On the heels of the announcement of the Future Stars Series national tournaments and combines heading to Nashville as part of the Music City Classic, preliminary details on the upcoming slate of signature events for 2023 have been unveiled, including the introduction of a new event in a familiar venue.
Underclass Premier will debut in 2023, held once again at Riders Field in Frisco, Texas, home of the Double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers, the Frisco Roughriders. The event is set to spotlight some of the top sophomores in the country, a change from the venue hosting the Underclass Elite, which will now be held at Fenway Park.
The Underclass Elite at Fenway, which hosted International Week twice as well as the most recent Main Event, is likely set to wrap up the domestic slate of signature events next year, with the Main Event preceding it the week prior at Citi Field. Queens was the site of the 2021 Main Event, which helped produce some of the top talent that ended up getting selected in the most recent MLB Draft, including Cam Collier, Henry Bolte and Cole Phillips.
One weekend that’s set to remain the same is the Fresh 50, which had an extremely successful debut showing at the University of Arizona just several weeks ago, and is currently scheduled to return to one of the top Power Five venues in all of college baseball for the 2023 slate. It’s set to be held during the first recruiting weekend in September.
Another? The Caribbean Classic, which will expand to an eight-team event and will once again be held in mid-October.
A complete set of dates will be officially announced in the coming months, and the possibility of additions to this schedule remains; the Citi Field and Fenway Park events are currently set to be held on back-to-back weekends, wrapping up with the Underclass Elite on the last weekend of September.
With the top events of the New Balance Baseball Future Stars Series now being held at two big league parks, one of the best ballparks in all of the minors and an impressive college venue — not to mention the Underclass and National Combines as well as the national tournaments being held in Nashville — it seems clear that New Balance’s global initiative for amateur baseball is set for their best year yet.
“Now that we’re through this year’s schedule of signature events after the Caribbean Classic, as much as I’d like to reflect on the success we had this past year with debuting events like the Fresh 50 and arguably our best Main Event yet, it’s more important that we look forward to what’s ahead,” said Future Stars Series president and CEO Jeremy Booth.
“Excited as we are to be collaborating with the Music City Classic for some of our bigger events in Nashville, our signature events really set the tone for what we do as a whole. To be able to introduce a new event in the Underclass Premier but be able to keep a great venue like Riders Field was really important to us, as was bringing back the Fresh 50, which I’m still hearing good things about literally every day since we got back from Arizona. But, having two big league ballparks on the schedule next year is the icing on the cake. We’re thrilled to be back at Fenway Park for the first year of the Underclass Elite being there, and couldn’t be happier to return to Citi Field for the Main Event with how great of a job they did hosting that just last year. Wrapping up the signature events schedule in the Dominican once again shows how truly global this is as well.”
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