2017 Arizona Junior Fall Classic

Having done both the Jr and Sr Fall Classic plus HF and Stanford with my 2017, I would agree that HF is the Gold Standard for opportunities to meet coaches and be recruited by the ones who were there.  I will add a couple of perceptions about the AZ Fall Classics:

• There are lot of schools and coaches who are there who do not show their colors.  It may be their preference that they would rather do the seeking than the other way around with players seeing their hats and shirts and going up to them.
• They layout of the fields of the AZ Classic makes it harder if your travel team gets games that are not in the quadrangle of fields.  The coaches want to see as many players as they can, and shuffling around 4 games at once make sense versus 2 games.
• The schedulers may not admit it, but they will schedule games with elite travel ball teams playing against each other.  We saw one of those where there were literally dozens of scouts watching the game.
• I completely agree with the comments about the rosters.  Too many teams brought 20-25 players.  No doubt it is a way to offset costs, or maybe more cynically, for these organizations to make a bunch of money.  But the AZ Classic organizers may be killing the goose that lays the golden egg by continuing to allow such huge rosters.  College coaches have limited time to see players and having rosters that huge reduces the ABs for players they may really want to see

The Academic Game is the one huge selling point the AZ Classics have going for it.  It narrows down the talent pool significantly and the coaches know the kids are academically eligible to play at most of the schools.  I am biased, as my son would not be playing college baseball had he not gotten the chance to pitch at the Academic Game.  But there is a much broader range of coaches who show up for the Academic Games than come to the HF camps.  The Senior Academic game is especially valuable because it is after the test scores and grades are in and the coaches can eliminate that uncertainty.

Backstop22 posted:

Having done both the Jr and Sr Fall Classic plus HF and Stanford with my 2017, I would agree that HF is the Gold Standard for opportunities to meet coaches and be recruited by the ones who were there.  I will add a couple of perceptions about the AZ Fall Classics:

• There are lot of schools and coaches who are there who do not show their colors.  It may be their preference that they would rather do the seeking than the other way around with players seeing their hats and shirts and going up to them.
• They layout of the fields of the AZ Classic makes it harder if your travel team gets games that are not in the quadrangle of fields.  The coaches want to see as many players as they can, and shuffling around 4 games at once make sense versus 2 games.
• The schedulers may not admit it, but they will schedule games with elite travel ball teams playing against each other.  We saw one of those where there were literally dozens of scouts watching the game.
• I completely agree with the comments about the rosters.  Too many teams brought 20-25 players.  No doubt it is a way to offset costs, or maybe more cynically, for these organizations to make a bunch of money.  But the AZ Classic organizers may be killing the goose that lays the golden egg by continuing to allow such huge rosters.  College coaches have limited time to see players and having rosters that huge reduces the ABs for players they may really want to see

 

The Academic Game is the one huge selling point the AZ Classics have going for it.  It narrows down the talent pool significantly and the coaches know the kids are academically eligible to play at most of the schools.  I am biased, as my son would not be playing college baseball had he not gotten the chance to pitch at the Academic Game.  But there is a much broader range of coaches who show up for the Academic Games than come to the HF camps.  The Senior Academic game is especially valuable because it is after the test scores and grades are in and the coaches can eliminate that uncertainty.

Good stuff, Backstop.  

Trying to fully understand your roster size comments... when your son went, how many games did the team play and how many pitchers did they use?  In the Academic Game, how many innings did each guy get?

Backstop22 posted:

Having done both the Jr and Sr Fall Classic plus HF and Stanford with my 2017, I would agree that HF is the Gold Standard for opportunities to meet coaches and be recruited by the ones who were there.  I will add a couple of perceptions about the AZ Fall Classics:

