MLB, USA Baseball Announce Six Invite-Only Pre-Draft Events

USA Baseball and Major League Baseball announced six pre-draft Prospect Development Pipeline (PDP) Premier Events that will take place in May and June this year before the 2021 draft.

The events are invite-only with the hope of attracting top amateur baseball players in various regions around the country. Because of the timing of the events, they will largely be focused on high school players, since college players will still be in the middle of their seasons.

The full schedule of PDP events is below:

May 1-2: PDP Premier Mid-Atlantic (USA Baseball National Training Complex)
May 8-9: PDP Premier Northeast (Citizens Bank Park)
May 15-16: PDP Premier Florida & Puerto Rico (Jackie Robinson Training Complex)
May 22-23: PDP Premier Northwest (T-Mobile Park)
May 22-23: PDP Premier Texas (Dell Diamond)
June 5-6: PDP Premier SoCal (Compton MLB Youth Academy)

“We are thrilled to have these six PDP Premier Events on the calendar in 2021,” said Russell Hartford, USA Baseball Senior Director of Technology, in a release. “These events will place a heavy emphasis on data collection and use of advanced assessment technologies, making them not only a unique opportunity for young players to receive invaluable resources and actionable data that will help them create sustained development, but also a chance for the scouting community to see some of the best draft-eligible prospects in action this spring.”

The events will focus on what USA Baseball is calling a PDP Performance Assessment, which it describes as a “series of comprehensive evaluations that utilize state-of-the-art technology to measure cognitive skills, speed of processing, athletic performance, and on-field talent.”

Participants will have their height, weight and grip measurements collected. They will participate in on-field assessments and performance data.

The PDP Premier Events fall in line with MLB’s “One Baseball” direction and attempt to try and streamline and become more involved in the amatuer and pre-draft process for baseball players around the country.

The PDP Premier Events join the previously announced MLB Draft Combine—the first ever—as newly scheduled events for MLB teams to evaluate and collect information on players before the July draft.