Just getting started

I'll start, may be a little slow on Sunday afternoon...

What are his goals, what does he want to do?

Ha!  Around here no doubt you violated somebody's rules lol.  Not mine for sure.  Listen first get some measurements. Surely even in Alaska someone must own a stalker. Get mound velocity, positional velocity, exit velocity and 60 times at minimum. Then you will have an idea. But remember there is somewhere for everyone who just wants to be on a team. Please save your money though and do the measurements first. Looking for a bare minimum of following numbers:

mound velo over 80

exit velo over 85

Positional velo over 80

60 time under 7.5 for sure preferably closer to 7 or under. Anything over 7.5 better be accompanied by big time power or arm. 

If you don't have these numbers you can still play somewhere but probably won't be a 'recruit'. So a showcase would be a waste of time. Hope this helps. 

I think 2020dad is right, in that you'll have a better idea once you have some "measurables." If you go to www.perfectgame.org you can see the measurables of kids who have participated in a PG showcase, which may help you get a sense of what qualifies as "good."

Also, I wouldn't worry about traditional "stats" (batting average, etc.) -- they won't matter when it comes to recruiting.

Good luck!

AKMOM'

please check into the local team in the Alaska Summer College League.

Maybe you can be a "host family" and your son could take BP with the team. If interested, I can send your name to the U of BC in Vancouver, Canada.

Chris Prickett is the Head Coach and one of our Goodwill Series alumni. They have opportunities for players to be "honestly" evaluated.

Bob    http://goodwillseries.org/

GPA?

Course level? Example: General, honors, AP)

Height?

Weight?

What does the pediatrician project?

Your height?

Dad's Height?

Are there several examples of cousins growing taller than dad?

Pitching velocity?

Throwing velocity? (Infield, outfield)

Exit velocity off a tee?

Sixty time?

Time for the difficult one, the objective parent: Where does he rank in your state talent wise for his age? On his team? (Example: the best, too 5%, top 25%)

Can you post video of him hitting, fielding and throwing?

Probably the best thing to do is go to a coach familiar with his abilities. Tell him he wants to play college ball. Ask if he can help. Or who can he go to for help. Do not just head for mainland showcases. If you pick the wrong showcases it could be a huge waste of money.

One idea would be to attempt to hook up with a a team for the summer in the US northwest. Obviously they would have to find a host family for him.

Stay calm. You're not behind. He's only fifteen. If he was a top shelf, early notice stud someone important would have noticed. Otherwise starting now is right on time.

Go44Dad, right now his goal is to play ball in college. He'd like to pitch, which I think is a reach for him, or play infield, which I think is more realistic. Like I said, he has no real academic goals right now. Reading the other responses, I need to start getting a lot more serious about pulling together info on him.

Bob,
Thanks! We are pretty familiar with the local summer college league team. The family of one of my son's teammates hosted 3 players last summer. This coming summer might be a good one for us to think about doing that.

Course level? Example: General, honors, AP) -- currently honors Math, headed hopefully for AP calc and sciences.  3.285 GPA at the end of freshman year, but can do better (and I've been trying to get him to see the importance of that for baseball).

Height? 5'8"

Weight? 155. He needs to build muscle.

What does the pediatrician project? Haven't asked recently. We should.

Your height? 5'6"

Dad's Height? 5'6"

Are there several examples of cousins growing taller than dad? Only cousins are on dad's side, a couple are taller, at least one is 6'. Height genes would probably come from me -- my only sibling is 6'2" but has no kids.

Pitching velocity? Don't know

throwing velocity? (Infield, outfield) Don't know

Sixty time? Don't know

Maybe someone has these stats for my son, but I'm not aware of them.

Time for the difficult one, the objective parent: Where does he rank in your state talent wise for his age? On his team? (Example: the best, too 5%, top 25%) Again, I'm not sure. Where would I even look for these stats? In high school, our coach eliminated any travel so they only played local teams. In Legion, he did travel but his team did not do well at all. In the all-state team listings, I noticed that the Fairbanks players were the only ones that didn't have any stats listed at all. I think that was my eye-opener -- I realized that the Legion coaches were not keeping any of that info. His former travel coach did but I don't have any of that and he's moved out of state.

I do know that at the beginning of the summer I was told by the Legion coach that my son would be playing on the A team and not doing much travel. Within a couple of weeks he was starting for the AA team and played with them all summer, including all their travel. We have had multiple rec, travel, and now Legion coaches tell us he's good.  But Fairbanks is a small pond for sure.

Can you post video of him hitting, fielding and throwing? I'll have to dig and see. I missed a lot of Legion games this summer because I was out of town for about half the season.

