Thanks Cabbage. You’re correct. I am not connecting the academic value of D3’s to D3 baseball bottom feeders.
A kid from our high school went to and played for Caltech. There’s certainly no way to criticize choosing to attend Caltech. In high school baseball the kid only got six mop up innings senior year of high school. He played Legion in the summer. In our area Legion is very mediocre ball.
The father is a real nice guy who understood his son’s fit in the high school program. He never commented on his son’s lack of playing time. I think he cheered harder for kids than their parents. I ran into him a couple of years ago. I asked him how getting pounded almost every game affected his son regarding baseball. He said the kid just loved playing that much. It was his chance to shine relative to the roster.
To each his own. Obviously a kid at Caltech isn’t sacrificing academics. But unless a player has pro potential my belief is you don’t sacrifice academics to play baseball. You don’t go to Whattamattah State over Brainiac U and suffer beatdown after beatdown just to say you played college ball.