@DD 2024 posted:Have seen the same thing - scholarship players get chance after chance after chance. Non-scholarship players rarely get chances, even if they are clearly better.
Not sure why this is, maybe human nature not to admit you’re not correct 100% of the time in selecting players. Maybe pressure by the administration to show ROI on the scholarship dollars. Hard to know.
Always follow the money.
Not only have I seen this over and over - I lived it. I was the rare D1 walk on that made the roster, played, and earned a scholarship. But it took me two years of working my ass off to do it and my reward was that I had a really good senior year. But I never got as many opportunities as my teammates and I thought I deserved - and it’s for the reasons stated above. I wasn’t recruited and I was never one of “their guys.” Neither were any of the other JuCo transfers who were all used to make “their guys” compete. That’s just how it was and how it still is most places - especially at ranked D1 programs. It also didn’t help my odds of getting on the mound that our #1 & #2 starters both had good big league careers. Another guy pitched a couple years for the Blue Jays and two others pitched in the minor leagues. Of the 8 pitchers that saw mound time 5 signed pro contracts. I was one of the 3 that didn’t. Even tho my stats were better than theirs that year it didn’t matter. The money had been invested in them and not me. They were also better players, evidenced by the fact they they were all drafted and I wasn’t. That’s why stats aren’t the be all end all of measuring performance. There can be statistical anomalies - and for that matter metrics aren’t either. Posting “impressive” metrics doesn’t mean a player can perform in a game.