Stanford Camp #1 (2018) report

Excellent work Smokeminside !

Nice summary.  Thanks for the report.  My 2020 will be going next weekend.  Have a few questions for you.  Did you stay to watch even during workouts?  What did your 2019 say about the dorms?  Was there A/C?  Just asking because one of the college camps that we were looking at said there was no A/C and in this summer heat I though that was going to be rough.    

In previous years with my older boy I stayed to watch the workouts.  The most interesting workouts to me were the cage sessions not just because of what they entailed but also because I could see which coaches were working most closely with my son.  I did not go to the workouts this year.

He said the dorms were small but comfortable.  The session he attended  was very cool at night and the days were very comfortable even sitting in the sun, so I can't comment on the weather.  It does look like it's heating up. 

The nighttime temperature in the Bay Area is very rarely an issue. Even when we get our heat waves, it almost always cools off to a comfortable level at night.  You need a sweater when you go out most nights.

One small, practical note about Stanford - though the fields are grass, some of the drills are done on turf fields, so turf shoes are a necessity.  Not having them slowed my kid down significantly.

No A/C in the dorms that my son (2020) stayed in last year. There was a bit of a heat wave when we were there and the dorm room got warm at night. They were not allowed to open the windows - I believe because they were on the ground floor. Great camp though and he's going again next week!

If I could do it all over, I think I would have tried to get my son to this camp. I not sure it would have changed any outcome, and he still may have ended up at the same school. However it sounds like quite an experience. 

Thanks Smoke....

And as Smoke knows D3 is not such a bad thing. I love Baseball at that division.

StrainedOblique posted:

Excellent work Smokeminside !

too bad I can't get paid for it!

Hello! FIrst post for me. Instead of making a new one just figured I would hide it in here as it is on the topic of the Stanford Baseball Camp.

My 2020 son attended the last summer session of that camp last week.  Overall he said it was a good experience, but he went as a PO (pitcher only - yes, I know you know what that means) and missed out on some things he would have liked.  To be fair, and clear, he really IS a PO at this point - it is his strongest position.  However, my son was a late bloomer, is still growing, and his shoulders haven't really started to come in yet. He projects to be a big strong kid, and until we are certain one way or the other I want him to continue developing as a complete player. I want him to learn a fielding position and I want him to learn how to hit.  These are extreme examples, of course, but one can consider the recent examples of Rick Ankiel and Shohei Ohtani - when they were injured (mentally or physically) and couldn't pitch they were able to play outfield.  On the other side, Bruce Kieschnick went from hitter to pitcher.

Anyhow, because he was a pitcher only he did not take ANY batting practice, at all, and was the last to participate in fielding or running drills.  His team played three games. He pitched four innings, and could have pitched more, but after his school baseball season he took some time off and is still recovering his arm strength. (He was starting to get inconsistent.)  In the other two games he charted pitches (an admittedly useful skill for a pitcher), and in the third game he did pinch run a few times for people that walked but remained at the plate to get their cuts in.

Every day he worked on pitching with a pitching coach, usually about 45 (NOT 4-5) minutes with 2-3 other pitchers, and he said those sessions were very good and "put together pretty well."  He had a lot of respect for the pitching coach.

He said the dorm was good.  No air conditioning, but the nights were cool.  He was in a four person room - he said the room was ok sized, two single beds and a bunk bed; the room next door had the same number but was smaller.

Food at the dining hall was good. There wasn't a lot to do baseball-wise when they were done with their games and practice, so they walked around the campus, which is pretty nice.

The coach's opening statement to the camp was good, reminding/informing the kids about the cost of the camp and how grateful they should be to their parents for sending them to the camp. He mixed in a lot of humor along with setting forth the rules.

Sunken Diamond at Klein Field is a great facility. Gorgeous stadium, nice sound system and a "jumbotron" where they would put the players pictures up with their name, school and year of graduation on the scoreboard. A really nice touch.

