When we talk with college coaches, they are brutally honest about the capabilities of their players; a few programs send a "scouting report", listing all of the guys they hope to place with a very candid assessment of each player's strengths and weaknesses. Talking to your coach about where he thinks you can/should play is a very good idea. Very rarely would we sign a player without first talking to his coach. It does a player no good whatsoever to sit most of the summer on the pines; one coach was grumbling a bit about the Cape, saying he had a couple pitchers that got about 10 innings total this past summer-his comment was he should have sent them someplace where they would have thrown more. For young D3 position players, which seems to be a big problem spot, the best advice I can give is be the hardest working guy on your college field, find some place/any place for your first summer where you will actually play, whether a summer league, American Legion, or a local league, and be the hardest working guy there too. The problem with D3 position players isn't a lack of talent, it's a lack of playing against high level talent so it's hard to project how the player will do against consistently better pitching than he sees during his college season. But I remember this guy well:
" Bruce Maxwell is the rare left-handed hitting catcher that major league teams covet so highly. He parlayed an amazing college career, spent mostly in obscurity, into his high draft position. A star at Sparkman High School in Alabama, Maxwell was a power-hitting first baseman with a lot of athleticism. He decided to attend college at Division III Birmingham-Southern College and ended up becoming the greatest player in the history of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC)."
He was drafted in the second round and is now in the Bigs.