Episode Transcript
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[00:01:10] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of the Dugout Dish podcast. I'm Andy Kirakitti, joined by my Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing, sir?
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Great.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: How are you?
Good.
Currently recording this podcast during the Oklahoma North Carolina Winner Take all game.
Today's podcast will be me and you with a little back and forth banter on some takeaways following the college baseball season. And you know how some of that stuff ties into the recruiting process. So I think we've got some good stuff to go over for the listeners. I don't know what Keith's gonna say.
Keith doesn't know what I'm gonna say roughly.
We might even disagree a little bit.
We're going to find out though, so why don't you kick it off? What's your, what's your first takeaway talking point after a long, hard fought college baseball season. We know our national champions minus the one that's being played right now. What, what do you got for us today? What's your, what's your number? What's your, your first talking point?
[00:02:27] Speaker A: I think the, my first one, and I don't necessarily know that I'm going to have to talk in circles here to really drive this back to recruiting, but I think I can do it.
I think the first one that I have is just how, you know, we talk about this all the time. You know, when Jonathan's on and we've had Eric and we get into the postseason podcast talking about conference tournaments and the regionals and supers and the World Series where, you know, we're kind of glued to the tv, especially during regional Conference tournament, regional and super regional weekend. It gets a little, you know, not that I'm not watching during the World Series, but, you know, I don't have 47 games playing at once. I, I have one on at a time playing at two and seven most nights.
But I think the, the very apparent rise in popularity of college baseball is something that being 40 years old and having played a very long time ago and coached this game for a really long time and then now being able to do this on this side of things and talk on this podcast and seeing well over, you know, millions of viewers watching the regionals, the super regionals and the World Series, it's, it's absolutely awesome to see at our age. I don't think if you asked 18 to 22 year old Keith, or even 27, 28, 29 year old Keith, if, you know, in the next 10 years, we would be at this, you know, I think that I probably thought we would have been close, but I don't know that I would have seen the meteoric rise of college baseball.
It's electric to watch. There's a ton of people. It's awesome seeing the World Series, obviously, and even the regionals and supers where, you know, you're watching, you know, Rob Vaughn and, excuse me, you're watching Wes Johnson and Kirby Smart. You know, Kirby Smart's at games in Omaha watching them play. Roy Williams has been out there, Eric Church is out there watching North Carolina. Like, it's awesome. It's become a, you know, I'm going to stop short of saying it's pop culture stuff, but there's a lot more people that are a lot more invested in watching it.
And I think that rise, you know, speaks to a, the popularity of baseball. I worry at times that we're losing really good kids in this game because where we do a little bit too much at the youth level.
But I mean, I think it's hard to argue that we don't have, you know, enough kids to be able to go play at these high levels. And you know, it's not just in the sec. In the sec. I mean, look at Daniel Jackson this year. I mean, that kid transferred from Wofford and he was, he was damn near a 30, 30 player as a catcher. Like everyone's route can be different and I think that aspiring to play at that level is awesome, but there's, there's way, there's so much college baseball going around that it's awesome to play at. It's finding the right fit for you.
But I Think for me, the, the first thing, and it's probably a little, you know, it's a reach for me to bring it back to recruiting, but it's. I think the floor has been raised. If you watch college baseball now and if you followed it long enough, you see that the level of play is a lot higher at these levels than what it was 7, 8, 9, 10 years ago, right, as a team.
And you have two of the best in the business coaching these two teams in the winner take all game.
And, you know, it's a completely different, you know, kind of roster construction which we'll probably get into.
You know, you have North Carolina 75% high school, and Oklahoma's at 50, which is probably still closer to the low end of some of Division 1 baseball, to be quite honest with you. But, you know, it's an awesome thing to see the rise in popularity where kids can be seen how they can get recruited and to get fired up and watch this and aspire to play in Omaha or play in Supers or play in regionals. Like, you know, this was something that, you know, you and I played in a regional.
We weren't on espn, right? Like, there was no ESPN Plus. They put some of the top teams on, but we had ESPN, ESPN2.
And maybe we. I mean, I know where there was ESPN News. I don't know if they were playing games on it at the time, but you can watch every single regional game this year. I know, I tried.
You go to ESPN plus. I mean, I, I had the.
What do they call it? The. I figured it's almost like the red zone for, for baseball. I had that go where there's like four games going at once.
Like, you can watch baseball from 11 in the morning till 1 in the morning, going from the east to the west coast, which was. You couldn't do it. You know, the access to it is so much better, which allows you to be able to kind of see where you fit in from a baseball standpoint and, and kind of guide your process from there. But, you know, I think the one thing that, that I, I was blown away by was just the numbers that were coming out of the regionals and the supers and the amount of people that are watching and the amount of people that were in the stands. You know, it's. It's an awesome thing to see. And having been a part of it for as long as I was and still am, I, like, it's.
I honestly can't really put into words how, how incredible I think it is, but I Think the access to it is getting a lot, the access to watch it and see if you can objectively figure out where you can fit in. You can really start to figure out like, and to guide your recruiting process to where you want to go.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: No, you're absolutely right. You know, I don't think that you overstretch with the pop culture portion of this. It's pretty, it's pretty wild to see some of the names and faces that have been popping up across college baseball in recent years.
