By Nathan Rode
National Supervisor

The offseason is upon us as many pitchers have shut down and events start moving indoors. I attended the South Atlantic Border Battle this weekend and saw what will likely be my final event until the calendar turns to 2015. Overall, it was obvious it was Nov. 1 as play was sloppy, velocities were down and the players just looked tired. Nonetheless, there are still some highlights worth talking about, which I will get to on Tuesday.

In the meantime, let’s take a question for the first time since I returned from the World Wood Bat Championship in Jupiter, FL…

After Jupiter, who are your top five 2015 pitchers?
I'm going to break this question into two categories—my top five pitchers overall and the top five I saw in Jupiter—since some of the top guys were shut down and didn't pitch down there.

As of right now, the top five pitchers in the 2015 class for me are LHP Kolby Allard (San Clemente HS, CA), LHP Justin Hooper (De La Salle HS, CA), RHP Mike Nikorak (Stroudsburg HS, PA), RHP Ashe Russell (Cathedral HS, IN) and RHP Cole McKay (Smithson Valley HS, TX). I'm pretty locked in on those first four, but McKay could be interchangeable with the likes of RHP Kyle Molnar (Aliso Niguel HS, CA) and RHP Donny Everett (Clarksville HS, TN).

Of those already mentioned, only Everett and Russell pitched in Jupiter. I saw only a couple batters of Russell’s start so I’ve excluded him from the second part of the list, as well as RHP Parker Ford (Lufkin HS, TX), RHP Antonio Santillan (Seguin HS, TX), RHP Nic Enright (Steward HS, VA), RHP Brady Singer (Eustis HS, FL) and RHP Nick Neidert (Peachtree Ridge HS, GA). I saw a few pitches out of Enright, but missed the others mentioned because of scheduling conflicts.

Here are the top five 2015 pitchers I saw in Jupiter with their write-up from the event included...