What does it take to play in college?

Stats mean Squat !!!!

It is what the coaches see in the Player

Ok Someone please help me here. I know there has to be some measurable items that are important - like how hard you throw the ball from the outfield or infield. Home runs are measurable? What is a good number. I know some of you can help me. Thanks,

If he is a senior then he and his HS coach need to sit down and try to identify where he could land. If HS coach won't cooperate (and some won't ... please explain that one to me someone) then a summer coach might help.

Start e-mailing and phone calls... try to arrange a visit.

As far as numbers... if you have them fine; but if not that doesn't mean you can't enter the process and find out if there is interest. There are plenty of small schools that will give a kid a try. If he's good he'll stick; if not then at least you found out.

pm me if you want more

There have been a number of threads here about stats --- here's the Reader's Digest version:

Stats depend far too much on the judgement, motives, and accuracy of the scorekeeper. Even given a fair and knowledgeable scorekeeper, stats depend on the quality of the league and competition. There are just too many variables for college recruiters to put a lot of faith in stats.

Recruiters will, however, pay attention to quality travel teams and showcases as those events are cost-effective ways for them to see a number of players during a time when their own college teams are not playing.

Check out the Recruiting Timeline published on this site for step-by-step guidance.

Good luck in your search!

I'd suggest that you take a look at the PG profiles from several events and see what they rate the kids relative to 60 times, velocities, etc., that they post. It varies as they take projectability into account but it should give you a reasonable idea. They tend to err on the positive side but it still should give you an idea.

My guess is that the typical D3 pitching prospect is going to be 80ish with very good pitchability and that 60 times will be somewhere between 7.0 and 7.4 or so. Outfield velocities will be similar to pitching velocities and infield velocities will be in the mid 70s. However, for position players hitting, hands and range are going to tend to be more important and you can't get that from stats.

There are D3 players who should be playing D1

There are D1 players who would be on a D3 bench

There are no physical lines of demarkation seperating players.

A player can hit 10 hrs on a 250' short porch

A player can run a 60 in 7.0 when the coach is counting 1-1000, 2-1000,....

Stats and numbers can be over rated and coaches do not do cartwheels when they are submitted by a player/parent. It is an "eye of the beholder" business, and that eye is not on a stat sheet.

Put the numbers away and ask....

Does he stand out on his HS team?

Does the opponent go to extra measures in hopes to "contain" the player?

Has the player gone above and beyond his peers in regard to hard work when getting to the status he's at?

Does he match up on the field with other known recruits?

IMHO, if you can answer "yes" to all those questions he MAY be a college prospect. Now it's time to go out and be seen by those who make decisions based on their opinions.

my friends who play D3 are solid all around, they were above average high school guys in just about every aspect of the game, no one tool really stands out otherwise theyd more likely have been recruited higher. (maybe)

As a parent of a D3 player who works at a D1 university...rz1 summed it up quite nicely.

In my opinion...NOTHING beats hard work regardless of the level. I have seen lightly recruited (even by D3 standards) players work their tails off...on and off the field...maximize their talent to where they are arguably a D1 player...
...I have seen players at all levels...simple P!$$ their opportunity away by NOT working (or not going to class) and are now not even in college. In short, it works both ways.

For an average D3 type school this is about what you are going to see a coach looking for.

Pitching--- 80+

Infield--- pop times of 2.15 or less

Fielding Percentage--- min 875+

60 Times ---- 7.2 or less

HS BA --- 280+

These are just standard measurements. Some D3 coaches may have lower if not higher standards. If seeking a scholarship these numbers will have to be better than the mins.

DIII is the toughest to evaluate. There are DIII teams that will have a faster outfield than most DI teams. As a player, you can play college baseball if you can hit or pitch.

Yes, sometimes DIII coaches will go more by statistics than DI coaches will. Let's face it, they don't have the same investment in the player. So if a player has outstanding statistics, it is likely to help interest the DIII coach more than the DI coach.

The other thing that makes it difficult is that there are DIII colleges that have lots of talent and recruit the best possible players and there are DIII colleges that will require nothing more than a warm body. I've often thoughyt that nearly anyone who a little skill and was willing to work hard enough might be able to find a college to play baseball at.

There are colleges out there that if you send them decent stats ot even bad stats... or even if you show any interest at all... they will show interest right back. There are colleges looking for "enrollment" rather than good baseball players.

quote:

The other thing that makes it difficult is that there are DIII colleges that have lots of talent and recruit the best possible players

Can you give me a couple of examples of quality DIII programs? Locally we only have a DI and a JC so I'm not familiar with DIII. (I know, I'm a lazy guy but a couple of names would give me a start on what to look for....)

