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My son will be entering the transfer portal in 2 weeks.  

Has anyone had experience with the portal?  He will be coming from a pretty big school so hopefully that will get interested but honestly we have no idea what kind of response people get from the portal. Do a lot of schools reach out typically?

i know it likely varies a lot but curious what others have seen.

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He needs to have a good idea what level he is wanting to play.  One of my son's friends went in and got phone calls within minutes, they must have a way of being notified when someone new goes in portal.  He got some good offers immediately from non-D1 schools and a couple of mid majors.  They are going to want to know academic information also.  Just be prepared and remember/remind him you are going back in the recruiting process on steroids.  He will need to know what level and how far away he wants to go away from home because the portal brings interest from all kinds of schools.

I will just remind you and him that all P5's right now are loaded.  There are 23 guys at my son's school trying to find innings.  The starters this weekend all three went 5/6 innings and then the relievers went to the 9th.  Same guy closed Friday and Saturday.  They used 5 guys Friday and Saturday to win.  Sunday they went 12 innings but only used 3 more guys to go that far with a guy who pitched Friday coming back.  They have 6 games in 6 days this week and a lot of guys should see mound time but it will still be hard to see much mound time.  It would be easy to say that son will not find time but you can only hope that when he does he does what he is supposed to do and firms up a spot.  I think most P5's and D1's are loaded with talent this year along with everyone else so he needs to understand that all rosters are going to be full.  If he wants to play immediately he will need to drop down and maybe to a different level than D1 or at least small D1.  He needs to be honest with himself and the coaches as to expectations because he does not want to go to another school that is similar and not be happy.  We have a friend that was at P5 and got redshirted pre-covid last year and went to smaller D1 and now is going into the portal again because he is not getting playing time.  It is tough to go from stud in HS to sitting but you have to decide end game.

@Gregory H. posted:

My son will be entering the transfer portal in 2 weeks.  

Has anyone had experience with the portal?  He will be coming from a pretty big school so hopefully that will get interested but honestly we have no idea what kind of response people get from the portal. Do a lot of schools reach out typically?

i know it likely varies a lot but curious what others have seen.

Depends on his history at that big school. If he sat the bench for multiple years he's probably not going to have a ton of interest but I'm sure he'll get some calls. Make sure he's upfront about why he's leaving good or bad. Coaches will find out one way or another. Return every call, text or email. He's got plenty of time now with no baseball and the perfect fit could be that contact he's not initially excited about. All the best to him!

@Gregory H. posted:

My son will be entering the transfer portal in 2 weeks.  

Has anyone had experience with the portal?  He will be coming from a pretty big school so hopefully that will get interested but honestly we have no idea what kind of response people get from the portal. Do a lot of schools reach out typically?

i know it likely varies a lot but curious what others have seen.

Your son probably knows this already, but in case not, is he prepared to be booted from his team if he's entering the portal in 2 weeks?  I don't know anything about your son's situation, but any baseball player (or any athlete in any sport) entering the Portal in the middle of the season will likely be told by their coach "clean out your locker and turn in your gear."

Even in situations where the decision to transfer is amicable and the coach is completely understanding of the player's decision, most coaches won't allow the athlete to continue as a member of the team.  One main reason is they don't want a player planning to transfer to be a "distraction" in the locker room or the dugout. 

@BrownIndian posted:

updated

thanks for posting the transferportal.xls.

  • The list is long ... enough players in the portal to fill 35 teams each with 35 players
  • There is at least one player on the list from 310 different schools.
  • Average is 4 players per school, median is 3 players from each school.
  • LaSalle leads the way with 31 players entering the portal (program cancelled)
  • 74 different schools with just one player in the portal
  • 23% look to be graduates with an extra year of eligibility to use
  • 34 schools only have grad students in the portal
  • after filtering out grad students, the average is 3.5 and the median is just 2 players from each school



my personal take-a-way from the data, if a school has 5 or more non-graduate players entering the transfer portal, it is a recruiting red flag ... and need to explore the why behind the numbers before I would want my kid at the school.