• There are lot of schools and coaches who are there who do not show their colors.  It may be their preference that they would rather do the seeking than the other way around with players seeing their hats and shirts and going up to them.
• They layout of the fields of the AZ Classic makes it harder if your travel team gets games that are not in the quadrangle of fields.  The coaches want to see as many players as they can, and shuffling around 4 games at once make sense versus 2 games.
• The schedulers may not admit it, but they will schedule games with elite travel ball teams playing against each other.  We saw one of those where there were literally dozens of scouts watching the game.
• I completely agree with the comments about the rosters.  Too many teams brought 20-25 players.  No doubt it is a way to offset costs, or maybe more cynically, for these organizations to make a bunch of money.  But the AZ Classic organizers may be killing the goose that lays the golden egg by continuing to allow such huge rosters.  College coaches have limited time to see players and having rosters that huge reduces the ABs for players they may really want to see

 

The Academic Game is the one huge selling point the AZ Classics have going for it.  It narrows down the talent pool significantly and the coaches know the kids are academically eligible to play at most of the schools.  I am biased, as my son would not be playing college baseball had he not gotten the chance to pitch at the Academic Game.  But there is a much broader range of coaches who show up for the Academic Games than come to the HF camps.  The Senior Academic game is especially valuable because it is after the test scores and grades are in and the coaches can eliminate that uncertainty.

Yes, when I mentioned the coaches that came to see my following through, they did so in plain clothes. We were the only ones that knew they were in attendance. Kinda nice when your son is a west coast ball player looking at east coast academic schools and he is the only California kid on their radar. 

There were 10 inning at the Academic Games and 10 pitchers.  2 position players for each position so they switched off every other inning.  The Academic tryouts and game are definitely the highlight of this event.  50-60 coaches watched the entire Academic game. It was a great evening at the main Peoria Complex stadium.

Some of them followed up and came to my son's games during the weekend after.  At least one spoke to our coach about my son. Some of the games didn't have much scouting, but at one game, we had 25-30 scouts.  Come to think of it, the game that was heavily scouted was the best team we played against.  I believe the teams post their pitching rotations and the coaches know which games have the best team/pitchers facing each other. 

We just got back from there also. I would agree that getting in the Academic game is a game changer for getting seen. As my son was just under the GPA cutoff he didn't get to attend. Though he has been contacted by a few coaches that saw him pitch against 1 of the Marucci teams from Cali, 1 of those coaches being an Ivy (go figure). 3 of the Power 5 teams we had expected to be there didn't show, with only 1 telling us they weren't coming that Wed. My son who's a SS/RHP guest played for a team who had 5 other MI that they rotated (was expecting only 2 or 3). So he only got 2 at bats per game and 2-3 innings at SS and 2nd combined per game. He played really well in the field, hit the ball well and never got a sniff from a coach, only when he pitched 3 innings in 1 game. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have a list of schools that were actually there, but the #'s that I saw looked way down from last year.

I will say as a non player, the location is the best I've ever been to. Everything you could want or need was within 2 miles of the fields, including hotels, good restaurants, mall, movies, Dicks. I might have driven 10 miles in 4 days once at the hotel..it was great!!

I heard complaints from parents with kids on other teams about roster sizes. My son's team has a half-dozen position players already committed (and hence weren't allowed to come), so there were a limited number of position players. My son got 13 plate appearances across the 4 games. 

I would agree that it is easier as a pitcher. Especially throwing 88+. Those were good opportunities for the hitters, too, because it seemed like everyone perked up if a hitter did some damage off a kid throwing upper 80s or higher.

I have no idea about coaches in plainclothes. Attendance of coaches wearing their logos varied at our games, the high being 25-ish and the low being just a couple. Compared to the Senior Classic last week, this event had a much, much higher proportion of D1s. And a fairly good geographic mix, though understandably tilted toward the West. 

One weird thing is that the rules varied. Some games were 3 outs or 6 batters, whichever came first. But one game was 6 batters, roll the inning, 6 batters, roll the inning, etc. In some games if you walked they put a runner on and you still got to hit. In my son's first game he got hit by a pitch and also walked, but got to say in the batter's box and hit. But in his last game if you walked you took your base (and he walked there so he ended up with 12 ABs total). It seemed to be up to the discretion of the umpire, which is kind of strange.

Good information here at the AZ Fall Classic from everyone who attended.  It is a pretty unique event that we thought had the best balance of D1 schools, academic schools at all levels, and many smaller D2 and D3 schools (some that we never heard of before who reached out to my son) and even JuCos.

