshine East just before the Academic and he was better at the Academic. He has distinctive Japanese trained pitching mechanics, with a long deliberate pause at the top of his delivery. Novak’s fastball tops out at 84 mph and he can absolutely spot it anywhere he wants from a mid ¾’s release point. Novak tends to get under his curveball and cast it, but came over it once and snapped off a sharp 69 mph breaker. With his pin point command and mature understanding of pitching, Novak had no problem carving up the hitters at either showcase. He has a young body and is pretty athletic, so throwing a bit harder isn’t out of the question at all. If he throws 84-85 mph consistently with the rest of his package, Novak is going to get lots of outs at the college level. Shawn is a very good student.