The camp cost $1,100 which is a ton of dough. Did we get our money's worth? Not sure. It was for sure a fantastic experience for my son, that that is what I really wanted.  He is still developing so we aren't really thinking about particular colleges yet, just looking for good experiences and comfort for next summer, the one before his senior year, when we will be more focused on the result, rather than the experience. Neither of us have a standard of comparison, but we will after next week, when we get back from Duke University's camp.

Really enjoying this fantastic baseball resource and hoping I can contribute something to it.

Welcome to the site!!  And thanks for fleshing out a pitcher’s experience at the camp!

There is always the question of the cost of the Stanford camp and whether it is worth it or not.  I'd say having paid the cost of Stanford, HeadFirst and Showball as my 2017 went to them all, it is important to differentiate that Stanford is a true baseball "camp" where coaching instruction is a huge part of it.  HF and Showball are true showcases with some but not much coaching instruction. 

It follows that it is harder for a kid to connect with specific coaches at Stanford.  For one, they are running the drills and they are assigned to specific areas.  So if your son is an OF but the coach he wants to talk to is running the catcher drills, it is not an ideal situation.  And as Smoke noted, at Stanford many of the coaches watching the games are not wearing identifiable school wear and are focused on scouting and compiling notes.  They are not mingling with the players like they do between games at HF.  There are chances to meet coaches at Stanford and some kids have success with it, but our experience was that it is not a great place to show off your skills to your select list of schools/coaches. 

Stanford is a baseball camp, and in that light, the coaching instruction my 2017 received was excellent and he used some of it in becoming a better player in his senior year.  There is good feedback provided after the camp as well, and there is video provided as well.  The uniforms are spectacular and having your kids picture up on the Sunken Diamond scoreboard and his pitching velocity included is a memory we will always have.  $1K is a lot of money and does not fit in everyone's budget, but I am pretty sure the experience is something my son will never forget.

It's interesting, Backstop, I agree with everything you said, but came to the opposite conclusion. It is an instructional camp. To me, it's not worth the money ($1,100 in the summer of 2018). Most of the D1 coaches working the camp seem to be volunteer assistants. My son doesn't want the uniforms -- he's never worn them once since attending the camp in the summer of 2017 -- although playing at Sunken Diamond was cool. Net, net, if your son is looking for a recruiting showcase, Stanford is not as good as some of the other options.* JMO.

*My kid had a very good round of BP, was pulled aside by a HC who was watching, and ended up with a UV at a school he was interested in. But to me that was just luck -- there were 40 schools working the camp, and he got lucky that one of the schools he was interested in happened to have a coach (and the HC at that) watching his round of BP -- at any given time there are only a half-dozen coaches watching BP, because most of them are working other aspects of the camp.

One additional comment. 

In this day and age of analytics, players should take seriously the athletic testing they do and they should practice the "spark" testing (or whatever they are doing now) prior to going to the camp. All teams get this data and if you are off the charts in these tests this alone will get you some interest. 

NorCalBBDad posted:

Hello! FIrst post for me. Instead of making a new one just figured I would hide it in here as it is on the topic of the Stanford Baseball Camp.

My 2020 son attended the last summer session of that camp last week.  Overall he said it was a good experience, but he went as a PO (pitcher only - yes, I know you know what that means) and missed out on some things he would have liked.  To be fair, and clear, he really IS a PO at this point - it is his strongest position.  However, my son was a late bloomer, is still growing, and his shoulders haven't really started to come in yet. He projects to be a big strong kid, and until we are certain one way or the other I want him to continue developing as a complete player. I want him to learn a fielding position and I want him to learn how to hit.  These are extreme examples, of course, but one can consider the recent examples of Rick Ankiel and Shohei Ohtani - when they were injured (mentally or physically) and couldn't pitch they were able to play outfield.  On the other side, Bruce Kieschnick went from hitter to pitcher.

Anyhow, because he was a pitcher only he did not take ANY batting practice, at all, and was the last to participate in fielding or running drills.  His team played three games. He pitched four innings, and could have pitched more, but after his school baseball season he took some time off and is still recovering his arm strength. (He was starting to get inconsistent.)  In the other two games he charted pitches (an admittedly useful skill for a pitcher), and in the third game he did pinch run a few times for people that walked but remained at the plate to get their cuts in.

