Squeeze, FCSL set to play teams from Georgia, Korea

Although most baseball players dream of playing in the World Series among the best players in the world, opportunities to play international competition are sparse in the amateur ranks.

For the second consecutive year, a select group of 25 Florida Collegiate Summer League players — including two from the Winter Garden Squeeze: FCSL All-Star pitcher Ian Doughty and shortstop Damon Haecker — will have such an opportunity this Saturday and Monday, when they host South Korea’s Korean University Baseball Federation team on its five-game trip around the FCSL. The July 18 game will be in Sanford, and the July 20 game will be in DeLand.

“They contacted us about the potential of coming down, interested in playing five games,” FCSL President Rob Sitz said. “We did some research on them and talked with our people at MLB about it and whether it’d be a good fit, good competition. MLB got back and said it would be really good. They’re a good team. It was a great experience for our players last season and the community to see it, as well. They contacted us this year to find a way to do it during the season as opposed to after the season, which is better than keeping the players longer.”

Instead of having one FCSL All-Star team from the July 7 All-Star Game face the KUBF team Saturday and the other face it Monday, Sitz and staff from each FCSL team will have a roster of the 25 players scouts want to see most, Sitz said.

“It’s just going to be one all-star team put together, really what we call our prospect team, basically the top prospects in the league,” he said. “We do this every year for the game with the Sunbelt League.”

That game is the Southeast Prospect Showcase, which will be July 19 in Sanford, between the games with KUBF. The Sunbelt League is the Georgia equivalent of the FCSL.

“We started that prospect game with the Sunbelt League,” Sitz said. “This will be our third year. MLB asked us to do that to have the elite prospects of both leagues against each other. The timing worked out for the Korean team to be down here at that time, too. That should work out well for us to have that team play the Koreans and Sunbelt League at the same time.”

The Sunbelt League beat the FCSL 4-3 in 2013, but the teams tied in 10 innings last year, 4-4. 

In last season’s five-game series with KUBF, the FCSL won 1-0 in the first game and 5-2 in the second but then lost the remaining three, scoring just two more runs. This year, the KUBF will face three FCSL teams once and the prospect team just twice.

The Southeast Prospect Showcase begins with a 2 p.m. series of drills for position players to perform for scouts, such as running and defensive skills, whereas the scouts use just the games to judge the pitchers, Sitz said.

All three games for FCSL’s prospect team will begin at 7 p.m., with radio broadcasts, and the Southeast Prospect Showcase will be on television on tape delay, Sitz said. 

For more information about the FCSL, visit FloridaLeague.com.

Contact Zak Kerr at [email protected].