Ranking the Various Tournament Organizations

I would disagree, but again, I think its regional.  And I'm speaking to organizations in general, not just tournaments. Prospect Wire and Prospect Select wouldn't even be in the running for me, but we are in TX.  Around here, Five Tool ran really good tournaments pre covid.  They were always at college fields and they have reps at each game that tweet out highlights.   I think as organizations, PG and PBR are neck and neck.  There is a ton of information and actually more in depth on PBR because they scout hs games too.  They do both write ups and video/podcazts.  If you watch/listen to the podcasts and the videos they post, they usually do one for each state or region even during the hs season when most others aren't doing much.  The top invites for both are very good.  I would say PBR is better if you aren't recruited after sophomore season, outside of the All American, which is only 40 kids nationally and they are all draft type kids.

I've heard from several on here how good PBR is. My son played in their big event this summer at Lakepoint and it was the best field of teams I'd seen top to bottom and the tournament was very smoothly run. They seem to be newer to FL and trying to gain some of the market share. Their website though has got to get some attention.

I'm not familiar with Five Tool. I don't think they've done anything in FL.

PBR is taking over GA from PG.  PG is really struggling with very poor quality umpires and even worse scorekeeping (DiamondKast).  Unless PG has a major turnaround and fast PBR will own GA in less than 2 years. 

@RossGA posted:

PBR is taking over GA from PG.  PG is really struggling with very poor quality umpires and even worse scorekeeping (DiamondKast).  Unless PG has a major turnaround and fast PBR will own GA in less than 2 years.

Does PBR have any scorekeeping? I agree, DK is not that good, but it's better than nothing.

Overall, I thought the umpiring across the board was the best I've seen this summer. Many tournaments we went to had some minor league guys on the field.

I am not sure if you consider Area Code games a "tournament organization" but those games/tryouts are the single best value for a HS player. They are free and even if you don't qualify for the games the exposure is unmatched IMO.

PG, PBR, Five Tool.  Never heard of Prospect Wire or Prospect Select and we played all over the Southeast and MidWest.  PBR is catching up but not close to PG in overall.  I think that anyone who is looking up a ranking or statistics will go to PG over PBR at this point.  Five Tool is almost exclusively a MidWest thing but do a good job out there.  USSSA is not considered an option for after 12U.  If you are talking 8U-18U then USSSA is the best overall but after 12U they fall off and most competitive teams stop playing USSSA.

BOF;

thank you for the reference. The Pro Scouts and I created the Area Code games in 1987 in the town of Lodi, CA at Zupo Field, Dodgers Class A. We used the one field from 7 am to 10 PM at night. Many of the attending scouts played at Zupo.

The 1st year - 6 teams from California - Dodgers, Cubs, Padres, Giants, Angels, Blue Jays.  Scouts coached the teams. Each teams played 4 nine inning games. Players paid $0.

This was the beginning of "showcase" baseball. Although, I would never use that word.

"Communication, cooperation and consistency" are the keys to success.

Bob

@TerribleBPthrower posted:

Does PBR have any scorekeeping? I agree, DK is not that good, but it's better than nothing.

Overall, I thought the umpiring across the board was the best I've seen this summer. Many tournaments we went to had some minor league guys on the field.

PBR is now using an app, ScoreHQ. In some ways it’s easier/better than DK (app based, pitch locations on real-time games, etc), but more difficult/worse than DK (harder to navigate, not very intuitive, long-term tracking isn’t built into it) Overall, I do prefer it to DK.

PBR still doesn't track stuff/awards for items like all-tourney hitting/ pitching, but when you can make all-tourney hitting with a single & 3 BB across 4 games, you realize that it’s kinda BS.... Feels good, but means nothing ultimately.