Probably the best thing to do is go to a coach familiar with his abilities. Tell him he wants to play college ball. Ask if he can help. This I can start to do. His Legion coach may have some ideas. A former youth rec coach has always been pretty honest with us, and has a son who has played somewhere in California and a season or two on our summer college league team so he has some experience.

Thank you for all the questions. They give me a place to start. One of my biggest concerns has always been being objective and knowing whether he's "Alaska good" or actually good.

Question for you or anyone -- Baseball factory has come to Anchorage the past few years and we have not been able to swing being down there to participate. If no one else is getting this info on my son (velocity, speed, etc), would that be a good option? Not necessarily for recruiting, but just to get the stats?

I think there should be less expensive ways to get the stars u need. Strongly agree with hooking up with someone involved with the Goldpanners to help u get some measure able stats.  NOT batting average stuff.

Try to get, by next spring, throwing and hitting velocities, 60 time.  You can use Home made videos with an I phone of infield/outfield drills. 

Hi AKMOM, welcome to the site.  You've found the right site for the guidance you need. 

Currently, your son does not fit the profile of a top shelf D1 recruit.  Most other recruiting occurs somewhere around the junior year, so you and he have plenty of time.

It sounds like you have access to a few good sources such as the coach who has a player playing in California.  Also, I would check into any coaches that were involved with the local summer college team that may be based locally.  These are people who can give you reasonably accurate unbiased feedback.  I always suggest that you ask for the person to be overly critical with their assessment.

At some point, you will need some of those key measurables, particularly the throwing velo and the 60 time.  The Baseball Factory will provide an official neutral party measurement but you can probably get those two numbers in another manner without spending the $ on the event.  Also, he will need to put together a skills video.  There is plenty of information available here on the site that you can search.  You can do this yourself with the right instruction and equipment.  In any case, again, there is no hurry.

Just a warning for awareness...  MOST players and families who are pursuing playing college baseball are surprised at how competitive many of the D2, D3 and NAIA programs are.  You may find it quite different than the situation with your daughter swimming at the local D2.  The same applies to JC's particularly in California.

Stats don't really mean much, particularly if you play in a remote area where the level of competition is a bit of an unknown.  Be careful with how you communicate dissatisfaction with his coaches.  For one, baseball is a very small world and there is a good likelihood that any potential recruiting coach will contact his current/past coaches.  Also, son must learn to see the best in coaches and learn to thrive in an environment where he doesn't necessarily see eye to eye with the coaching staff.  It is a very possible scenario with whatever college team he ends up with.

Also be aware that baseball scholarship money is quite different than other sports.  To simplify, the average scholarship is approximately 25% and there are many players who play that are not on athletic scholarship.  So, academic money becomes a very significant piece of the puzzle.  While mileage varies, a 3.5 GPA is generally a very significant hurdle for earning meaningful $$.  Hopefully, he can use that as motivation in regards to academics.

For the next year or so, your son can focus on academics, developing his baseball skills as well as his strength/speed/agility, enjoying his HS years and enjoying playing the game.  Maybe start putting some thought into what type of college he would like to attend, how far he's willing to go, what the realistic budget is, etc. 

Cabbagedad,

Thanks. It's been through some reading online that I've realized that we need to be starting to think about things now and not wait. The D2 swimming thing just kind of fell into our laps, and I am hoping my son doesn't think that baseball will be anything like that. And as a parent, even that "easy" process was stressful!

I have been involved on the board for the local rec league, and while I have not shared everything with my son, I have shared some of the ins and outs and behind the scenes, a lot of which have involved coaches and former coaches. Since it is such a small town, he's been able to encounter most of his coaches both as his coach and as an opposing coach, and in other contexts as well (dad of a friend, local businessman, etc).  He really admired the HS coach during the season, but once he got into Legion he started to realize some of the HS coach's shortcomings. But he's a very coachable and respectful kid, and that's part of what coaches love about him. I worry more about myself and my husband -- we often need to bite our tongues and watch what we say around our son and let him develop his own opinions and ways of dealing with things.

I really do appreciate all the feedback here. It's confirming a lot of what I already thought (he's not D1) and has given me some direction. I've already shared some of it with my son ("The first thing I got asked was 'What's his GPA?;" LOL). Living in Alaska I find online communities can help when we feel disconnected.

AK Mom,  I just want to encourage you that you're not too late to make this work, even with the fact that you live in Alaska.  To reiterate:

1)lineup a showcase or two in the Seattle (or west coast) area next summer and

2) get what ever videos and measurements together that you can before that and

3) send them to the coaches of the schools your son is interested in and has a chance to attend academically a couple of months before the showcases,

then you'll have a fighting chance.

