@auberon posted:The players getting meaningful NIL money are the ones who have professional prospects. The top 25 NIL earners in college baseball are making an average of $45,000 per year (Source). Wasting a year of your life for a shot to make $45k if you end up in the top 0.2% of D1 baseball players? All these kids repeating eighth grade are delusional, or have delusional parents.
Calling it a "waste of a year" assumes that you will have a career in something other than baseball. Some people want to work in baseball, even if not playing professionally. Having that kind of experience is valuable, in that case.
But you cannot possibly tell that about an 8th-grader. I agree that most parents are delusional. Even before the flood, there were two kids in our (small) town who were held back in 8th grade, for a different sport. While in high school, opponents' fans yelled "super-senior" (as an insult) every time they touched the ball. One went on to a P5, played 5 years (pandemic), had a good experience. The other went to a D2, I think, and vanished. So that's a 50% success rate - glass half full, or half empty?