What do you think the numbers and demographics tell you?

Last edited by mjd-dad

Also have to consider that this past year changed a lot of kids priorities in ways different than in the past.  Some were stuck on campuses states away from family and worrying or even knowing their family members were at risk or sick.  Others had to pay tuition for the full experience but do classes via zoom and hated it. And in other families, financial situations changed considerably. Not all the transfers in there are on the coaching staff.

@wildcat posted:

Also have to consider that this past year changed a lot of kids priorities in ways different than in the past.  Some were stuck on campuses states away from family and worrying or even knowing their family members were at risk or sick.  Others had to pay tuition for the full experience but do classes via zoom and hated it. And in other families, financial situations changed considerably. Not all the transfers in there are on the coaching staff.

Agree.

Last edited by TPM

I think the lower levels are at the top going down.  I think next year will be a big year for the upper level teams because of the one time transfer.  A guy who is a stud on a bad team will try to go to a good team to make a run at Omaha.  You would rather be the Sunday guy on a contending team than the Friday guy on a team that will not make the 64.  You would rather be the #8 batter on a contending team than the 1-4 guy on a team that won't make the 64.  After this year I think it gets better for everyone but it will take a few years to get back to where it was.  Son's team had no freshmen start this year and only about 4 played any minutes either batting/fielding or pitching.  One batter/fielder had 58 AB's and next was 1 and 0.  Pitching was 9.1, 8.2, 2.2, 2.2, and 0 innings pitched for freshmen.  Most of those are coming back plus about 6 guys who got no innings either way.  Do you see the logjam for the incoming class, plus we have 5 juco guys and at least 1 6th year guy coming back who has been a great contributor?  It may take a couple of more years before P5 teams get anywhere back to normal.

The coach burned the freshman's eligibility but they will stay, unless he let's them go after season is over.

There are teams that had freshman that played and wont be green next year.

Everything in D1 baseball is not about P5.  There are many players that would rather play than sit on a P5 bench. A guy that is a stud sitting on a P5 bench will transfer to a team that will give him more innings or more at bats.

JMO

Do you think that it is peaking?  There are schools that had huge rosters this year, that will have to have cuts to meet next year's restrictions but don't have nearly as many in the portal as I would expect.  Does a player have to go into the portal in order to transfer?

Could be they have used up their eligibility, or transfering to Juco, D2, D3.

Or quit the game.

@Smitty28 posted:

It's amazing that as a result of 12-15 months of Covid, the NCAA will have caused, when it's all over, 3-4 years of chaos, disruption and in many cases ruined college athletic careers.

You would think a whole room full of "intelligent" men could have seen the fallout.  They should have just let everyone have a bad year (some losing more than others) and moved on.

Some think they messed up and others think it was a good choice.  It really depends where you are/were in the process.  My son and those in school got their year back that they lost so I’m sure most of them thought it was a good choice.   They made the decision to help the current NCAA athletes not the future NCAA athletes.  I can promise you the 6th year guy who gets to play and work on masters thinks it was a great decision. Sometimes in life decisions that are made that affect you depend on the glasses you are wearing.  

@PitchingFan posted:

Some think they messed up and others think it was a good choice.  It really depends where you are/were in the process.  My son and those in school got their year back that they lost so I’m sure most of them thought it was a good choice.   They made the decision to help the current NCAA athletes not the future NCAA athletes.  I can promise you the 6th year guy who gets to play and work on masters thinks it was a great decision. Sometimes in life decisions that are made that affect you depend on the glasses you are wearing.  

Completely agree, but everyone lost something. If you look at the overall process and the good of sports in general, this was a bad decision and created a lot more problems than it solved.

@baseballhs posted:

Completely agree, but everyone lost something. If you look at the overall process and the good of sports in general, this was a bad decision and created a lot more problems than it solved.

I agree. And it wasn't just in baseball.

All of college sports took a hit this year. Just look at all the coaches and assistants losing their jobs or forced to retire.

And let's stop and think about the athletes that didnt play at all. Not the fortunate 6th year seniors.

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