There are also 2 divisions of NAIA and 2 divisions of Juco (that I know of)... so there are a lot of different levels...

Hawk19,

I doubt if the boys from the "land of the sand" would would enjoy our "cooler" months but WI has a great DIII conference, and the DIII world series is played in WI annually.

WIAC

Would agree that I would not go on stats, but neutral times in the 60 and throwing speed are, of course, some indication. Your best bet would be to have you son attend a showcase or two or an event where there is some evaluation. And, when you go to these events, as Yogi said, You can observe a lot by watching.

Lots of good DIII baseball in the northeast, east coast, midwest, etc. I hesitate to name schools for fear of leaving many good ones out. rz is correct about Wisconsin.

Here is a sight to look at.
http://www.d3baseball.com/

.
...lots of college programs out there where a comitted player, even without great "numbers" can blossum, start talking to them....lots of HS kids without stats or numbers who find a coach who see's something...lots of kids with numbers who never catch a coaches eye, and spend a lot of pine time..

...and the reality is that you can't measure heart, passion, a willingness to work through walls...tons of stories of kids who simply wouldn't quit...my first "measure" would be heart and desire...with a player like that I can build a future...see a lot of players out there with numbers and no heart...


44
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rz1 and PGStaff, thanks for the links.

rz1...don't assume too much. Son was born in Rochester MN, not too far from WI at all...

And I think it's pretty lush here in AZ. We have grass and everything....

I'm always amazed when I travel at how much vegatation there is, especially in the South and Northeast...I've gotten used to the cactus and scrubbrush and after living here in AZ for a total of 15 years, it looks normal to me....

And then there's that old thing they call "opportunity"...be that bigger fish in a smaller pond rather then the little fish that never gets a chance to even show them how he could swim if given a chance.
Look for your best OPPORTUNITIES!

quote:

As a player, you can play college baseball if you can hit or pitch.

Hawk, there are no DIII's in Az., New Mexico, Utah, etc.
If you want those close to Az, there are very good DIII's in Texas and Southern CA.
In Texas, the top DIII's include UT-Tyler, UT-Dallas and McMurray in the American Southwest Conference.
Trinity and Southwestern in the Southern Collegate Athletic Conference..link attached.(very tough academics).
http://www.scacsports.com/sports/bsb/index
UT-Tyler, UT-Dallas and Trinity regularly have players drafted and have players in Summer Wood bat leagues who compete very well even in the Cape..
In Southern Ca. Chapman has been the strongest for many years. Great academics and usually strong baseball would be at Pomona Pitzer. You can find real fine DIII baseball at LaVerne and Redlands, also.

You can see which schools have NCAA baseball for each of the three divsions:

http://web1.ncaa.org/onlineDir/exec/sponsorship

If your looking for certain milestones of arm strength, speed, hitting ability ect., you should look at PG Player Profiles. This will give you some kind of comparison as to where other players, that are at the same skill level as your son, are going to college. And I wouldn't exactly just focus on DIII schools, you'd be suprised where your son might get an offer to play ball.

As of my knowledge, i've kept in touch with a few kids who graduated in the past two years. One went to a DIII school and was a LHP. He topped out around 75, and had less than average stuff. He wasn't very projectable either.

Good luck in finding somewhere for your son to play, he'll go somewhere. If he wants to play, someone will recruit him.

As rz1 and JT have posted, the range of skills from DI to DIII isn't very far when it comes to baseball. Often times it can overlap, and other times it is upside down.
Having clicked on the ranking system for PG, for the first time, I don't view it as reflective of the DIII recruiting that I have seen and experienced for upper level DIII programs.
To put this in a more global perspective, if you sent your son to a Camp like Headfirst, the Stanford Camp or those with PG where academics are a factor,,the Ivy league schools, schools like Georgetown and schools like Trinity, Tx., Rhodes, in Memphis and Millsaps in Jackson, Missippi, are almost all going to focus on and recruit the same student athletes. Those DIII's are going to aggressively identify players with DI skills and recruit based on playing now, the quality of education, the quality of the competition and playing experience, etc. They won't get them all, but they get plenty of them.

I really suggest that you go take in some games if at all possible. Go see some D3 games , D2 , D1 etc. Get a look for yourself. Trying to base it on stats is pointless. As far as 60 times or other measurables that pointless as well. You need to get a look at the skill level of the players first hand. Many times I have heard someone say "The kid is definitely a D2 player" and the person has never seen a college game in their life.

