COLLEGE BASEBALL RECRUITING SPECIAL EDITION Special Edition | Page 28

Many high school baseball players have the goal of continuing to play baseball at the
next level. The problem is that sometimes these athletes don’t know where to start or even
where to look. Hopefully this article will help answer a few questions for some athletes or even
lead them to what to do next.
The first step is that the athlete has to be honest with himself on what his skills truly are
and what level of college that he might fit at. The reason this is hard is because too many
people are more about making you feel good when telling you about your ability instead of
being honest. There are not certain numbers you have to reach for different metrics to be
guaranteed a spot at a certain level but the better you perform the better chance you have to
play at a higher level. Find a coach or instructor that will be straight up with you and evaluate
your skills honestly. If someone is guaranteeing you 5-6 mph on your fastball or that they can
get you a scholarship somewhere, they are more than likely not who you want to work with.
The next thing you have to do is start to narrow down what schools will be a good fit for
you. Pick a couple areas of study that you are interested in and start seeing what schools have
those options. If you start to spend a lot of time trying to go to a school that doesn’t have your
major, then you are wasting your time. If you just pick a major to try to be able to go to a
certain school, you could end up not liking your major and wanting to transfer to a school that
has the area of study that you are actually interested in. Now you are starting the recruiting
process all over again. Don’t get caught up in what level the school is as well (D1, D2, D3, NAIA,
JUCO). Every level has different things to offer. There are good players, teams and coaches at
every level. It’s about where are you going to get a chance to play and get a degree.
You need to look at the needs of the program, what guys are returning to their roster
and what the roster size looks like. Our head coach, Johnny Cardenas, says “If you have a leak in
your house you are going to call a plumber and not an electrician”. The same is true in baseball.
If you have a lot of outfielders then you are not going to sign outfielders for the next year. You
have to go through and look at the roster and see what positions they are low on, if any. Many
high school and select team coaches tell us all the time “you need to get on my guy”. The
problem is we do not need that position at all. We have to fill our needs first. Also you need to
look into how many guys are on the roster. At the D1 level we can carry a max of 35 players.
Other levels do not have a max. Some schools require the coach to bring in so many players
(50+) and to also have a JV team. Find a situation that you believe is also a fit for you.
Once you have started to narrow down some of the schools you are interested in, then
you need to reach out to those schools and try to build a relationship with the coaching staff.
Email with video and attending a school’s camp is a great way to start this process. You need to
get to know how the coaches at a particular school interact with their players. A great way to go
about doing this is by getting out and seeing them practice. Some coaches might be the nicest