Showcasing: An essential step to realizing a dream

There was a time when college coaches and pro scouts hit the long, hard road attending game after game after game to find their recruits. Those days are long gone and so are the days of relying on being noticed from a HS or summer league game. Showcasing is arguably the most important step in a young ballplayers journey towards college baseball. A college coach will many times say the same about his recruiting efforts every year. It is a way to identify tools in players and also learn the usability of those tools by witnessing game performances as well. These events have obvious benefit to the college coaches and we have identified several important reasons why a High School baseball player must attend at least one, if not several credible showcases.

The first and most obvious reason a player should attend a showcase is exposure. It is the easiest way to portray your abilities in front of dozens of coaches all at the same time. THIS IS HOW COACHES START THE RECRUITING PROCESS! Also, with college programs being limited by miniscule recruiting budgets (at least 95% of colleges) they use showcases to cut down on expenses by identifying players. In the past they might have attended 2-3 games and then realized that the player was not a good fit. With a showcase, they can immediately identify the tools that could be a good fit and then maybe reduce the amount of games they would need to see him to 1 or even 0. I attended Team One Midwest in 1996, performed badly and still garnered attention from as many as a half a dozen schools that all offered respectable scholarships. 

Another reason to attend a showcase is for competition. Everyone in HS is all district, all region, or all whatever their area brings them. These are accomplishments to be proud of, but they tend to give players a false sense of where they stand amongst the rest of the country. Attending a showcase is a good way to take the “Tunnel Vision” off that comes with being the “big fish” in your area. When you get to college, you will be a “minnow”, and the earlier players figure this out, the better position they will be in to have success. Showcases can be an excellent setting for this.

Showcases are also a good source for pressure situations. Many players are very talented and have huge success in HS until they stroll up to the plate with 2 down, tie game, and the bases juiced. Then all of a sudden, the knees start to quiver and a strikeout or a “F6” is the result. By exposing yourself to as many pressure situations as possible, the more comfortable and relaxed you will be in the future when the game is on the line. Taking batting practice or fielding a ground ball in front of 50 college coaches can be nerve racking. The more you are on that “pressure” stage the better off you will be.

When you plan to attend a showcase, you must prepare for it. A showcase is a quick snapshot of your “tools” as a ball player. With this known, you have to make an impact on coaches early and often throughout the event. You must get the 60 time down, the arm strength up, the body tightened up, and the presentation of yourself as professional and clean as possible. So, if you do these things simply to impress a coach with the quick “snapshot”, you will ultimately make your game better. Many players might not work on body type or foot speed or other aspects of there game unless they had this incentive in front of them. On the contrary, you must not get too enthralled with one weakness you may have and lose focus off your strengths.

Yet another benefit of attending showcases is that many of them will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. From a player development standpoint this information can be enormous in value. So many players work on their games and attempt to get better, but they truly can’t because they don’t know what to work on, let alone how to work on it. Sure it is better than nothing to just get a lot of reps in the cage, but it would be so much more beneficial if a young player understood his weaknesses. To me, that is one of the most valuable things we (Baseball Factory) bring to a player and his future is our ability to identify strengths and weaknesses. The first half of the player development process is identifying your weaknesses. The next half of the process is to know how to make those weaknesses better and actually executing it. Most good showcases will provide you with the first.

Lastly, National or Regional showcases can be very beneficial “life” experiences. Many times players come from similar backgrounds as their teammates throughout childhood and into High School. When you are put on a team of 18 with everyone being from a different background, you will be forced to adjust and learn to interact with different personalities and approaches to baseball, not even to mention life. By the way, chances are slim that you will have anyone on your roster that is from your area once you get to college.  A showcase with diverse backgrounds is a good start to you making an adjustment once that first semester rolls around.
 
To summarize, showcasing is a must. Know what is out there and if you get invited to a credible event, make sure you prepare and attend. It will ultimately be one of the main steps in realizing your dream of college baseball. Best of luck to all of you.