(KMOX) - The St. Louis Cardinals No. 1 overall prospect, pitcher Matthew Liberatore, has been selected to join the USA Baseball camp that hopes to qualify for the 2021 Olympics.
He, and a number of former Cardinals, were invited to the 28-player camp, which will have to be cut to 26 before the qualifying tournament begins.
Besides the 21-year-old left-handed pitcher, Cardinals fans will recognize a few more names. Outfielder Jon Jay, and pitchers Brandon Dickson, Edwin Jackson and Marc Rzepczynski were also invited to the camp.
Liberatore is currently playing for the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds and is 0-3 with a 5.48 ERA in four starts.
Jay was a member of the 2011 World Series championship team and released a pretty sweet hype video about making the camp:
Only players who are not currently on an MLB 40-man roster are eligible to play in the Olympic events.
USA has its work cut out though to actually make it to Tokyo for the summer games. They'll compete with Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, and Nicaragua in the qualifying tournament in Florida that begins May 31. The winner is in and the second- and third-place teams will have one more chance to qualify in a smaller tournament against Australia, Taiwan, and the Netherlands.
Basically there are 11 countries fighting for the final two spots in the Olympics.
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