@PitchingFan posted:

PG, PBR, Five Tool.  Never heard of Prospect Wire or Prospect Select and we played all over the Southeast and MidWest.  PBR is catching up but not close to PG in overall.  I think that anyone who is looking up a ranking or statistics will go to PG over PBR at this point.  Five Tool is almost exclusively a MidWest thing but do a good job out there.  USSSA is not considered an option for after 12U.  If you are talking 8U-18U then USSSA is the best overall but after 12U they fall off and most competitive teams stop playing USSSA.

PW is ok. Mostly smaller tournaments but they get decent FL teams. Prospect Select has a couple big tournaments (Palm Beach Classic and The Wave) which attract a ton of teams. USSSA actually had a couple really good 15-18u tournaments this summer because everyone else was shut down. They own that Space Coast complex in Viera and were able to keep playing. It was weird to see teams of that level playing a USSSA event.

I don't have a ton of experience with any of them.  Only PBR and PG have any presence within about a 3 hour drive radius of here and our largest experience is with PBR.  I could be wrong on this, but my understanding is that a state's PBR is a franchise one buys in to.  In that regard, I think the value of PBR overall is directly linked to who is running the state you're showcasing/competing in.  I bounce around PBR online in general quite a bit and feel it's easy to see the states where the PBR staff are TRULY invested in making the experience as good as possible.  If you look around at players in different states, you'll some differences.  Some PBR states are great about including the 60 running in their videos while others almost never do.  Little things like that.  I also see how much the Comments vary a lot from state to state.  Some are more lengthy, specific and authentic while others are shorter and lazy.  Oh, I think it's laughable that PBR will roll out Trackman, Rapsodo, Blast and the like, but still hand time their running.  Great, so you can tell me what my RA (G's) number is down to the decimal point, but 60 and Home to 1st times are all over the place because they're dependent upon a $5 stopwatch and how much coffee the person running it drank that morning.  Or how about a kid being able to bring in any bat he wants to hit with?  Some states are great about having "boots on the ground" to get much more in-depth assessments of players while others barely leave their desks. I think PBR as a whole could really increase their footprint and credibility if their top level/central management implemented more stringent standards to which all states - large and small - have to adhere to. 

I can only speak to PBR in TX, but their national scouts travel all over and usually have a pretty good idea of top performers in each region.  We had the main national cross checkers for PBR at several hs games over my son's career to see various kids.  They also set up a private trackman session for him and a few other guys during quarantine to get them some additional stats and press.  I have heard that some states aren't great.

@RossGA posted:

PBR is taking over GA from PG.  PG is really struggling with very poor quality umpires and even worse scorekeeping (DiamondKast).  Unless PG has a major turnaround and fast PBR will own GA in less than 2 years.

If PBR were to catch PG, the umpires and scoring system will not be the reasons. They're hired hands, very little these orgs can do about that.

PG still puts on 3 of the 4 best tournaments in the country every year. WWBA, Ft. Myers and Jupiter. With the other being Wilson Premier imo. This is what is really important.

States don't matter, it is the overall product. PG and PBR and competitors, but IMO PBR is still 10 years behind them.

in norcal, PG doesn't have a foothold PBR seems to be getting more popular for showcases, probably bc of the void left by PG, but PBR doesn't run tournaments here (do they in other areas?).  they do put together at team for the national tournaments, though.

the problem with PBR, imo, is that they advertise that they rank kids (and dole out invites, etc) based on seeing the kids rather than reputation, but with so many kids playing in California, they have to start somewhere. it seems like a lot of the kids who end up in their ranking system have never been to a PBR event but were blown up via PG.  I asked how they rank the kids and was told that they base it on their own eyes at their events as well as in live games. I asked how they decide which games/players to watch and was told it is based on the rankings.

it seems like the "serious" teams and players here head to Arizona and socal for the bigger events (PG, az fall classic, usa baseball).  we do have pretty good local events like the bay area world series but those are more one-off types that you have to get invited to in the first place (by making a name for yourself in az/socal/etc).

it's all very confusing for a first timer!!

I don't know anything about rankings or territory. I just use the best resources available. For now PG offers 3 of what I consider the 4 best events in the country. I don't get caught up in tweets or social media, I just try to go where the best baseball is played. For now it is PG and it isn't close.