I mean, you had Morgan Wallen with Vitello and the Volunteers and, you know, you had some fantastic name drop. So I won't, I won't beleaguer the point, but no, you're, you're spot on. And I think it's fantastic that the coverage is expanded significantly to where you can watch the Division 3 College World Series, Division 2, obviously the Division 1 whole tournament that you talked about, but how accessible it is during the regular season.
I mean, we're geeking about, you know, we're geeking out during the season about matchups on a Tuesday afternoon between, you know, name some random school in the Northeast and saying, now this is a good barometer. Check for them. Like, we'll find out how good, you know, St. Joe's really is if, you know, this week when they play so and so and we can watch it on, you know, espn. Plassen.
I think it's great for the game. I think it's great for the parents and the players who have an opportunity to, to kind of see the types of players that are running around right now and, you know, the level of play. I don't think it's ever been higher in college baseball.
Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome.
Stole one of my talking points, so now I have to come up with one on the fly. Thanks a lot, coach.
Just over here winging it on, on dugout dish today.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: One of my takeaways, and it always comes around this time of year, specifically when you start to watch the college baseball tournament, right? The regionals, the supers and obviously we're in the College World Series.
High pressure environments, super meaningful win or go home games and couple things always stick out to me this time of year. And I think this directly relates to recruiting and I'll try to tie back here in a second. But the composure of these players.
You got Oklahoma running out three consecutive freshmen to start games in the College World Series final series for an 18 year old to take the mound in Omaha in front of 24,000 people and do what they do. Right. Whether it's the Globner kid or whether it's the. The guys who've been starting games for Oklahoma.
I'm not sure if the casual follower of college baseball understands the character traits, the toughness, the competitiveness, the confidence that you have to have in order to perform in those types of settings.
And I'm continuously blown away by how these players handle themselves, how they handle these situations, how they handle failure, how these coaches coach these guys through these moments.
Just continuously impressed with, with how these guys are able to execute in these incredibly high pressure situations. And it's not easy when you're that age to, to have to make a pitch in front of 24,000 people with a guy in scoring position and two outs and be able to execute it. I think that that's lost sometimes the level of intensity and the level of pressure that exists in those moments. And these kids are able to succeed and, you know, compete the way that they do.
The other thing that continues to stick out to me is the level of compete from these guys, like the motor that some of these kids have, how hard they play.
And I think these are, these are must haves if you want to compete in college baseball. Not just at the level of where you're going to go play in Omaha, but just in general, right? How these young men handle themselves, how they push through failure, how they succeed, the emotion, the level of compete, how hard these kids play.
If you're a high school recruit, if you're a parent who's listening to this and you're watching these games, it's easy to get caught up in the velocities and the runs and all the stuff that is easy to hang on to.
What I would ask you to pay more and more attention to is the consistency of the effort, the consistency of the focus, and the level of composure that these kids show up with every day. And I think that when coaches are splitting hairs between prospects, those are the types of things that they are honing in on. Right. If you're Coach Forbes at North Carolina, yeah, you're going to get the pick of the litter from a talent perspective, right.
I think that goes without saying with their continued success for the last 30 years or whatever it's been.
But you need a certain type of kid from a character perspective to help you win that national championship that's been elusive to them.
And these are two differentiating factors in my opinion, like the compete and the composure that these kids have. And I continue to be blown away by it because those moments are, they're pressure packed and they're nerve wracking and they're intense, they're emotional.
And watching these kids deliver on television, it, it brings a smile to my face watching these guys do what they do. So that's, that was one of my big takeaways from the season. I just continue to be impressed by, by that part of the game.
My second one, before kicking it over to you for your second one is going to broadly term this velocity. But I think it goes deeper than how hard guys are throwing. Right?
You're seeing some wild numbers across baseball in general. Right. Jacob Mizarowski's throwing 104 miles an hour in the big leagues.
More and more routine to see college players just consistently throwing the baseball 94, 95, 96 miles an hour. You're seeing college guys get into the triple digits.
One of EMD's finest, Mr. Reese Bowie, I believe is the only left handed pitcher in the country to reach 100 miles an hour this year.
Which is just, it's crazy to see how the game has evolved.
And I know there's some detractors of it and you know, people like to talk about, you know, doesn't matter how hard you throw ball for.
Yeah, I get it. But the talent, the arm talent specifically I think is just off the charts with what some of these guys are doing. And I think the trickle down is really the, the quality of the secondary stuff and I'll get into some of that stuff in a second. But the other part of the velocity conversation, I think it's talked about less and less, is how good some of these hitters are and how comfortable these hitters are across college baseball. Not just the stuff you're watching on television right now. But I've talked about this with junior college coaches, I've talked about it with Division 3 coaches, Division 2 coaches all the way up.
And hitters are very comfortable hitting velocity.
