To provide a perspective on how important grades are I took two dimensions, grades and baseball ability and that show how important grades are. If you assume the % of available schools are based primarily on an athletes ability and grades then a 10 in both categories would mean that 100% of the schools would be available to an athlete. I assume that there is a floor where no matter what your grades are you will not play and no matter how good an athlete are you will not play unless you make the minimum 2.0 which are arbitrarily assigned as a mid point of 5 on my scale.
So if you have great grades and are a meet the lowest criteria of a college baseball player you still would have the opportunity to play at 50% of the available schools. If you are baseball god and you just barely make the grade you have the same available pool of schools. It is important to point out that for the “average” kid seeking to play in college is a 7, if he has barely passing grades (5) only 35% of the potential schools would be available for him to play. If he was a 10 then he could have 70% of the schools available, a huge difference.
I caveat this analysis with the fact that it assumes linearity in all areas, which is not the case, but it should get the point across.
GPA BB Ability Opportunity (%)
10 10 100
10 9 90
10 8 80
10 7 70
10 6 60
10 5 50
10 X Don’t bother
10 10 100
9 10 90
8 10 80
7 10 70
6 10 60
5 10 50
x 10 Don’t bother
9 9 81
8 8 64
7 7 49
6 6 36
5 5 25
10 7 70
7 10 70
10 6 60