MTH - That was a great post As a former fellow engineering baseball parent I couldn't agree more. You hit the nail on the head with your 3 factors. I think bottom line for me is there is no shortcut with this major. You do the work or you are done. At times, it seemed like he was trying to get his undergraduate and graduate degree at the same time. It is a lot of hardwork (a grind!) regardless of your intellect, commitment, determination and work habits. But intellect, commitment, determination and work habits can certainly help. ;-)
Where I think our experiences differ is the flexibility of the programs. My son's conference has specific language and metrics about missing classtime for an athletic event, travel or practice. The team and conference were flexible or at least accomodating. It sounds like your son's conference had no flexibility at all and he had to travel for midweek games. My son was fortunate to have travelled for very few midweek games (they could only travel with 22) because he (mostly) started one of the four weekend games. In his particular case being a pitcher made his situation much better than being a position player. My son told me flat out that he probably couldn't maintain his engineer grades and be a position player.
So, I think we've told everyone about the good (our sons are employed!) , bad, and ugly about college baseball and engineering. I think every situation is different and it is up to the recruit to understand what to very specifically expect and figure out if this is a path for the recruit.