And I think that both ends of the velocity spectrum, from how guys are able to handle it from an offensive perspective, guys being able to get to 98 and kind of look comfortable while they're doing it, guys being able to throw 98 and really challenge some guys with some velocity, I think that that is a something to continue to keep an eye on. I don't know what that curve is going to look like in terms of development, but you know, the velocity floor to pitch in college baseball has certainly risen pretty significantly. But I think the more interesting part of that side of the conversation is that you continue to see these rise in velocities, but the reality is you're seeing fastball usage go down. And this is a trend that you're not only seeing in the big leagues, which is easily quantifiable just because of the amount of data that they have there, but anecdotally and statistically you're seeing these trends across college baseball too, where guys who throw 95, 96, 97 miles an hour, they're not just sitting there throwing 80% fastballs, they have to effectively be able to pitch with their off speed stuff. And for the young high school pitchers who are out there, the quality of your secondary stuff is a lot of times a separating factor in the evaluation process. And I think that it's more and more important as the average velocity of kids continues to go up is not so much how hard can you throw, but does that level up your secondary stuff? Do you have really good feel for your secondary stuff? Can you pitch predominantly with your secondary stuff despite having some good velocity? I think the way guys pitch and how guys have to pitch because hitters are comfortable being able to stand in there and turn around 95, 96, 97 pitchers have had to adapt and you can't just all of a sudden just say, hey, I'm going to just throw you a bunch of 95 mile an hour fastballs and see what happens because guys are comfortable with it. So the evolution of it from a physical perspective, I think the evolution of it from an execution perspective offensively, and then what in turn that is forced pitchers and pitching coaches to do is to lean more on secondary stuff than I think the common watcher of college baseball would think that like, hey, if you throw 98, just throw fastballs, we'll turn on the College World Series. There's not many of these guys that are intimidated by velocity these days, so that's really stuck out to me. Been crazy impressed with the, obviously the arm talent, but maybe on the other side of it even more impressed with how quickly the hitters have adapted to be able to handle this kind of stuff and still be able to get good swings off and do some damage on some baseball. So that's my number two.
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Ah, gosh, I'm fighting for the mute button over here. Sorry for the delay.
No, it's interesting. I mean the, the kid they started for North Carolina tonight, I think he's throwing 121 sliders and they hadn't been put in play for or they've been put in play. He hadn't given him a hit off his slider this postseason to your point. So you know, it's, hitters are not afraid of velocity anymore, which is, you know, contrary to the game that we grew up in. And, and I think that it's, it's super interesting because you have, you know, kind of the data and you also have the, the developmental tools to be able to, to train it.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: You know, when, when we came up in this game there was, you know, it was few and far between the guys that were going to be, you know, throwing in the 90s where now it seems like every game I flip on there there's multiple guys that are 93, 94, 95 or at the very least sitting 89, 91, 92 too with some, some pretty good secondary stuff. And you know, with the rise of the three mil machines and your hack attacks and things like that, you can train velocity where you know, we couldn't necessarily do that.
You know, we had the, the old school jugs double mission double barrel machine that shot yellow dimple balls at you and if you didn't barrel it, it, it ricocheted and you know, it rattled your bat and your hands through your core and he could only throw so hard and he threw it in the same spot where a lot of these machines now, not that they're necessarily throwing in the same spot every single time you have the ability to, you know, there's some variation to it which is good.
It's gives you way more game like reps constantly that you otherwise didn't get, you know, 10, 15 years ago.
And you know, even to the point now, you know, you, you watch MLB Network and they, they do their live look in there's There's a good portion of the time where you're watching guys take pregame batting practice off of machines and they're in all the big league cages and in their complexes and the stuff they're doing. So, you know, if they're doing it and finding success, they're, it's going to trickle its way on down. And the reality is, from a hitting perspective, how are you, how do you train to hit 93 to 97 or guys that are throwing harder than that? You know, if you don't, you don't get that type of reaction speed off of a BP arm, at some point you're gonna have to train that semblance of reaction speed. And we have the technology to do it now. And I think that it's, it's definitely given a rise to, you know, hitters, to your point, not being scared of velocity and being able to throw off and spin breaking balls and change ups and sliders in spots where, you know, they weren't necessarily doing that before is, is definitely making it even harder on hitters. And I think it's super interesting to watch what these kids are capable of doing.
I mean, North Carolina is rolling in a freshman right now who's in the 90s and throwing vicious sliders at people. So, you know, it's, it's been awesome to watch and I'm interested to see where this trend is, is going to take us. Right. Like, I don't think it's going away anytime soon because, you know, your top hitters are still going to be able to, you know, most hitters are going to be scared of velocity, but like, your top hitters are still going to be able to get to it. You're still going to have to pitch to get these guys out.
Yeah, I mean, this kid's 95 from a low slot,
[00:24:17] Speaker B: just, just a tough ass, a B.
It's interesting. Like, you see a lot of the pundits come around and talk about we'll walk, numbers are up.
I'm not a hundred percent sure if that's true. Strike percentages, all that kind of stuff. But I think the fact that you're seeing the pitch mix is more diversified that I think you would think. When guys are thrown as hard as they are these days, I think it actually brings it kind of back full circle to those guys who, you know, like to talk about the command portion of it, which is obviously important. But I think what that tells you is that your ability to pitch has to be a part of the velocity equation.
