By Sean Duncan
Executive Director

An overwhelming amount of baseball was consumed in Jupiter a few weeks back. So much so that it would be impossible to synthesize all my notes. Many of the top highlights were documented in our daily notebooks and Nathan Rode’s post-wrap stories.

But our previous content represents a small portion of all the baseball we saw. Below is a partially organized brain dump of some of the highlights, risers, sleepers and uncommitted players we saw from 2016 prospects over the course of the tournament.

The Arms

There were so many high-level 2016 pitchers we scouted from our coverage area, but here are three pitchers who helped their draft stock with impressive performances:

Skylar Szynski, RHP, Penn HS, IN, 2016
In my opinion, no player helped his draft stock more substantially than the athletically built 6-foot-2, 195-pound Szynski. The Indiana recruit certainly wasn’t an unknown commodity in the Midwest, but the national scouting community got a good look at the next big arm coming out of the Hoosier State, which produced two first-round high school draft picks last year in Ashe Russell and Nolan Watson. Szynski threw three dominant scoreless innings during the Reds Scout Team’s blowout 10-0 victory over the Texas Sun Devils. Szynski’s fastball sat 92-93 mph, and topped at 94 in each of his three innings. More importantly, he pounded the lower half of the strike zone from a clean, athletic high-3/4 slot. His fastball had late arm-side finish as he worked at a confident, quick pace. Although he didn’t need it much, he flashed a few 78-80 mph curveballs that flashed sharp late bite, something area scouts had been waiting to see develop. In three innings, the Indiana recruit allowed one hit, struck out five and walked none. Perhaps the most impressive statistic was he threw 31 of his 37 pitches for strikes. In the spring, Szynski helped lead Penn HS to the 4A state championship, and at a past PBR event, he ran a 6.87 60. Here’s video of Szynski from the PBR Future Games two summers ago, when he first burst onto the scene: