Ahead of the Draft: Why the HBCU Swingman Classic Is More Than an Exhibition

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Ahead of the Draft: Why the HBCU Swingman Classic Is More Than an Exhibition

PHILADELPHIA — By the time the last out is recorded at Citizens Bank Park on Friday night, some of the players on the field will have less than 18 hours before Major League Baseball starts calling names in the 2026 Draft.

That’s the calendar this year: the HBCU Swingman Classic presented by USA Baseball tips off July 10 at 7 p.m. ET, and the draft’s first three rounds begin the next morning, July 11, at the Philadelphia Convention Center — the same weekend, the same city. For a showcase built on getting overlooked players in front of the people who make those calls, the timing could hardly be more direct.

A track record scouts already trust

This isn’t a new theory. Over its first three years, the Classic has sent 10 alumni into the professional ranks. The inaugural 2023 class, played in Seattle, produced three draftees, including Xavier Meachen, a 10th-round pick of the Marlins. Two more alumni heard their names called in 2024 — Randy Flores of Alabama State, taken by the Angels in the eighth round, and North Carolina A&T’s Canyon Brown, picked by the Royals in the ninth. Last year’s group in Atlanta topped both of those combined, with five former Classic participants drafted, among them Southern’s Cardell Thibodeaux and Alabama State’s Kameron Douglas and Juan Cruz.

For the players about to take that same field this year, the message is simple: this game has already put people on rosters.

“We always like to be seen by the right guys,” Thibodeaux said ahead of last year’s event.

Built into baseball’s scouting pipeline, not separate from it

Part of why the Classic carries weight with evaluators is that it doesn’t stand alone. This year’s 50-man roster includes 22 players who have already come up through MLB’s other elite-development pipelines — the Hank Aaron Invitational, the Breakthrough Series, and Nike’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program — meaning many of these players are already known quantities to scouts before they ever step on the field in Philadelphia. Rosters in past years have also been unveiled live from the MLB Draft Combine, tying the event directly to the same scouting apparatus that sets draft boards.

North Carolina A&T catcher Tyler Smith, who has come up through those same programs, said Hall of Famer and Classic founder Ken Griffey Jr. has been part of that development for years. “He’s always there to answer questions,” Smith said.

Why Griffey built it this way

Griffey started the Swingman Classic in 2023 with a specific gap in mind: talented players at HBCUs often don’t have access to the travel-ball circuits, showcase events, and Power Five budgets that put other prospects in front of scouts year-round. The Classic — and the national broadcast that comes with it — is designed to close that gap in one night.

Jimmy Rollins, managing the National League squad this year alongside Rickie Weeks on the American League side, said he saw the request to manage as an easy call once he understood what it could mean for the players. “Giving these players an opportunity to shine on the big stage,” he said, was reason enough. Griffey has been more direct about what he wants to see from it: kids “seen and heard,” and, eventually, drafted in bigger numbers than the sport has historically pulled from HBCU programs.

The stakes this year

Every previous Classic has fed into a draft that followed within weeks. This year, it feeds into one that follows within hours. Scouts, executives, and front-office decision-makers who watch Friday’s game on MLB Network will, in many cases, be back in draft rooms by Saturday morning — some of them picking for the same teams whose scouts were just in the stands.

For a 50-man roster that includes returning participants looking for a bigger league night after prior appearances, and newcomers making their first case to a national audience, the Swingman Classic isn’t a preview of the draft. This year, it’s the opening round.