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As a parent, it is common and completely understandable that the perspectives of coaches might be viewed in ways different than our perspectives.
On the other hand, this can be a very good experience, when taken in a context which works. What those coaches who saw your son are saying is he has work to do.
None are saying this is the way he will be as a freshman in college. They are saying he has a lot of work to do to play in college.
Understand your son has been assessed by some high quality college coaches. Most of those coaches are quite good and successful. The perspective I would recommend is to read what that score means in terms of work to do going forward, not being disappointed or trying to argue "against" the score.
were the comments based only on his game play, or did they also respond to his batting practice and cage work?
Which session did your son attend?
11 ab is great. Much better then going to other showcases and only getting 3-4. What was his BA for showcase? How did he do on defense? Where did he play and how many innings did he get? Just sounds like he has some work to do. Good luck
They are looking for tools, athleticism, potential, hustle, etc. They do not focus on how many hits he has in the games. The games at those types of camps are largely for pitchers and catchers to be seen. When scouting hitters, most coaches at those camps do it during BP sessions. Now, if he hit an oppo bomb or went gap to gap in 2 or 3 consecutive ABs, that would get noticed. FWIW, my son was a rising junior last summer, went to the Stanford camp in August. He pitched well but didn't light up the radar gun...in fact his velo was down from just a week earlier at another camp. His scouting report was fine..so, so...not great, not bad. I didn't even bother to show it to him. So, he just continued on his path and worked his tail off off the field in the fall, saw a big jump in velo by Oct (PG Ft. Myers), pitched very well in front of 20-30 D1 coaches, had several offers shortly thereafter and committed D1 in December. My points are:
(a) don't worry about one specific game/day/performance..just keep working hard to improve and
(b) things can and do happen very quickly in this process if one adheres to point (a) above, and
(c) if he has the requisite "tools" and those were on display, they likely were noticed by the right coaches (maybe not the Stanford coaches..)
The Stanford evaluation form we got back had 3 sections, Offense, Defense and Intangibles. The rating score was 1-6 on each subsection( current rating and a projected rating). 1 hs player, 2 chance to play after HS, 3 Good JC/4 year player, 4 Average D1 player, 5 Immediate impact d1 player, 6 high level D1, MLB. I dont know if every coach had a personal style of form. I will find out next week as my 2017 did both and we should be getting the future star form soon. By this formula, 5 would be an exceptional review. My son's coach had also stated that the best review he ever gave was a prospect that went 1-11 at the camp but was awesome at all the workouts and intangibles. That player went on to be a high level D1 player. Coaches know what they are evaluating for good at bats and the game situation. My son had one at bat where he drew a walk to load the bases in a tied game with 1 out, knowing the situation he hits a long deep fly to CF for a Sac fly, even deep enough to advance runner at second, Kid at third doesnt tag up because "coach never said Go." Gets the kid at second in a pickle and the double play ends the inning. Coach noticed the approach and situational hitting and acknowledged excellent evaluation of the situation, even though it goes in the book as hitting into an inning ending double play. And even if the coach's review was an average one, remember a lot of other eyes were out there watching, and each coach may be looking for different style of players. And the great thing is that this probably wont be your son's last workout and each time he should get experience and play better.
On the one hand, it's important and almost essential to learn from coaches their views of your son's present capacity and projectibility as your family proceeds through the recruiting conduit. Carrying parental bias forward can be a recipe for extreme disappointment. Ostensibly, college coaches are practiced at making such assessment son the fly as they have to see 100's of kids every week when they recruit.
But as we all know, there are several dozen variables, if not more, that will influence the validity and utility of any such coaching evaluation. Worse yet, each coach brings his own inherent bias regarding myriad things such as body typing, tools, and projectibility. And that bias also undermines the utility of any given camp evaluation.
The more time passes since our experience at the Stanford camp, the less importance my son's camp eval has to us. There are some nice factual observations that my son really enjoyed hearing and the video voiceover stuff he looks at every few days for reminders. But the overall player evaluation he received was out scale with reality and we've moved on from it.
FWIW, our scale was 1-10 with 1 being "not a baseball player," 5 being "above average HS player, could play after HS" and 10 being "HS superstar, definite Top-5 round MLB pick." The characterization of each level is flawed as threshold matter. There should be no relational connection between the quality of HS player and his likely level of future success. In fact, I believe the use of "HS superstar" "HS Team leader" "above average or average" HS player is a miss. Connecting that assessment, by default, to how draftable a player is is folly.
My son is probably not draftable next year. But he just had one of the best years of any player in the State during HS season and has carried his production into the summer. Also notable, he is on the board at two Big West schools, three WCC schools, two PAC12 schools, and a recuit at two other PAC12 schools. His Stanford eval? "5 above average HS player, could play at a 4 year college."
Not very meaningful.
Thanks, the reason I asked was that my son was at the same camp end of June and is still waiting for his eval.
We are still waiting too, for the evaluation, from the first All Star Camp at end June. By stats and his accounts, he did well, and the follow up emails from some schools seem to corroborate this, but we nevertheless want the coach's actual evaluation.
we are still waiting from all star session 1 for the evaluation, been 4 weeks now! Does not diminish how much 2017 loved the camp, but would be nice to have by now, especially before we head to Headfirst.
