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Reply to "The 411 on helping your son play College Baseball"

ADesertDuck posted:

Good little overview, Rocky. Nice of you to take the time to share your thoughts and experiences. Should be very helpful to those just starting their journey and looking for a general overview to get them pointed in the right direction.

Don't get too worked up over rjm's comments and lack of detail when picking your work apart. Drive-by's are just his style. If he can't relate it to his personal or his kids 'all world, championship experiences' he'll just swing and run. Take a look at his history, I think he makes a nickel for every time he post's on a thread....he doesn't miss ANY!

And everyone here knows you have an attitude. I wasn’t going to bother since the errors should be obvious to anyone but a rookie. But I guess I’m being challenged to slice and dice the article.

The first section is about kiddie ball. No one becomes a college prospect in kiddie ball on a small field. Most college players were preteen stars. But many preteen stars don’t even make their high school team. Many parents can’t recognize the difference between the physical early bloomer of a 5”8” father and genuine potential. I wouldn’t given any credence to compliments from parents unless they played to a high level of ball. Any bit of connecting kiddie ball to college ball is delusional. 

The next part gets into high schools. Don’t pick your kid’s high school based on athletics. Pick it based on its academics. Even if you’re selecting a high school heading into high school there’s a very slim chance the high school will impact a kid playing college ball, being drafted and/or becoming a MLBer. There are plenty of college baseball players who attended high schools with mediocre baseball programs. Or the team was only successful because a kid was a dominating pitcher. The exposure comes their travel team. High school has a much better chance of affecting college academics and career start. 

What are unofficial levels of D1 baseball? There’s no such thing. D3’s are not for the most part high academics. There are far more D3’s that are part of a state university system than high academics. There are plenty of “write the check and you’re accepted” private D3’s. Not a lot of D3 players can play D1. Some mid major D1 prospects play D3. Typically they’ve selected a high academic D3 over an academic middle of the road mid major. They know they’re not pro prospects. They’re thinking grad school. Why are the handful of D3 draftees typically pitchers? Because 90+ is 90+ no matter where you throw it. Hitting success against the wide range of D3 pitchers is very subjective to judge.

A scholarship is a scholarship. Not true. At the D1 level with some exceptions, if the baseball coach doesn’t have any skin in the game with his scholarship count chances are the player is a low priority recruit. 

D3 schools require less practice. Ask some of the posters here if D3’s practice and train a lot less than D1 players. During the regular season there may be a time when when a player misses a game due to a non athletic friendly professor unwilling to provide an alternate test date. There may be a can’t miss lab. But I know D1 players who missed practice for labs. A player may be more likely to ask for a day off from practice to study. But to state D3’s practice less is very misleading. 

Most elite D3’s aren’t in the northeast. There are more in the northeast. There are plenty of elite D3’s all over the county. By the way Ohio and Illinois are not the east. West of Pennsyltucky (Central PA) is the Midwest.

I’ll pass on JuCo’s and NAIA’s for lack of knowledge and experience.

6.8 is good speed. It’s not top prospect elite speed. 6.8 foot speed is not in the same park as a 94 mph fastball.

Almost no baseball players are on the college radar at age twelve. 12yos are typically playing on a small field. Even Jerry Ford once said he only saw two 12yos with big time potential.

Most players on D1 teams don’t have scholarships. Not true. Up to 27 of 35 may be on scholarship. Yes, there are underfunded D1 programs. But still a majority of the players are getting at least 25%.

Don’t expect to have time for anything but baseball and school. While the two are very time consuming most baseball players have some semblance of a social life and girlfriends. 

Did any poster’s kid choose his school based on how many fans would be at the games and games are on tv? Crowds/environment are a plus. But not a reason to choose a program. Games on tv are a plus for parents. But once again, not a reason to choose a program. There are more D1 programs playing in front of 500 fans than playing before 3,000+.

Choose a recruiting service.  75-90% of this board would disagree. Most coaches don’t read recruiting service spam. There’s nothing a recruiting service can do that can’t be learned on this board. Besides, what a player really needs is his travel coaching selling him to his college contacts. 

Recruiting services provide honest evaluations of player’s talent. How. I’ll take the honest evaluation of up close and personal baseball people. If a kid has talent and lives in a metropolitan area in high school a travel team relevant to his abilities (D1 to D3) is pursuing him. 

Tell the coach about yourself as a person (in email). They’re not looking for Dr Schweitzer. They’re looking for baseball players. Provide metrics, possibly a two minute fundamentals video, why you want to play there and why you want to attend the college. 

Provide your grades and test scores. Coaches aren’t looking at grades and test scores until they know you can play the game. It’s not the reverse.

If you throw 77 focus on D2 and D3. If you throw 77 you’re not playing D2. You’re marginal for D3. Unless you have great command you might want to focus on intramural softball.

Last edited by RJM
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