How do you analyze a college roster?

1.  Initial focus is how many kids are on the roster that play my sons position?  What year are the players, size, those players stats, any PG profiles on those kids? PG grade, gpa/act, athletic awards, trying to get a sense how strong of recruits those kids were.  

2)  Any kids committed via PG 2016, 17,18's? What are their profiles?

 

3) Who are the coach's, their tenure, school record, any draft picks Jr year, new facilities, new AD?

 

Wealth of information to cross reference to gain a sense of recruitment probability, playing time, and college's commitment to their baseball program.

 

This happens to be my focus with my youngest, who is a 2018. 

 

My 2cents

Kids that they tweet about are all seniors who just signed an NLI. They aren't allowed to talk about their junior commits until a year from now when they are allowed to sign.

 

i don't think we did much roster analysis other than where the kids were from And maybe how many they were "signing" each year. 14 is maybe just a little above average if they're all HS if they do it every year. Some years it may not be though depending on what they expect to lose. 

 

 

If you are right hand hitter, I look for a short left field fence. Then I look at the k's per time at bat for the hitters and the RBI per time at bat For #3, 4,5,6 hitters.

 

This tells me who the coach will play during season when he needs to win.

 

Bob

How many the expect to lose, seems like it can be a big factor for the very top programs, I was looking at something about this once and it mentioned that  North Carolina lost, like  5  of something like 15 or 16 commits one year to the draft.  Also remember reading an interview with a coach at some top program about this phenomenon.  He said that although they know up front that they stand some chance of losing their top recruits every year, they were determined to keep signing guys of that caliber.  He seemed to believe that they would fall behind, if they started to set their sights lower on more sure to come kind of guys. 

If the coach has been there more than five years or so, you can trace a few classes from their signing announcements through their playing careers and get a rough sense of how they flow through the system. How many transfer in and out? How many play for three or four years?  Do they bring in large classes, pick those who are immediately ready to contribute and cast the rest adrift? Or do you see players grow into starting roles over a couple seasons? The higher up you get within D1, the more important it is to be ready to win a position as a freshman, because there will be an all American coming in next year wanting the spot you think you've grown into.

 

When you look at previous rosters and stats, you can see what happens to those players who didn't get more than 35 ABs. Were they gone the following year? Did they move into starting roles? Did JUCO transfers claim starting spots? Did they remain in the same roles? 

 

You can also look at the resumes the players had in high school by checking the school's press releases when they signed, the roster bios and their Perfect Game profiles. Make an honest comparison and ask if your son is where the starters were when they were your son's age. 

 

You can also see what the players are majoring in. How many are studying something real that indicates a viable non-baseball contingency plan for their lives after college? 

 

I don't see much value in counting players at particular positions. Too many college players change positions for this information to be useful. Coaches will move players around as needed to get the best bats in the lineup. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

This is all excellent info.  Not sure I would have thought of many of these things. Good topic - Thanks!

We would look at the following things:

How many players are carried on roster

Where players are from geographically (tells a little about recruiting)

Which positions are graduating

How long has manager been with the team

Do any players play multiple position

Who is in the class ahead of him/positions (from coaches or Perfect game commits)

Look at the heights and weights of players (son on small side)

Check Stats: (esp. BA and K%) for current players in son's position

Does the program play underclassmen or under players' stats does it say DID NOT PLAY

Looked at SB attempts for the team, sacrifices and K%/PA (which gave some ideas about coach philosophy.)

What majors did kids declare on team

Is there still a large senior class, or do a number of players leave program

 

We looked at only a few things on a clubs roster from the perspective of a pitcher.

 

1) How many pitchers will be graduating that son could be replacing.  Is he competing for one roster spot or five. 

 

2) What is the distribution of pitching innings...who is getting the bulk of innings and what is their pitching role.  How good are they (attended a few games to get an idea) relative to pitchers he's seen playing national travel ball and relative to their conference.

 

3) How many engineering majors from freshmen year to senior year

 

That was it in a nutshell.  It was that simple for us.

What you look at may different based on the level of competition. At a D1 you know there will be a roster of 35. At a D3 the roster might be 50. A player who is # 30-50 is probably wasting his time.

 

You can look at trends. But unless the coach is a lifer at the program you can't be sure he'll be around the next four years. Any young (under 50yo) hot coach at a D3, D2, mid major or even cold weather Power 5 is a prospect to keep moving up.

