It’s time.
The one you’ve all been waiting for is finally here, with the sixth installment of the New Balance Baseball Future Stars Series Main Event — formerly known as International Week — set to get underway on Friday afternoon at four-time minor-league Ballpark of the Year Dunkin Donuts Park in Hartford, CT, home of the Colorado Rockies Double-A affiliate.
The first of three games is set to get underway at 5:35 PM, and will be broadcast exclusively on DAZN with a big league crew on the call; Mike Ferrin, Jim Duquette and Alanna Rizzo will provide on-site coverage for the Main Event. After drawing rave reviews for his message at the recent Underclass Elite in Frisco, Texas, motivational speaker Stephen Mackey will return to address Main Event players after the game in Hartford.
After that, the event shifts to historic Fenway Park for the final two games on Saturday, with a doubleheader set to get started at 12:15 PM, with first pitch of the second contest slated for 45 minutes after the conclusion of the first.
While there are a ton of highly regarded bats in attendance, a lot of the national focus has been on the pitching, with an extraordinary amount of elite arms set to throw in front of a larger-than-ever guest list of big league executives and scouts throughout the weekend.
Subject to change as always, but the projected pitching matchup for Game 1 in Hartford is a good one, with Ethan Sutton set to start for Navy and Hudson Hamilton taking the ball for White & Red. Hudson Mattox and Cole Lanford, who led the Underclass Elite event with seven strikeouts, are currently set to pitch in relief of Sutton. Javi Torres and Jackson Elizondo are slated to follow Hamilton.
Luke McNeillie returns for his second consecutive Main Event, and will have the honor of getting the start at the first game at Fenway Park for Navy, where he’ll be opposed by Zane Adams, who was one of the standouts on the mound at the National Combine in Lake Charles this summer. Harrison Lewis and Andrew Elkhill will relieve McNeillie, while Brayden Marx and Deegan Cordova will do the same for Adams.
New Jersey’s high school player of the year Alex Kranzler, also a two-time Main Event participant, will get the nod in the finale for Navy, opposed by Jake Brown, who will get the ball for White & Red freshly removed from winning a gold medal with Team USA. Mac Heuer and Diego Ramos will follow Kranzler, with Cody New and Mason Gerrard set to pitch after Brown. Additionally, Jevarra Martin and Braison Crews are set to find innings where they can for the Navy squad, while Jake Melvin and Vinny Hudson will also see work on the bump for White & Red.
After going under the “International Week” moniker for the first four years of its existence, this will be the second annual “Main Event,” which makes its return to the home of the Boston Red Sox, who hosted in both 2019 and 2020 before a very successful trip to Citi Field last year.
Regardless of name or venue, the event has helped produce some of the top prospects in baseball, including Grayson Rodriguez (2017), Bo Naylor (2017), Daniel Espino (2018), Zac Veen (2019), Dylan Crews (2019), Ricky Tiedemann (2019), Markevian “Tink” Hence (2019), Mick Abel (2017, 2018, 2019), Braden Montgomery (2020), Edwin Arroyo (2020), Cam Collier (2020, 2021) and seemingly countless others.
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