Right. Not just Throwing hard, but also being able to do the other stuff, the slider command, good secondary stuff, being able to throw the fastball to a couple different quadrants of the zone.
I think it. It's interesting that people like to take the idea of, like, these kids are just throwers and they, you know, just trying to throw as hard as they can.
But I think when you really dig into it and you start to look at the success of guys and pitching staffs that have been really good and players that have been really good, they're not just hard throwers.
They do the other stuff as well. And I don't think that that's ever disappeared. I think it's just been easier for people to.
To hang on to. Like, guys are just chasing velocity these days. Well, you need to chase velocity because it helps you if you make a mistake. Like, there's all kind of data that backs up that if you throw 95 and you throw it down the middle, there's way less chance of it getting smashed than if you throw 90. Like, there's no if hands or bots about it. But with the hitters getting better, I think that the ability to do the other stuff well, move the ball around the strike zone, secondary command, secondary quality, I think it might be more important as it's at least as important as it's ever been, despite the increase in velocity at this point. So what's.
What's your second takeaway here, Coach?
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Oklahoma. Blowing it open. Coach.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: The Sooners.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Oh, six one in the fourth. Plenty of games still left to play.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Plenty of game. Plenty of game.
Live updates on EMD here.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you still have, what, 18 ounce to play with as North Carolina. If you can get out of this down 5.
I think, my gosh, I'm going to. I think you and I can have a longer discussion on this because it's. It's too. We. We kind of have.
What was that? What was the set?
[00:27:18] Speaker B: The.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: The similar one that you and I
[00:27:20] Speaker B: had different ways of constructing rosters.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Yes. In today's game, we can. We can go down a rabbit hole here.
I think one of the interesting.
And it's. It holds true in, in the World Series this year. I mean, you saw Troy had, you know, they were 75% transfers and North Carolina was 75% homegrown high school kids.
And most people were in the middle. I mean, Georgia was a tick above that, where I think they were around 60, but everyone else was 50 or below. You know, your six other teams or 50% of the below were homegrown high school kids. And I think that it's an interesting kind of microcosm of college baseball where, you know, you have this rise of the transfer portal and people who want to, you know, jump in and try to go up things of that nature. Whereas you have programs like North Carolina that have had a ton of success in mainly staying the high school route and developing guys from within.
I'm. This is not a shot at Troy or coach me, but they're in a, they're in that realm of college baseball where they, they're going to get gutted likely year after year where the,
[00:28:48] Speaker B: the
[00:28:49] Speaker A: landscape in which they operate is going to have guys, they're playing at a, you know, while the Sunbelt's not considered to be a power forward conference of baseball, like, is a really good conference for baseball. And if kids go in there and have a lot of success early, they're going to jump and get into the transfer portal and see if they can go play at a higher level and find more success there.
And there's, I think, and I don't know which way you're going to take this, but I think that there's way more programs like that out there than most people really have an understanding of.
There's not going, you know, I think North Carolina is a little bit more the outlier, right where, you know, at that level.
But I think a good portion of college baseball lives in that realm where you're one or two years away from having a really, really good year or a really, really bad year and having to reconstruct your entire roster with some holdovers because you could be that mid major division one that goes and has a really good year and seven of your guys in your starting lineup are going to jump in the transfer portal and two of the other two are graduating and three of your arms are jumping in and you know, you're graduating four more and all of a sudden it's like, oh my goodness, I have to, we have to reconstruct an entire roster because we just had a really good year and a bunch of guys are going to try and get in the portal and go elsewhere. And conversely, you could also have a, you know, you could miss and not have good years and guys are gonna be like, yeah, I don't, you know, mutually. Right? Like, hey, it's not going to work out here. I think you should jump in the portal. Slash A. We had some pretty good, you know, we had some guys with some good numbers and they're going to try to jump in the Portal and go elsewhere, too.
And I think that happens a little bit more at. In college baseball than most people think.
It's not a negative. You know, I. I have been on here multiple times talking about how I don't think the transfer portal is the worst thing in the world, but it is a reality.
And I think you were seeing, you know, a place like West Virginia this year had a lot of success bringing in some guys from the Division 2, you know, from junior college, from Division 2.
You saw Kansas have a lot of success bringing in a ton of juco guys, you know, and it's kind of.
I think the people that are having a lot of success with roster construction and seeing the dividends being paid on the field or they understand their coaching style and what fits the program it is that they're running, right? Like, not everyone can go juco heavy and have a lot of success. Not everyone can go transfer portal heavy and have a ton of success. There has to be some balance within what it is that you're doing, roster construction wise, because you're not going to see an entire. You're not going to see 100% of a roster be transfers or juco guys, you know, the upper ends. I would argue that Troy is probably on the upper end of that, right, at 70%. I haven't seen a higher number this year. I.
