And You Thought Early College Recruiting Was Bad?

Seems to me the incentive for MLB teams to reign this in has become even less. 

Has anyone seen Pelotero? It's a documentary on Latin American baseball recruiting. The hottest prospect in this movie turned out to be Micheal Sano. An important part of this story is what happens when it's discovered a kid is seventeen and not sixteen. It cost him a lot of money. It's also about the corruption of the 16yos agents.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt18...513?ref_=vi_prev_btn

My son's scout team was run by Fred Ferreira (Google him). I used to have a guy working for me that ran a "training" academy in the Dominican Republic.

One one hand I can see it as being exploitative, but on the other it gives some a chance to get out of terrible economic conditions.   

Fl State was mentioned as recruiting 2020's early. Even the northern schools are recruiting to 2020s.  Things have sped up considerably in just the last 1-2 years. 

Florida State only has three 2020 commitments listed by PG.

SLACKERS!  The "U" has eleven!

The answer to the original questions is "no".  If you look at most sports recruiting, whether the player is 14 or 16, more often than not projections do not  work out.  Why they do not work out has many factors and I would venture to say when trying to predict how a 14 year old will develop, mentally and physically, is a lot harder than predicting how a 16-17 will. Go to any of the travel baseball organization's list of college commits and then go to the college roster of where they committed and see if the player is still on roster.   I have done it and many are not.

Recruiting has a lot to do with physical size of a position player or velo of the pitcher.  Right or wrong, recruiting will always favor the 6'3-210 position player and the 91 mph pitcher.  Coaches will recruit as many of high school freshman and sophmore as they can and hope 1-2 work out! HC/RC have created a system that makes a more competitive recruiting environment. It forces them to evaluate younger and younger which is why they will increasingly find that many more players  may not work out.

Go to any of the travel baseball organization's list of college commits and then go to the college roster of where they committed and see if the player is still on roster. I have done it and many are not.

A college roster has a roster of thirty-five recruits they believe can help the team win. About sixteen to twenty will get the kind of playing time they expected. About half are going to transfer out in one or two years. This is as much a numbers game as projecting.

Agreed. But many of the 16-20 are not always the ones they recruited when they were 14.

JABMK posted:

Agreed. But many of the 16-20 are not always the ones they recruited when they were 14.

The entire process is a crap shoot. When all the recruiting was done on sixteen and seventeen year olds rosters were just as volatile. They may have been more volition given there wasn't a sit out, transfer rule until about seven, eight years ago. 

I realize some people take a stance against early recruiting as their kids are physical late bloomers. My son was a physical late bloomer. It didn't hurt him. 

I object to early recruiting for academic reasons. Women's sports recruiting has been crazy for a long time. Most girls physically mature between 12-14yo.

My daughter received offers after freshman year of high school. A lot of girls receive offers before they reach high school. How many kids know where they want to aim their life in 8th or 9th grade? Fortunately my daughter did. She did change directions. But her major was a good, unique major for law school.