Nick …The most heavily recruited player on my son’s travel team was the least successful in college. He accepted an offer from a top ranked team. When the kid signed his NLI the coach said it could be his best recruit ever. For three years the kid played his way out of the lineup by conference play Opening Day.
When this kid took the field he would have been voted “most likely to be a MLB ball player.” Josh Hamilton is my physical visual of the perfect ball player build. This kid was built like Hamilton in his junior year of high school. When he hit the ball he had “ooh-ah” metrics. He had a great arm. He had better than average recruitable speed.
My son was recruited for 17u teams while playing 16u as a 14u eligible with his May birthday. At the time he was 5’11” 135. Despite his build he had quality metrics for that size. I’m 6’1”. I played college ball. His mother is 5’8”. His sister was a college (at the time) softball player was 5’10”. So the travel teams and scouts looked at the talent and saw a kid who would continue to grow and fill out. Once again, we’re back to projection.
What your son is going to experience is how the metrics match up crossed with physical potential. Unfortunately, he’s often going to lose out to players with similar skills and better size. Stats aren’t that important.
There are thirty-five players on a D1 team. D2 and D3 sometimes have more. Only 18-20 are going to play enough to impact the season. It allows recruiting coaches to take some chances on the hard thrower with no movement who gets smacked around. You can’t teach velocity (past a certain point). You can teach movement. If the kid doesn’t figure out movement will be gone within two years. Next man up. Coaches only have to have about a 50% success rate to be successful recruiters. If they bring in fourteen and seven work out it’s a good recruiting year.
Due to the bias it’s important to be fishing in the right pond to avoid wasting time and money.