Even on the local scene, PG has driven out every other competing organization. It went from one or two local PG tournaments a season to them putting something on every week with all the notable travel orgs present. Now - if you're not playing PG or doing a college showcase of some sort you have to question the validity of the program.

With PBR taking over Lake Pointe, and the partnerships they have made, I see them making up time quickly.   PG hasn't upped their game in awhile until PGTV this summer.  You might not get caught up in the tweets or social media, but especially now, they matter.  They also have detailed stats to share because of Trackman/Rapsodo, etc.  PG saying a kid has a great breaking ball isn't the same as PBR saying a kid has "X" inches of induced vertical break and "y" inches of  horizontal break on his ball, along with spin rate, and velo.  If they aren't really close now, they will be soon (to me they already are).

Another item to add onto @baseballhs’s point is, quite frankly, the convenience/attraction of LP itself. Teams always know where they are playing, no matter the weather. Field conditions are stable and predictable. And PBR is definitely starting to get top tier teams for their events there.

For the WWBA this year, if you weren’t on one of the core teams (and therefore scheduled at or near ECB for all games), the distance between fields could be over 2 hours. That’s just ludicrous. I see PBR as making greater and greater inroads here in the next few years.

I'm not loyal to PG, I'll go wherever the best opportunities are.

Right now I just see PBR as having cornered the - dads with twitter accounts - market and PG taking up the majority of the - highest quality baseball - market.

I really don't think the tweets are all that important. I think coaches know what they're looking for and know how to find it. Is it nice, sure. Are coaches refreshing their twitter feed all day waiting for the next SS to turn up, probably not.

In regards to LP. Once you get 400 teams in a tournament you're going to be spread out across a 3 hr radius. If PBR ever puts an event together the size of the WWBA they'll run into the same problem. Even when PG was at LP, they still had the 2.5 hour car rides. Theres no way around it.

Social media is a great tool. But when everybody has access to it and every Johnny gets a share, it loses its value. When the feed is full of kids throwing 82 and random showcase results coaches revert back to ole reliable - contacting the top travel orgs. Look at flat ground. Great concept, excellent results, but you can scroll for 10 minutes before you find a halfway decent player.

Until PG opens Hutto.  PG jumps way ahead then.

I don't usually see PBR posting about every 82, but I watch all of it.  I follow all the PG accounts (or used to, I've started to weed out now that my son is in college), PBR, D1Baseball, BaseballAmerica, I watch Coffee and Curveballs, and read the blogs.  I could tell you about pretty much every top level kid last year from social media stuff.  I'm sure it will be harder for me to follow this year when colleges have 5 years of high level guys, but I'll try.  My son really benefited from PBR, so I like them.   Like PG too.  I think they are both really quality organizations.  I live in Austin, so I wish PG would have opened Hutto 3-4 years ago. Would have made life easy.

"Keep Austin weird," I love that place!

@CatsPop posted:

"Keep Austin weird," I love that place!

When I was in HS and college Austin was awesome. I wouldn’t give you a red nickel for the University that that calls Austin home, but it has always been a great town. Until recently. Unmanageable traffic, huge homeless problem, inflated real estate prices, insufficient infrastructure & extremely liberal politics have changed it for the worse IMO. But I have great memories from there.

Sounds like things have changed a lot in the 10 years since I was last there.  Used to head down several times a year to corporate headquarters there in the early 2000's until the recession.  Heard quite a few major fortune 500 companies that were slated to open corporate offices there have decided otherwise since Covid-19.  Hope things can change all the way around sooner than later.  Thanks for the update bud.

With PG going into Hutto, they picked a good spot. Coming from the north, you get there before Austin (and don't have to drive through it), and coming from the south, you can jump on toll road 130 (85 MPH speed limit, most drive 90-95) and stay away from Austin too. There are also tons of high school fields around if the PG facility fills up, without going into Austin proper.