The Hoover Metropolitan Complex in August will be the location for the 2018 East Coast Pro Showcase, an event that will bring in about 150 top high school baseball players in the eastern United States for professional scouts to view.
The event is slated to come to Hoover on Aug. 1-4, according to the East Coast Pro website.
Hoover officials have called a press conference for Tuesday morning to make the official announcement and give more details.
The East Coast Pro Showcase is designed to bring the top high school baseball talent in the eastern United States together in one place for scouts to see how they perform in a professional environment.
The past three years, 2015 to 2017, the showcase was held at Steinbrenner Field, the New York Yankees’ spring training facility in Tampa, Florida. Before that, the showcase was held at NBT Bank Stadium, the home of the Syracuse Chiefs minor league baseball team in Syracuse, New York.
The players are chosen by professional baseball scouts and divided into six teams. In 2017, each team had 21 to 29 players on it, and three games were played on four consecutive days.
Scouts from every Major League Baseball team are invited to attend. The players and their parents also get to attend seminars to learn about what professional baseball has to offer.
Each year, between 80 and 110 players who attend this event are selected in the Major League Baseball Rule 4 draft, according to the East Coast Pro Showcase website. The Rule 4 draft is the first-year player draft that involves high school players who have graduated high school but not attended college or who have completed at least one year of junior college. Players attending four-year colleges are eligible to be drafted upon completing their junior year or turning 21 years old.
