Baylor Lock's Up Top Recruiting Class-Baseball America

Bears Lock Up Top Class

Baylor's class has impact players all over the diamond

By Aaron Fitt
October 11, 2006 Print this article

When Mark McCormick and Ryan Lamotta arrived on Baylor’s campus as the jewels of a promising 2002 recruiting class, Bears coach Steve Smith felt like he got the players he wanted out of the state of Texas for the first time.

“Then we went through a couple years there coming off the basketball stuff that really, really hurt us in the state,” Smith said. “There was so much negative publicity around basketball, it really did affect us in-state.”

He’s referring, of course, to the 2003 murder of Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy by teammate Carlton Dotson and the subsequent misconduct and resignation of basketball coach Dave Bliss. Smith and his baseball program had nothing to do with any of that, yet they suffered on the recruiting trail from the PR fallout.

But it turns out the Baylor coaching staff was right to believe its 2002 class was a harbinger of good things to come for the baseball program. Three years later, that class played a crucial role in Baylor’s first trip to the College World Series since 1978. All of a sudden, the Bears found themselves out of basketball’s dark shadow.

“I always wondered if we got to Omaha what kind of impact it would have on recruiting, and it had a big one,” Smith said. “And it couldn’t have come at a better time.”

Added recruiting coordinator Mitch Thompson: “It was quite a time, because we’d make an offer to a kid and he’d accept it. We didn’t lose a single kid that we offered.”

Now Baylor is harvesting the fruits of that 2005 CWS run and the ensuing recruiting boon. With four elite recruits and a number of other potential high-impact players, Baylor’s 2006 haul ranks as the nation’s best.

Unique In The Big 12

Many scouts considered premium bats Aaron Miller and Dustin Dickerson top-two-rounds talents in the 2006 draft, but they slipped to the 11th and 15th rounds because of their strong commitments. Both should both emerge as middle-of-the-order threats for Baylor, quite possibly as soon as this spring. Miller figures to take over the right-field job in 2007, while Dickerson will see time at first base or left field. Infielders Shaver Hansen and Raynor Campbell and catcher Gregg Glime will all have a chance to win starting jobs as well.

The Bears also have a pair of the best freshman arms in the country in righthanders Kendal Volz and Shawn Tolleson. Volz, a 6-foot-4 horse with a 92-94 mph fastball, a plus slider and a solid changeup, is likely ticketed for Baylor’s weekend rotation right away. Tolleson, who was generating first- or second-round buzz as a junior in high school, doesn’t figure to start pitching for the Bears until April or May, because he’s recovering from early-March Tommy John surgery. When healthy, Tolleson showed a sinking fastball that touches 94 mph and a devastating slider, ingredients that should cement his place alongside Volz in the first two slots in Baylor’s rotation in the coming years. Righthanders Willie Kempf, Craig Fritsch and Ryan Jenkins all have quality stuff and should be impact pitchers for Baylor as well.

Tolleson’s surgery turned out to be one in a series of factors that led to Baylor’s banner class arriving in Waco almost entirely intact. Major league clubs passed on Tolleson in the draft because of his injured elbow and bonus demands. Volz, a high school middle linebacker, was dinged up just enough on the football field that no team was willing to give him the potential seven-figure bonus it would have taken to buy him out of his commitment. Dickerson, a local kid out of Waco’s Midway High, loves being at home near friends and family and wasn’t yet ready to give that up. And Miller was the No. 5 student in his Channelview (Texas) High class of about 700, making an education at a private university particularly appealing.

Baylor’s status as the lone private school in the Big 12 Conference puts it in a unique position to attract academic-minded players. The only other private baseball power in Texas is Rice, which draws largely from the Houston area, leaving Baylor as the major private school option in central Texas. Of course, competing for players against less expensive public schools has its challenges.

“I think it’s a tough deal when your cost of attendance is twice what anybody else’s is,” Smith said. “But if you’re going to be a private school, you might as well be the only one. That is a niche, no doubt, and we don’t have to share it with anyone.”

And in its 10th year in the Big 12, Baylor has brought in a watershed recruiting class that proves a private school can sustain success against all the conference’s public heavyweights. Now the Bears’ big challenge will be bringing in another strong class behind this one.

“What’s interesting, we are so young, and everybody’s using that against us,” Smith said. “People are asking (recruits) the question, ‘Where are you going to play (at Baylor)?’ We’re trying to make sure we sign four or five quality players to mix with these guys we’ve got. There’s enough players out there, in this state in particular, we’ll eventually land a really good group.”