Every day he worked on pitching with a pitching coach, usually about 45 (NOT 4-5) minutes with 2-3 other pitchers, and he said those sessions were very good and "put together pretty well."  He had a lot of respect for the pitching coach.

He said the dorm was good.  No air conditioning, but the nights were cool.  He was in a four person room - he said the room was ok sized, two single beds and a bunk bed; the room next door had the same number but was smaller.

Food at the dining hall was good. There wasn't a lot to do baseball-wise when they were done with their games and practice, so they walked around the campus, which is pretty nice.

The coach's opening statement to the camp was good, reminding/informing the kids about the cost of the camp and how grateful they should be to their parents for sending them to the camp. He mixed in a lot of humor along with setting forth the rules.

Sunken Diamond at Klein Field is a great facility. Gorgeous stadium, nice sound system and a "jumbotron" where they would put the players pictures up with their name, school and year of graduation on the scoreboard. A really nice touch.

The camp cost $1,100 which is a ton of dough. Did we get our money's worth? Not sure. It was for sure a fantastic experience for my son, that that is what I really wanted.  He is still developing so we aren't really thinking about particular colleges yet, just looking for good experiences and comfort for next summer, the one before his senior year, when we will be more focused on the result, rather than the experience. Neither of us have a standard of comparison, but we will after next week, when we get back from Duke University's camp.

Really enjoying this fantastic baseball resource and hoping I can contribute something to it.

Great post.  I agree and would like to add to the Stanford experience.  My 2020 went the 4th session, same weekend I think.  He also went to the HF West 1 in Sacramento back in June.  

Stanford

My first thought as I'm driving through the Stanford campus to drop off my son at the dorm is how beautiful it is.  Felt like I was dropping my son off for college.  Had something in my eye (sniff, sniff) as I saw him line up to enter the dorm.  One of the stand out baseball experiences shared with my son. When it he was 12U, it was Cooperstown.  

Son's on the smaller side so his stats are not going to impress, but he is a gamer and does pretty well.  He was assigned to a team where the coach was the Wheaton HC.  He got to know his coach and had some good interaction with him.  At the end of the camp, he got the coach's phone number and had some interaction with a few of the other coaches.  Coaches from the other teams and other coaches that hung around when games were going on observed the players.  Heard there were more coaches in the earlier sessions.  

Stats

If you go to Stanford, or any of these showcases, you need to find out how they measure the stats and practice it before heading out there.

For exit velocity, they used machine pitch and HitTrax.  The players where rotating through BP with Tee work, soft toss, heavy ball, machine pitching, live pitching, and then the HitTrax.  He did well in all the stations, but when he got to the HitTrax he couldn't get his timing down on the slower machine pitching.

For 60 times, they had a track timing system setup with start based on motion, 30 yard split, and 60 yard finish.

HF

There was great interaction with the coaches.  More coaches were in the dugout and out on the field.  Son got some good advice from a few coaches and used that as an opportunity to reach out to them after the camp.  But everything felt rushed and my son was exhausted at the end of day two.  

For BP, they had the net 30ft from home plate.  One HF rep throwing BP to 140 players.  

Exit velocity was off of a Tee, with a HF rep holding a radar gun behind the net.  

60 times had a HF rep at the finish line holding a stop watch.

Issues with how they measured. Probably because my son wasn't happy with his results. 

Both Stanford and HF are good showcase options.  At about the same cost ($1100 vs $995),  I found more value with Stanford.  The college baseball life is what my son got out of the Stanford camp.  I wish we went last year.  He would have gotten an earlier taste of what it would be like and possibly fueled his passion more.  

Based on what I've learned and at this stage of my 2020's recruiting process, thinking of  targeted college camps rather than showcases.  I would send him back to Stanford next year, maybe an earlier session.  Don't think I would go back to HF. If another showcase, then maybe Showball.

Thank you to the HSBW community for providing so much valuable information.