I would add that the organizers are trying to get more opportunities to show in games, as they start the games now on Thursday afternoon after the Academic Game tryouts where they used to not start most of the games until Friday.  So to answer Cabbage Dad's question, I believe all teams now get 4 games, and most pitchers are 2 innings (although some PO's throw 3 innings and go home).  The Sunday games are a challenge, as many of the coaches start leaving then (particularly those from the East schools), so the opportunities to show are less.  Also concur with the comment about the shifting rules--it seems each game used a different criteria for what counted as an AB or inning.

A big must for pitchers is to be sure to contact the coaches who are there once you know the game and innings you are pitching.  Some of the top teams have it figured out before they even arrive, while others figure it out as you go along.  If a coach is interested and has already had dialogue with a kid, a quick text of the game time, date and field location is all that is necessary.

The debate will always be if a kid can be "discovered" at this event.  But I suspect there are enough who are at the AZ Fall Classics that are to make it worthwhile for both prospects and schools. The event seems to be growing in stature.  Particularly for the Academic game because even the tryouts are heavily scouted, and then the game itself is on the main Peoria field with no competition from other games and upwards of 75+ coaches are there to scout the players.  My son was especially grateful to have gotten invited for the Academic tryout and the chance to pitch in the actual game.  He had 12+ coaches follow-up after one inning on the mound and now is pitching for one of those coaches who saw him the game.  I don't think that would have happened without that opportunity.

We only saw maybe 2-3 pitchers that threw 85+ in the 5 games we played with none throwing above 90, we only had 1 on our team. We played what I was told were really good teams, MBA Colorado, GBG Marucci, and Padres Amateur. Though these teams played ok, I was expecting better pitching and hitting across the board. I never saw or heard of any HR's being hit, maybe someone else did. Lot's of triples though with the fields being so big. I'm not sure if every kid there was supposed to be uncommitted ( all of ours were), if so maybe that's why the talent was a step lower than expected. Heck we had 4 or 5 kids on our mixed bag team that had no business being there, would be very surprised if they make their HS Varsity team as a Jr. Maybe most of the top talent was down in Jupiter, who knows!

Also we never had more than 7-8 RC's at our games, and our last 2 were played on Mariners #2 where we avg'd 2-3 and only AF at our last 1.

Texas 2 Sons posted:

We only saw maybe 2-3 pitchers that threw 85+ in the 5 games we played with none throwing above 90, we only had 1 on our team. We played what I was told were really good teams, MBA Colorado, GBG Marucci, and Padres Amateur. Though these teams played ok, I was expecting better pitching and hitting across the board. I never saw or heard of any HR's being hit, maybe someone else did. Lot's of triples though with the fields being so big. I'm not sure if every kid there was supposed to be uncommitted ( all of ours were), if so maybe that's why the talent was a step lower than expected. Heck we had 4 or 5 kids on our mixed bag team that had no business being there, would be very surprised if they make their HS Varsity team as a Jr. Maybe most of the top talent was down in Jupiter, who knows!

Also we never had more than 7-8 RC's at our games, and our last 2 were played on Mariners #2 where we avg'd 2-3 and only AF at our last 1.

Yeah, every kid is supposed to be uncommitted, and excluding the committed players certainly lessens the talent level. E.g., GBG has 10 commits in its 2019 class, but you didn't play against them.

2019Dad posted:

Texas 2 Sons posted:

We only saw maybe 2-3 pitchers that threw 85+ in the 5 games we played with none throwing above 90, we only had 1 on our team. We played what I was told were really good teams, MBA Colorado, GBG Marucci, and Padres Amateur. Though these teams played ok, I was expecting better pitching and hitting across the board. I never saw or heard of any HR's being hit, maybe someone else did. Lot's of triples though with the fields being so big. I'm not sure if every kid there was supposed to be uncommitted ( all of ours were), if so maybe that's why the talent was a step lower than expected. Heck we had 4 or 5 kids on our mixed bag team that had no business being there, would be very surprised if they make their HS Varsity team as a Jr. Maybe most of the top talent was down in Jupiter, who knows!