I'm sure there's a couple out there, but I would argue that the vast majority are probably living in that 40 to 60% range of, you know, transfer guys where you're, you know, maybe 60 of your roster is going to be high school and 40% is transfers. There's going to be some that are lower, like North Carolina. That's going to be 75 high school and 25 transfer, depending on the level. But I don't think that it's a reality that we can shy away from anymore. And I thought that the, you know, the graphics they put out there in the World Series, I think kind of showed it. I think again, I think it's a little bit more of a microcosm of what college baseball looks like right now, because again, you can't commit to the transfer portal. You have to. You have to go to college first, and then it matters what you do from there, but it's going to.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: What.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: What ultimately matters is how you're doing at the place you're at. And then does that play up and into another place? Because not everyone is going to go to a school and then end up at North Carolina. Is that 25% transfer, right.
And you're talking about what, eight guys.
Ish. On a 34 man roster, right? So like if they're. And that's across multiple classes, right? So like it's not like they're just going and getting eight guys to transfer in every class. You're talking about maybe to a class that they're getting transfer wise in. So that's a super low number. Whereas other schools, it might be seven, eight, nine, you know, that they're trying to bring in because they got gutted. They have their high school guys coming in and I think that's a.
Something that is worth understanding is that the high school guys that are coming in are still showing up to that program. The transfer portal is being used or getting juco guys is being used for the guys that are on their way out of that program, whether it's trying to go up or hey, it's not going to work out here, right? Like they're still recruiting high school guys to, to backfill guys that are leaving just like it's been for years. It's just the portal is a little bit more user friendly, if you will, in this day and age.
But I think it, it's worth understanding and, and doing a little bit of a, you know, you don't have to do a deep dive. We'll do it for you here. But it's worth understanding what that landscape looks like. It's far different than it was four, five, six, seven, ten years ago.
But it's not nearly as negative as some people paint that picture to be, especially in baseball.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Parents, if you've ever felt overwhelmed trying to navigate youth sports, there's a new resource designed just for you. TeamMatch Team match is an online platform built to streamline how families find the right youth sports teams by location, sport and skill level all in one place. It also provides a safe, organized space for kids to share their accomplishments, stats and highlights while giving coaches and teams a clear way to connect with athletes who are the right fit. Less searching, less stress, more confidence in the process. Youth sports just got simpler for families. This is Team Match. Check it out today@teammatch sports.com yeah, I think that for me the, the key point that you hit on there is like there's different ways of doing this right to your point. Like North Carolina's mostly high school guys.
With that being said, I think half their lineup offensively is transfer guys, but I think that that's a product of them losing guys and having to go and find good players to step into the program. But you know, you've got that. You've got some other programs like Troy, like you said, that are very much portal heavy and transfer heavy. But I think that, and this gets to the nuance of it, is that to your point, like coach me may not have had a choice but to go and get 70% transfers because they've been good and he's done a fantastic job there. And when you're at that level where the Sun Belt is, if you haven't watched Sunbelt baseball, watch some of the baseball. It's absolutely legit. And obviously Troy and Coastal in recent years have really kind of elevated the name Southern Miss, you know, so on and so forth. But, you know, you're.
You're kind of subject to the powers that be where if a kid comes to Troy and he's there for two years and he's awesome, you start to get into these conversations of like, can you pay a kid to stay?
It's just the reality, what we live in.
But I think every single coach at every different level, specifically a Division 1 baseball, is going to take a slightly different approach to this.
And I think what you're seeing in the College World Series with Oklahoma, with unc, with Troy, is there's different ways to tackle this and there's no one size fits all.
And I thought Coach Saban's press conference where he spoke a little bit about his. The success they've had with some Division 2 guys. And I think what he was kind of alluding to, and I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but my takeaway from the conversation was, you know, some of these guys are, they're talented enough to play for us, but West Virginia is. It's like they've done the Division 2 thing.
They've had to earn everything that they've got and that they value the character that comes along with making that jump.
And I think that that is a very true statement. When you talk about junior college kids is the junior college kid who comes into your program as a junior has likely played on some bad field with some facilities that might not be as nice as the ones that they're playing in. And they don't take some of the things that are for granted that the high school kid who walked on to campus at Oklahoma may take for granted. And the toughness and the maturity that comes along with that is, I think it's hard to put a price on that type of experience, that type of toughness, that type of commitment to baseball, and everybody's going to value that stuff a little bit differently. And I also think there's, like, there's some programs like UNC where kids grow up, where that's the only place they want to go, and you can keep those kids. Right? There's guys on that roster that have been there for three years that have barely played, but they're so invested in the program. And this is a credit to Coach Forbes and his staff. I think there's some other schools in the country that are. That are very similar to this, where you grow up in a specific state or a specific region. And, like, that's the dream. And I think they've leaned into that.
Right. With how he's built that roster is like, you can go get some pieces of the puzzle in the transfer portal that are going to help you get to where they are right now, but you have the core of your culture and the guys that were banging down the door to get to unc. And for me, I think the conversation is less about whether the portal is good or bad. I think it's more nuanced. And for me, it's more interesting to see how these coaches build rosters with the transfer portal as a part of the equation.
