How important is fall ball for a 2012

jimdandy welcome to the site and please understand you've come to a wonderful place with tons of baseball knowledge from all kinds of levels and experiences.

That's a good question you got and you are going to get a ton of different responses from everyone. There are pros and cons for each side of playing fall ball or going to camps. I guess before I can give my advice I need to ask - how interest has your son seen from college coaches so far?

There's two ways to look at it - cast a huge net and hope for a good catch or get a smaller net and try to hook a specific catch. What I mean is that IMO if you go the fall ball route you need to make sure it's the right team and situation where you WILL be playing in front of college coaches. I don't know the level of talent your son has and stats won't help me or anybody else on here to know how good he is so you have to make sure he plays on a team that is of his skill level. By doing this you're casting the big net in hoping he's seen by the right college coach at the right time. Then the recruiting process will start and lead to a scholarship. If he's not on the right team / situation where he's playing and no coaches are there OR he's sitting the bench then he's wasting his time. When choosing a fall ball team make sure you know what you're getting into.

The smaller net is that your son knows, or at least has a good idea, of what schools he wants to attend. Make a list of 5, 10, 15 or however many schools he wants to attend and fix a schedule to attend as many camps and showcases that this list of schools will have or attend. This is good because you're being seen by the people you want to be seen by. Don't leave it up to chance either. Make contact before the camps / showcases explaining his interest, introduce himself to coaches before camps / showcases and then perform. Now the recruiting process is hopefully started now.

The truly best option is to do both - get on a good team and attend camps of schools want to attend. This will cost some money to make sure you plan it out very well. There's not a lot of money in college baseball scholarships so make sure the grades are strong to get academic money to finish what baseball doesn't provide.

Hope that helps.

At least out here on the West Coast the fall season the year before you graduate is where it ALL comes together. West Coast schools follow the weekly games, and then there are a couple of scout tournaments where schools from all over the country come in. It is topped off with the Arizona Fall Sr. Classic. My son’s scout ball team calls the last week of the scout season the “feeding frenzy”, where all of the sharks (coaches) are swimming around in the pool trying to find the last morsels. (players) It is capped off the Arizona Fall Sr Classic. Not sure if there is a similar season on the East Coast, but fall is critical for players out here.

Coach thanks very much for the welcome and great advice! he has made his list and ranked his schools by desire 1-10 (2) of which are major D1 programs in the Big East, he is an upper level player with a great skill set,one draw back is speed at this time 7.0 60 he stands 6'2" at 160lbs, looks like he's got the coat hanger still in the shirt(lol) grade wise 3.5gpa first sat 1600 retaking in fall. since he will be attending the PG event in Aug it would be a good idea to let his choices know in advance of his attandence? again thanks for the response

That's pretty funny about the coat hanger LOL. Sounds like he has a good frame that might be able to put some serious muscle on pretty quick. Has he went through a fairly recent growth spurt? That might help explain the lack of speed in that he's not used to his newer, taller body.....or he could just be slow. Back in my day I used to use the growth spurt but I was just slow and everyone knew it but me LOL.

Glad to hear he has grades / academics in gear. That will help more than you realize down the road.

The PG event will have a ton of coaches / scouts there so that will help with the big net. Since he's got that list I would most definitely let them know he's going to be there and find out if they will be. I don't think you can ever go wrong by contacting coaches ahead of time that you will be at something they will or might be at. All they have to do is look at him and make a decision if he's what they are looking for. Pretty simple once you realize that overall is what it's about.

One last thing - make sure it's your son and not you that's making contact with these coaches. They want to see initiative and not a player who has to rely on his dad to talk for him.