As usual @JucoDad was spot on in his description of the JuCo experience. But as for the OP, there are an infinite number of things that impact the outcome of a player’s freshman year. Some kids have good to great outcomes. My son’s freshman year couldn’t have gone any better. Literally. Part of the reason why is that we really did our homework. The culture of any program begins and ends with the HC. We knew the HC was a good man - well respected and treated his kids fairly. Area MLB scouts told me that. We knew that the school had a winning culture. We knew they recruited good kids from good families. We knew that they didn’t over recruit. We knew the academics were very good by Juco standards - which are better than many people think. We took the HC at his word when he told my son if he committed that he wouldn’t bring in another recruit at the 3B position. And he was true to his word. So we knew that there would be immediate opportunity for playing time. We knew that players liked it there. We asked them and they told us. We knew this JuCo had a good history of advancing their players to good 4 year programs. We knew that there wasn’t a lot of roster turnover. And on and on. I really believe that if people did a better job of fact finding up front they would make better choices and would have better outcomes