And some guys have success with. With certain strategies, and I think you're seeing some of that play out in the College World Series.
I think there's some teams that have tried to do what Troy has done where they go, and they're very portal heavy and they bring in guys, or transfer heavy, I should say, juco, whatever it might be, that that's blown up in their face because they bring in a bunch of guys and you can't find any congruency. You can't find that, that, that.
That. That culture, that.
That feel for winning that Coach Mead has clearly been able to. To establish in that program.
And then you've seen some guys who have tried to stick strictly to high school, and that's also bit him in the butt. So, like, there's teams that are winning, doing in different ways, there's teams that are losing and doing in different ways. And I think that one of the cool things about college baseball right now is that you have an opportunity to, as a coach, from a coach's perspective, you have an opportunity to come up with strategies to put together a roster that's going to be successful. And I think each and every program is going to do it a little bit differently. And for me, I think that that's cool.
And I just think that the College World Series is a microcosm of college baseball, broadly, is like, you have eight teams that got to that point. All eight of those teams constructed their rosters and built their rosters in a slightly different way, and they all ended up in Omaha.
And I think that speaks more accurately of what college baseball is right now. It's not this.
It's not this death of the high school kid.
Everybody's going to recruit out of the portal type of situation.
Everybody's going to do it a little bit different. And I find that fascinating. I think it's.
I think it's actually helped elevate college baseball. I think you've gotten some amazing stories out of it because of it.
And I think it's given some kids who have been.
I shouldn't even say overlooked, but maybe just hadn't quite developed enough out of high school to go to a place like George Mason, who was in a regional last year, by the way. Very good team right down the road from where I live, where their center fielders playing center field for unc. I'm sure if Coach Forbes had known that that kid was going to be as good as he was as a junior when he was in high school, he probably would have recruited him then. But the reality was that kid probably just wasn't good enough to play at UNC coming out of high school, and now he is. And I think that's a beautiful part of the transfer portal that people don't want to talk about and how these guys put together the rosters, how they value certain traits, how they value certain characteristics and build these rosters. I think it's a fascinating part of college baseball. I know some people hate it, but it's the world we live in. And I think it's. I think it's a super interesting part of college baseball right now.
What else you got, Coach? What's. What's your bullet number? Three.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: I was hoping you were going to go on three.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: I can go. I can go.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: I got one.
Hit me with it.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: I think it dovetails on the transfer and the roster construction. Different ways to win part of the conversation here, but watched a decent amount of the Division 3 tournament, caught a little bit of the Division 2 tournament, watched a lot of the Division 1 tournament.
And for me, one of the biggest takeaways, and I think this might be the most applicable point from a pure recruiting perspective, is that the barrier to entry to play college baseball right now has it just continues to skyrocket.
And just watching a clip today of a young man from endicott, small Division 3 school outside of Boston played in the College World Series. They've been very good in recent years.
Strong, strong tradition in that program, I think is probably the best way to put it.
I mean there's kids 90 to 93 with an 83 mile an hour slider.
And I think that Division 3 baseball is probably the, the brightest example of the level of play continuing to rise when 10 years ago that kid didn't exist in College in Division 3 college baseball or was very, very hard to find.
You fast forward now in that upper 80s righty, low 90s righty in Division 3 college baseball is not an oncome. It's not an uncommon thing and haven't talked to a long list of Division 3 college coaches over this past year for a variety of different reasons that is more common than it is uncommon at this point. Where good division three programs and good conferences, they may not have the depth but the top end of those rotations, you're going to see some velocity numbers that have quite a bit of crossover with really good Division 1 baseball.
And for me, I just think it's an indication of the development that's happening on and off campuses. Right. I think there's some guys who are really good from a facility perspective, from a pitching, from the pitching side and have been able to get guys into their pipeline and they get stronger and they learn how to throw harder, they learn how to move better.
Same thing from a hitting perspective. Kids are stronger, they're running faster, the bat speeds are better, the swings are a little bit cleaner.
And when you start to look at the different levels of college baseball, that Division 3 player to me is what really jumps off the page.
And I think that, I don't think it's talked about enough, I don't think it's understood enough that the barrier to entry to play college baseball right now is, is really high. And I think it's a wonderful thing for the game of baseball. It's always, it was always supposed to be hard to play college baseball, but I think with some of the talent that you're seeing and some of the other pieces of the puzzle that we've talked about, I just, I continue to continue to be impressed with what college baseball is producing across all levels. And I think it's really important for people to understand and recruiting that as you go through this process that don't, don't undersell or discount a school because of the number associated with the division. I think that getting a chance to play college baseball in itself is an achievement and guys are developing at all different levels. And I think the transfer portal is, despite all its criticisms, I think it's created the ability for kids to be mobile and move up and down levels. And I think it's a really good thing in a lot of ways. And yeah, I just. I continue to be impressed with how the level of play broadly across all college baseball. And I think my big takeaway is that the, the barrier to entry right now is higher than it's ever been.