Also we never had more than 7-8 RC's at our games, and our last 2 were played on Mariners #2 where we avg'd 2-3 and only AF at our last 1.

Yeah, every kid is supposed to be uncommitted, and excluding the committed players certainly lessens the talent level. E.g., GBG has 10 commits in its 2019 class, but you didn't play against them.

10? Dang that's a lot, so that makes a lot more sense. They were still decent though. Heck if you took 10 of the better players off my son's summer team we would only be left with 3-4 players  lol  

Texas 2 Sons posted:

We only saw maybe 2-3 pitchers that threw 85+ in the 5 games we played with none throwing above 90, we only had 1 on our team. We played what I was told were really good teams, MBA Colorado, GBG Marucci, and Padres Amateur. Though these teams played ok, I was expecting better pitching and hitting across the board. I never saw or heard of any HR's being hit, maybe someone else did. Lot's of triples though with the fields being so big. I'm not sure if every kid there was supposed to be uncommitted ( all of ours were), if so maybe that's why the talent was a step lower than expected. Heck we had 4 or 5 kids on our mixed bag team that had no business being there, would be very surprised if they make their HS Varsity team as a Jr. Maybe most of the top talent was down in Jupiter, who knows!

Also we never had more than 7-8 RC's at our games, and our last 2 were played on Mariners #2 where we avg'd 2-3 and only AF at our last 1.

You played GBG Marucci Blue which is essentially our "B" team which, without our commits, drops down much lower. Our GBG Marucci Navy (the "A" team) had pitchers with offers but not committed and most sat at 87 and up. The best of the bunch topped out at 93.  We had an average of 15-20 scouts at our games primarily to see pitchers and a catcher we had. Typically that benefits our position players hoping to have a stellar day.  Most of the players on this team are high academic kids hoping to get looks from Ivy's and and Patriot league schools.

2019cubdad posted:

Texas 2 Sons posted:

We only saw maybe 2-3 pitchers that threw 85+ in the 5 games we played with none throwing above 90, we only had 1 on our team. We played what I was told were really good teams, MBA Colorado, GBG Marucci, and Padres Amateur. Though these teams played ok, I was expecting better pitching and hitting across the board. I never saw or heard of any HR's being hit, maybe someone else did. Lot's of triples though with the fields being so big. I'm not sure if every kid there was supposed to be uncommitted ( all of ours were), if so maybe that's why the talent was a step lower than expected. Heck we had 4 or 5 kids on our mixed bag team that had no business being there, would be very surprised if they make their HS Varsity team as a Jr. Maybe most of the top talent was down in Jupiter, who knows!

Also we never had more than 7-8 RC's at our games, and our last 2 were played on Mariners #2 where we avg'd 2-3 and only AF at our last 1.

You played GBG Marucci Blue which is essentially our "B" team which, without our commits, drops down much lower. Our GBG Marucci Navy (the "A" team) had pitchers with offers but not committed and most sat at 87 and up. The best of the bunch topped out at 93.  We had an average of 15-20 scouts at our games primarily to see pitchers and a catcher we had. Typically that benefits our position players hoping to have a stellar day.  Most of the players on this team are high academic kids hoping to get looks from Ivy's and and Patriot league schools.

Yeah one of the harder throwers we faced came from this team..sat mostly mid to upper 80's from my viewpoint. I think we played y'all Friday morning. My son was in the 6 man rotation for SS and 2nd. I do remember there were some pretty tall boys on that team. The SS who started was over 6' and the 1st baseman was really big. What position did your son play?

Live in Scottsdale with a 2023 and went to a couple of the Sr Fall Classic games. I was also surprised by the size of some of the rosters. Spoke to a father from DC with a kid on the UA team - I think he said the fees are per player at $3500. Can anyone verify that?  

Possibly for that team. I know that Baseball Factory charges their kids $3100 each. The tourney isn't that expensive.  Some clubs make $$ for themselves on top of the cost of the tourney. Our fee to play was $445 plus our traveling expenses,  which we paid ourselves.