Well said Louise about the ED/EA consideration. It really is specific to each student and how strongly they want to go to a particular school. And I was surprised by Smoke's answer that 2 of the 3 schools his son is considering do not offer both ED and EA. My son has several really high academic schools on his list and all of them offer both options, so Smoke's must be the "elite of the elite" where they can readily exclude from the applicant pool any student who is not 100% certain they want to go to that school.
I do wonder if it hurts the "only ED" schools' baseball options though because after the ED pool is settled, if a coach missed several players who he thought would get in but did not, then they have to wait until late Spring and Regular Decision candidates to move to the next pool of players. Meanwhile, a lot of their competition is aware of who been accepted EA and they can get down to financial aid packages and settle on a roster of known recruits before the only ED schools can.
For us, it comes down to the ethics dilemma combined with the uncertainty of what kind of financial package can be provided. The ethics end of it is two-sided: are we willing to back out of ED if the package is not enough to make it work, and could the school/coach use ED as a means by which they say "take it or leave it" knowing the student really has no other options having gone ED? In some ways, I am glad my son does not have a "must" school on his list and that eliminates ED entirely from our consideration. And he has been very open about that with the coaches and I think they believe him.