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Reply to "The average pitching speed at age X is this!"

I want to emphasize what Leftside said: the risk is entirely on the player who is recruited early (or before) the HS career has some legs.

 

i am close to several top twenty programs. Each casts its net wide and early. There is absolutely no downside risk to each program; even though every year there are multiple verbal commitments which don't ripen to NLI's, the line of other recruits simply step over the bodies of those who fell.

 

Since this is a business, I do not blame the coaches; they are paid to win. To win, they over stock their inventory (players) - much like modern day businesses over order and then withdraw orders if sales don't materialize. There is no hidden ball trick here. Parents, travel ball coaches, private instructors, and the college coaches all know the game. Of course, the player is probably the least informed - and most impacted.

 

So many variables exist between early recruitment and signing. I would argue that the early offer has implied conditions (which should be known to ANY legitmate travel ball coach, private coach, parent, etc.) which must be satisfied before the verbal offer/acceptance ripens to a official NLI. These include (but are not limited to): player continues to develop (some of this development is within the players control [e.g., work ethic], some is outside the player's control [e.g., physical growth, injury]), coaching continuity (coaches move all the time either voluntarily of involuntarily), player academics (totally in a player's control), character issues (totally within a players control), financial ability to pay the shortfall between what is offered and what will be owed (who knows the parents finances four years out), and more.

 

On top of this house of cards rests the whims of a kid whose "dream school" may change half a dozen times between eighth grade and NLI time. (Apart from my personal belief that no eighth grader can have the maturity, knowledge, or context, to label a school his ultimate dream before he has taken a HS class, a standardized test, seen the competition on the diamond, seen and compared the spectrum of college choices to match against his interests; that is not to say a kid doesn't verbalized a dream school - based upon his view as a young teenager - which is generally reinforced by parents or siblings; simply that he is not yet prepared to make the MAJOR decision of his life (at that point) - one with consequences which will reverberate for the rest of his life. The same goes for ninth graders (except they have a year of basic HS classes under their belts).)

 

So, whether you label "recruiting" as beginning in the cradle or in eleventh grade, it doesn't matter. If the program doesn't want the player, there are legitimate reasons (from the program's perspective); if the player doesn't want the program, there are legitimate reasons (from the player side). Verbal or no verbal, the player needs to press forward in the classroom, in the weight room, with his personal coaches, and on the diamond as if he has NO offers - until he graduates HS. He can never let up (and, BTW, that continues in college (where many programs have a perform or else approach) and beyond).

Last edited by Goosegg
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