 

My son looked for programs who liked fast, left handed hitting outfielders. But he made sure they knew he also played infield in the beginning of high school and 18u travel. If a player runs a very fast sixty the coaches interested in speed comes to them.

 

i once read 50% of D1 recruits transfer to play somewhere else. It makes sense. A D1 recruit was probably all everything in high school. He has high expectations. Yet only about 18-20 of the thirty-five players will get much playing time. I know two Gatorade players of the year who transferred from a highly ranked program when it didn't work out for them. 

 

If academics are high on the list of priorities check out the majors of the players. Most won't have challenging majors. But look to see if there are a few. For some coaches their emphasis of academics is "Is the player eligible to play?" I have a couple of friends where the coach (of a ranked program) told them engineering was no problem during the recruiting process. It was an issue when they arrived on campus.

 

When it's all said and done the player picks the college and the baseball program not the coach. Every variable except the college may change.

If a kid is a pitcher try to find out how many of the program's pitchers have had surgery. There's a ranked program where every top pitcher had surgery after turning pro. The coach has a reputation of riding his pitchers like a mule to success.

Pertaining to pitchers. A D1 pitching/recruiting coach said to my son, "we will have 14 pitchers on our roster, but 9 pitchers will get most of the playing time".

I would say thats pretty accurate through 2 sons at D1.  At least in their programs (both Pac12) that rang very true.

I just think it depends on the program.  Schools like Stanford would be 0 or 1...our younger son's team (Washington) lost 2 or 3 (the 2 I can think of were 1st round and supplemental 1st round).  5 seems a little on the high side but I'm sure it happens.

We never looked at a roster, a coach's recruiting ratios or even how much their football team was winning...we went where he wanted to go to school and where he wanted to compete for a spot. Your kid can be the best on the team, be in the best position to play, be the most talented and never see the field due to issues outside a parent's control. Exclusive of the tuition amount/scholarship offer...remove yourself from the equation. 

 

Well that got me to thinking... if you look at the size of 2016 recruiting classes, at least as posted on Perfect Game, there's a wide variation. Cal, for example, shows 6.  I'd be feeling good about that if I was one of them, or if I was a returning player.  But what about Arizona State?  According to PG they have a great recruiting class.  I guess they must -- 17 recruits!  Obviously they're not going to all be there come opening day. Or if they are, not very many returning players will be there.  And they're not alone.  16 in Washington's incoming class.  15 for UCLA.  13 for both Oregon and OSU.  16 for Vandy, just to throw a token SEC school into the mix.

I think there are 5 draft picks in that 2016 AZ State incoming class. Ditto Vandy (including the projected #1 overall pick). And in some programs, there can be up to a 50% churn of existing players.

 

So when you take that U of H roster from the OP, you need to compare the personnel on the roster from year to year to identify the drop off, and compare the PG commits vs. who actually ended up there. I think you'll find that everything adds up.

There is some good advice in this thread, but in the end you have to first find an academic fit, and then match that with a realistic valuation of where your son could compete. This is the most difficult part for parents -  since most of us (during the recruiting period) have/had probably not seen a college baseball game and really don't (or did not) know where he would fit. This is just part of the process of figuring out where your son fits in the whole scheme of college baseball. It is probably pretty evident if he can compete in a top 50 program, since he will be getting lots of attention from pro scouts, Below this it starts to get fuzzy, this is where independent non biased opinions really help.

 

We came at it from an academic fit first, then where we thought he could compete, and the roster stuff in the end did not matter so much. If he can compete then he will earn a spot and if not he will not.  

I took a different angle. 

 

Son was about to get an offer from a pretty high academic D1.   He had a pre-read, but I was concerned, like many parents I'm sure, if he would be able to handle the academic load (at a  high pressure school) with the demands of baseball.

 

So before the unofficial visit when the offer was made, I printed off about 5 years worth of rosters to review.  What I looked for was 1)  how many freshman were on the roster vs. how many indicated were going there on the PG website; and 2)  how many players actually made it to senior year (less those drafted).  I only did a quick glance at freshman statistics, since I really didn't know the players and their abilities.

 

I thought it was helpful.

 

(side note that should be a disclaimer:  past roster turnover doesn't predict future turnover with new coaches)

Thanks everyone who posted.  Valuable and appreciated.

 

Juco info certainly welcome.