The best way to understand what it takes is to see what your striving to achieve. Your son may be better than you think. Or he may be over his head. Take a look and be honest with yourself. Could he step on the field with those guys and compete? Or is that level of play way beyond his abilities? How do you know if you have never actually seen it? Good luck

My son played D-3 in Southern California. He was recruited by D-1, 2 and 3 schools. Don't think coach's look at HS or other stats. They want to see the player (at camps, showcases, video etc.) HS stats are pretty meaningless given no way to compare the level of play from HS to HS.

In my experience many D-3 teams, most all the ones I saw play in SoCal can hold their own against D-1's on any given day. The main difference I think is D-1 rosters are "deeper" with talent and typically with pitching. D-3 schools usually don't have the same facilities as a D-1 nor the extensive coaching staff.

BIG difference, ain't no scholarship money at D-3 level for athletics.

Regardless of the division, get ready to work your butt off. Plenty of guys have been drafted from my son's school over the years and certainly from the conference they play in. Saw scouts at every game.

In D3 i've seen teams that could hang with alot of D1 programs and some that would get beat by a decent high school team. It varies.

quote:

I really suggest that you go take in some games if at all possible. Go see some D3 games , D2 , D1 etc. Get a look for yourself.

Excellent advice coach! It is an eye opening experience that will usually fill in the blanks for players and their folks. Educational and fun at the same time.

quote:

Go see some D3 games , D2 , D1 etc. Get a look for yourself.

Good point. I watched Boston College - North Carolina State on Saturday and Harvard - Princeton on Sunday. Both are D1. While both were well played games, the Ivy game looked like slow motion compared to the ACC game.

The SWAC and ACC are all in the same division, but thats about where it ends. There are 303 D1 teams that span the spectrum of quality.

Here is the main information link on the website and really should answer all your questions:

http://www.hsbaseballweb.com/recruiting_tips.htm

There are probably a dozen different category links to dozens and dozens of articles. I have read all of them and they are excellent.

Beyond that, in addition to going to some college games and/or practices trying to determine where your son might fit, go to a reputable showcase (e.g, PG) and get a third party's opinion on your son's ability. If after showcasing, he only hears from D3 coaches, that will be a very strong clue.

There are in fact programs out there that will take players sight unseen. I don't think your son would enjoy that. Likely all that program does is lose and losing is no fun.

To answer your original question about stats, let me give you a pretty good analogy. Lets suppose you are in the market for a car. You know which "stats" you are looking for - make, model, color, condition, gas milage, horse power, etc., etc. You see an ad in the paper for that car and the ad has every stat you are looking for. Do you just send the person who ran the ad a check and go pick the car up? More likely, you want to see and test drive the car before buying it?

Recruiting is exactly the same way. You'll probably get a coach's interest if you call him up and tell him your son hit 20 homeruns or throws in the high 80's. They won't make an offer based off that however. They'll invite him to one of their camps or they'll let you know which showcase they are attending. If it is a local college to your son's school or summer tournament, you might be able to coax them out and watch one of your son's games.

Recruiting is simple. It is talent plus exposure. Missing either piece will end your son's baseball career. If your son wants to play in college, you need to figure out how to expose him to the colleges that may be a fit for him. Follow the links included at the top of this post and it contains all the information you need to do just that.

hawk,

Since you mentioned your son growing up in Rochester, MN, I'll share a few notes from my son's D3 college years. His small conference definitely confirmed these comments:

PGStaff:
"The other thing that makes it difficult is that there are DIII colleges that have lots of talent and recruit the best possible players and there are DIII colleges that will require nothing more than a warm body."

Ben_08
"In D3 i've seen teams that could hang with alot of D1 programs and some that would get beat by a decent high school team. It varies."

My son played for a small D3 in southern Minnesota (not too far from Rochester), in the UMAC:
http://www.umacathletics.com/s...th=baseball&tab=mens

The perennial winner of this conference is St. Scholastica, a nationally ranked D3 which has had players drafted in the past. In the years I watched, St. Scholastica typically had 15 good pitchers on their roster, with at least a handful of those pitchers in the high 80s and some hitting 90 or more. Their position starters looked to me like "big college" athletes, and they have a total roster of up to 40 players who all belong playing baseball at the college level.

At the bottom of this conference you find one or two teams that have trouble filling out their rosters each year. At those schools, any "warm body" could make the team, and if they got varsity playing time in HS, they would have a shot at getting playing time in college.