We're geographically challenged, too, though our weather is a bit warmer.  We found we HAD to get our 2017 in front of coaches to create the kinds of options he wanted for academics and baseball.  However, we do know of two other kids on his HS team that managed to make legitimate connections to middle of the road academic/athletic d3s based on the strength of their videos alone.

Since you don't have measurables yet:

what are his strengths on the field? compared to his teammates, is his arm better? does he hit for extra bases? fast? Slick fielder? very good linedrive hitting and contact skill? more allround polished Player without real strengths?

You said he played Legion this past summer.  Do you at least have a pitching velocity?  Seems like someone would have gunned him....either in a tryout or during a game.  At 15 and as a sophomore anything close to 80 would be enough to at least get him started with contacting some schools.  You said he's played some 2nd base, so I'm assuming he's a righty?  

AK Mom, you have gotten some solid advice here.  Just a couple points I would add.

1. As a sophomore, your son is entering crunch-time academically. If he wants to play in college, he needs to get serious about grades right now. I'd have him meet with his HS councilor for a reality check on where his grades are compared to where they need to be for the schools he'd like to attend.
2.  Sounds like he's not going to be tall. Nothing he can do about that. But he can work on being big. He'll be a much more attractive prospect if he spends your long winter days in the gym and puts on some serious muscle.
3. 2020 is right about the importance of the 60 time. The good news is that to a certain extent speed can be learned and improved upon. Indoors even.  Sounds like another great way to spend the winter. He should ask the school track coach for help.

What is the name of your local summer team. We have former Goodwill Series players in the Alaska League and they would be "happy" to help your son and provide an evaluation for both of you.

Also each team has a cameraman who can film your son. Have your son offer to help in the Club House and learn the "inside" of the game. This is our camera man in Australia.

Bob

Dominik85, I have had more than one coach tell me they need him in the game for his arm.  His travel ball coach left him in during a state tournament when he was 0-for-whatever at bat because his fielding and throwing are good. He is a utility player and will willingly play wherever he is sent. He has told me he hates 2nd base, but of course he'd rather be there than on the bench. About the only thing he shies away from is catching (he had a coach want him to catch this summer and while he didn't outright say no, he made it pretty clear he was uncomfortable with that idea).

Buckeye, he is a righty. I don't know that anyone was getting velocity during Legion, but I will check with the head coach.

JCG, thanks for your response. I've shared a lot of what I"ve learned here, and focused on the academic stuff. He's got midterms coming up and it is a good time for him to boost his grades. He's good at school but has a bad habit of not turning work in. Sigh. I've also been encouraging him to work out the past few winters. It's hard with baseball being so non-existent during the winter. He loses motivation. I see signs of interest this year.  I will keep encouraging (but not pushing).

Bob, our local college league team is the Goldpanners. Like I said, a friend has some ties to the team, but it is always good to be connected.

out of curiosity, where does he usually hit in the order?

AKMom posted:

I will keep encouraging (but not pushing).

Two years ago I told my son, who is a 2018, exactly what we would do to help him pursue baseball at college, including camps, lessons, etc. BUT he first had to demonstrate that he was willing to work for it by working out and working on his skills on his own, not just during practices. And then we stopped talking to him about it. His birthday was last week. Had family over for dinner. As soon as we were done he left. Had to go to the gym. They do get it eventually.

To measure the velo, just buy a pocket radar ball coach. It's pretty accurate.

AKMom posted:

Dominik85, I have had more than one coach tell me they need him in the game for his arm.  His travel ball coach left him in during a state tournament when he was 0-for-whatever at bat because his fielding and throwing are good. He is a utility player and will willingly play wherever he is sent. He has told me he hates 2nd base, but of course he'd rather be there than on the bench. About the only thing he shies away from is catching (he had a coach want him to catch this summer and while he didn't outright say no, he made it pretty clear he was uncomfortable with that idea).

The general rule in college is good fielders are a dime a dozen, but if you can hit, the coach will find a place in the line up for him.  Remember, unlike HS or Legion, every player at the college level was a HS stud.

Coaches do love utility players - the more positions he can play the better.  Generally speaking, college coaches recruit from the middle positions - Catcher, pitcher, middle infield (SS then 2B) and CF.  It's not uncommon to find most position players at the college level were middle infielders (SS) or CF's in HS.

Our son played catcher, 3B and 1B in HS and was recruited to play 1B at JuCo and then 1B at a D2 so he was an exception.  At both JuCo and D2 he played DH and outfield in addition to 1B.