And I don't. I don't anticipate that it's going to get any easier moving forward here.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Oklahoma just jumped the yard seven one in the fifth, now my third one and my last one, and I think you might have one more than me. But I was hoping that you were going to bring this up because I had some conversations
[00:47:29] Speaker B: about.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: And I watched some of it. I didn't watch nearly as much as I watched the other stuff. But the JuCo World Series, where some of it was on ESPN plus, where I did see some of the teams that were playing, some of them were not. We knew some people that were playing in it. So I tuned in a little bit.
But the physicality and the level of play at the junior college level is incredibly high. And we tout that on here quite a bit. And I don't know if I've told this story on here. I think the first time that.
Well, this is a true story. The first time I ever went recruiting, I was 22 years old.
I was living in Livingston, Alabama, and they sent me to watch.
If my memory serves, Meridian was one of the teams and I believe they were playing at a Wamba and two places that I couldn't find on a map.
If you gave me the entire day to find, I showed up. I'm watching this and I'm just circling every single player on the field.
I bring it back and our recruiting coordinator was like, what do you got? And I handed him my sheet and all the guys that I had circled. He was like, he's committed to Mississippi State. He's committed Ole Miss. That kid's going to Alabama. This kid's going to Mississippi State. State.
That kid's committed to Southern Miss. And the list goes on and on and on. And I was like, damn, at least I kind of know what I'm doing. The reality was I had no idea what I was doing. I just went to a junior college game and saw that, you know, these kids were bros and I circled them, thought they play West Alabama.
And my point is that, like, it's been that good in the south for a very long time.
I think now we're starting to see junior college baseball across the country.
The floor is being risen, right? The same reason that we talk about Division 1, 2 and 3 and the roster cuts and things like that happening in the transfer portal, because the reality is not everyone who enters the transfer portal as a freshman does find a four year place. They might end up at a junior college.
And the guys that used to kind of be back end roster guys or you know, borderline division one guys, they go and they can play junior college baseball and you can play 15, 16 games in the fall and then you go play 56 in the spring. And you know, I say this, you know, there's a caveat like there are no real rules. There obviously are rules, but there's no real practice limit rules like there is at the NCAA level where you only get 35 days in Division 1 and you only get 16 to 24. At the Division 3 level you can practice. Second, you set foot on campus all the way up to classes, end in the fall and fire right back up in January or February when classes start until you're done with the season.
So there's a lot of development that's happening at those levels and there's a lot of baseball being played. And I think this goes back to, and this is another point that I have, and I figured I was going to weave it into this one, quite frankly, like the gameplay stuff still matters. You still have to play the game in order to be recruited, right? So, you know, I think in something, you know, especially if you're going through the recruiting process and I challenge a lot of people who do this to not turn up their noses at junior college because it's an unbelievable opportunity to go get, you know, 60 plus games played as a freshman and another 60 plus games played as a sophomore. And all of a sudden you've played 120 plus games at the collegiate level and you have a really good batting average and your feeling percentage looks good. We can compare that, coaches can look at that and compare that across other guys and be like, well, you know, I could take the junior college guy who has 350 at bats and it's hit.360 for his career. Like, yeah, he might not be facing the best pitching, but it's college pitching and he's hitting.360 against it. So I'll roll the dice on this kid.
And. But the, the floor has been raised, you know, and I think the other thing that junior college can do, especially for kids who are, you know, in between levels, don't necessarily know what they want to do.
Obviously it's, it's cheaper from a monetary perspective.
But the other side of it is, you know, you go in and you get really good grades and you graduate with your associate's degree, you can more than likely open up other doors academically that may have been closed to you coming out of high school.
And I think that's an important thing to kind of think about, right? Like say you want to go play high level academic baseball, but you don't have the grades coming out of high school. You can find a junior college that has, that has a strong track record to go play at. Go get, Go graduate with a 38 and get your associates.
They're very rarely are they really asking for your high school grades. And even if they are, they're going to see like, wow, look where he was in high school. He had an 85 GPA. But then he went to college and played baseball and, you know, figured out time management, really buckled down and studied well.
Now he has a 3 9. Like, this kid's on an upward trajectory. These are the type of kids we want. And you can open up more doors to yourself academically for what you're looking for out of a degree standpoint.
So I think it's, you know, but the, the floor at the junior college level from a baseball perspective has been raised. There's a lot of really good players at the junior college level. You know, go look across the sec, the acc. I mean, Kansas was one of the best teams in the country and they had a ton of JUCO guys on that roster. Like they're playing at the highest levels of college baseball and having success, you know, and I think a lot of people kind of look at it of like, yeah, it's like 13th grade.
We can go play the same argument I used to have three years ago when I, we. I would get on here and talk and pontificate about Division 3 baseball and that, that misnomer there. And I think that to your point, you know, that you brought up a couple minutes ago, I think that's starting to be removed. Right. I still think it, it happens at the junior college level and look like there are there going to be some jugos that aren't as good. Yeah, there are, man. Just like there's not good division through 1, 2 and 3 programs, you know, but there's a lot of really good programs out there. And if you watch some of the baseball that they put out there, there's really good players and they're going and playing in mid major to high level Division 1 conferences. It's not by accident, it's not by mistake. They're not looking at it and being like, wow, he's a juco guy. So we're going to take him like no, that kid still has to go produce. He's got to go out there and hit.350,360,380,390 and hit home runs and doubles and still defend.