Between those top and bottom teams, there are a lot of good teams where all the players were successful at the HS level, and most or all of the starting players were the best player on their HS team, many of those starting players getting honors like all-conference in HS. Most of the starting players were actively recruited out of HS by the D3 coach. That was the case on my son's team (Bethany Lutheran, which so far this season is tied with St. Scholastica at the top of the conference). But I remember a smallish (5'8") outfielder who did not get any honors in HS and was not recruited by this D3 coach, who worked his butt off, put on some muscle in college, and not only became a starter on my son's team, but got all-conference recognition his senior year of college.

Throughout that particular D3 conference, most teams have starting pitchers who throw low to mid-80s with maybe one high-80s guy, and the IF and OF probably have similar arms. Most teams also probably have a crafty lefty or junkballer who throws below 80. Most position players are fast runners. This is only an estimate comparing other players to my son's 60 time which is the only one I knew at that time, I'd say 7.0 to 7.2 would be average speed, but within the team it might vary from 6.8 to 7.8. But if a player can hit COLLLEGE PITCHING consistently and hit the ball hard, he could probably run a 9.0 60 and find a place in the D3 lineup.

I mentioned COLLEGE PITCHING because a HS batting average may mean nothing when the player gets to college. Even in D3, most starting pitchers for the other teams you face are going to be like the ace starting pitcher for a decent HS team. They will not just throw strikes in the 80s, but will have at least one useable off-speed pitch, and perhaps two.

Feel free to PM me for any more info on my son's conference.

Julie

Some of the previous posters are correct. Depending on the D-3 across the country, you could be a kid who should/could be playing division 1 or you could be a kid who barely played varsity on your small, average high school team. If you are a kid, or a parent that has a kid, that has a passion to play collegiate baseball, and you can run, chew gum, and catch a ball, there is some team out there that will bring you on as a roster guy and give you a chance. Especially if you will pay the money to attend the D-3.

Here is the link to SCIAC in So Cal.

I agree go to some games and you will figure out where you fit.


http://www.thesciac.org/sports/bsb/2008-09/standings

Thanks for all the info. We are just starting out. D3 is only if he gets financial aid for smarts - which he seems to have. We will get to some D3 and D1 games - lots in the area to chose from - Cleveland area. I will keep you posted. HS season is going well and summer season is filled with top level competition.

quote:

Originally posted by TRhit:
Stats mean Squat !!!!

It is what the coaches see in the Player

Actually, I have to partially disagree with TR. Stats mean everything, just not the stats that TR is referring to. Stats, as in your academic stats, are every bit as important as your athletic results. For a D3 school, your academic stats are probably MORE important than your ability.

Hawk19, there are a good number of quality D3 programs just to the west of you, in California and Oregon. Chapman, Menlo, Concordia, Cal Lutheran, Cal St. East Bay, Redlands, Whittier, Simpson, Occidental and Bethany in California, and in Oregon Willamette, Linfield, Pacific, George Fox, Eastern Oregon, Lewis and Clark. There are more in Washington and Idaho.

06

What you do in the classroom are, to me, not stats in terms of baseball or any sport for that matter---they are grades


Why do you mix the two terms---stats and grades---
OH yea--you are in California

As a father of a D3 pitcher IMHO having watched talent develope from LL days Senior LL, Babe Ruth, AAU, American Legion, through California travel ball, Area Code, Goodwill Series, CCCA Jr College, NAIA, and now NCAA D3 and I could say the one thing that separates the players is their status relative to maturity in areas of academic performance, and ability to manage their own personal commitments and responsibilites.

I have watched some very fine ballplayers get drafted then fade from the scene because of their lack of maturity. One great pitcher was drafted, very live arm but couldn't stay away from "beer pong". Ended up destroying his motivation, self-discipline, and self-direction, became lathargic and uncaring about academics and his baseball performances.

The distractions really test their maturity level. For D3 the academics are tougher and if they are on the quarter system requires more intensive attention to their academics.

But D3 ballplayers can range from phenoms to bench players but the overall talent is as good as some D1 and they beat good D2 teams quite frequently.

JMO

Update. Took son to a D1 college showcase and he got rated borderline D1 - with work he can maybe play D1 but definitely D2/D3. At least that was the evaluation on that day on what the scouts saw. Several D3 schools came to see him play this summer and showed interest and have invited him to visit. Visited one college and the coach spend several hours explained the program and telling son he would love to have him play there. Thanks for the suggestions - the evaluation camp was worth it just to see where he fits baseball wise and where he stacked up. The D3 schools that are interested are all good academic schools too offering the major he is interested in.

Thanks for the update. I love it when posters come back on here to let us know how things are turning out. Good luck and enjoy his senior season.