And the gameplay stuff to circle back to. It matters. If you can go play 60 plus games for two years, you're going to get an incredible amount of game reps at that, at the collegiate level and the speed of the game slows down for you and you can handle yourself in pressure situations and you're going to be further along more than likely than other juniors that you're going to walk into that program with, right? You're, there's going to be juniors that have only played 20 games in their career. When you get there as a junior college kid where you have 120 plus and there, there's a lot that matters a lot in college baseball, that is hundreds more at bats, that's hundreds more innings being played in the field. Different situations that you've seen that experience, you can't, you can't replicate that.
And I think that it's something that is, is worth bringing up because you still have to be good to play at that level, right? Like you might be able to make team, but in order to be on the field and get burned, you still got to be good, you still got to produce and that can open up more doors for you in the future. Whether it's academically, whether it's athletically.
You marry the two, you're, you're in business. But you know, there's, if you're not
[00:55:32] Speaker B: getting,
[00:55:34] Speaker A: you know, I don't want to say if you're not getting because that's not the right way to put it. If you're not, if you're not being recruited at the schools in which are really good fits for you, right? Like it's, I don't think these places are the best fit for me. Find a junior college that's a really good fit and go play baseball and get your associate's degree in two years and go transfer to a four year school.
Plenty of guys have done it and had a ton of success doing it. And it's currently happening, right? So like it's, it's worth looking into because the floor has been raised at that level too. And you still got to be good to play. But there's been programs for years that are churning out guys and you can always hit the high ones, right, like Chipotle and you know, Meridian's always been good, but there's, there's programs out that Walter State. There's programs out there that you've probably never heard of or, or have can't find. You couldn't find it if you threw a dart at the map.
But they're really churn out baseball players and they're really good and they go on to four year schools and have phenomenal careers. You know, I think that it's just something from a recruiting standpoint that people should definitely look into and not, you know, kind of look down their nose at and say better than junior college. Because there's some out there where you might not even make, you might not even make the team where you're going to get cut.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: I mean there's junior, there's legitimately junior colleges who could really compete at the Division 1 level.
And I think that that's missed on people. And I'm glad you brought this up because I, I think that it, it just gets overlooked and the development piece I think is huge. But I think a lot of people assume that, well, I went to junior college, I must not be a good student. Well, you know, your high school track record doesn't go away, you know, so that's not necessarily the case. I think that's kind of a broad assumption that is just, just not really all that true.
Yeah, the junior college baseball ranks right now and it's been this way for a while. Like they produce a ton of really high end talent and it's been that way for a long time. And I think that the game is getting a little, the junior college baseball game is getting a little bit more notoriety just because of the visibility of college baseball broadly. And you know, you get a chance to see a team like Kansas.
But I mean if you really care about baseball and that's something that's really important to you and you want to develop, I think junior college is a great route for, for a lot of kids. For all the reasons that you said, I'm not gonna, I don't really have a ton more to add to it because I think you, I think you covered it pretty comprehensively. But it's.
Yeah, this idea that junior college is like an afterthought. I, I think it couldn't be further from the truth.
There's a lot of really good high school players who would have trouble making a large portion of the junior college rosters.
That's just. That's just the truth of it.
Yeah. That's all I got on that.
I covered my points, Coach. We had the crossover on the different ways to win, so I don't know if you had a third bullet you wanted to cover.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: That was my third bullet.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:58:58] Speaker A: I'm all out of bullets.
[00:59:00] Speaker B: I'm all out of bullets. Fair enough.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: I'm Winchester, as they say in the.
In the. In the armed services.
[00:59:08] Speaker B: Fair enough. I like that.
Yeah, I don't have much else to add. I think there's.
Yeah, some good takeaways there. Some things for people to think about.
A lot of cool stuff going on in college baseball continues to evolve, continues to change.
Try not to think about it necessarily as good, about whether it's good or bad, but more about, like, kind of what is it?
And, you know, me and you spend a lot of time talking about this stuff offline somewhat in preparation for these, but, you know, oftentimes just general conversation with.
Between me and you and between other coaches that we talk to. Like, we try to get this type of information and get people's thoughts.
Yeah, I think college baseball is in a great place.
I think it's incredibly competitive.
It's an awesome game. And for all the haters out there, it looks like we're going to get another SEC championship.
We'll see if the Tar Heels have some.
Some continued fight in them, which I'm sure they do. But as we close to the end of this recording, it's currently 7 1. Oklahoma in the bottom of the fifth
[01:00:28] Speaker A: inning, two out to nobody on one account,
[01:00:36] Speaker B: George Mason transfer Owen hall.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: Who can. Who can roll the barrel?
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Who can absolutely roll the barrel.
Anything else you want to add, Coach?
[01:00:48] Speaker A: No, sir.
[01:00:49] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you for listening, everybody. Tune in next week. We will talk to you then. Thank you.
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