Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse with EMD Baseball. I am Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host, Keith Glasser. How we doing?
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Great. How are you?
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I think we had a slight technical glitch there, but we're going to move on.
We're doing it live, so we'll move on.
Topic of today's discussion.
Topic of today's discussion.
We'll. We'll unpack this here in a second. But the recruiting process is the process of elimination, not the process of accumulation.
And I think a lot of people get this backwards now.
And we'll preface this conversation with saying that this comes with getting interest. Right? There are kids who are going to go through this process who may not have the luxury of being able to sort through a bunch of different schools. Right.
Fundamentally, the goal isn't to see how much interest you can get. The goal is to find the right fit. And that does not mean accumulating a bunch of things to sort through. It means honing in on schools that you're interested in and making decisions that allow you to whittle that list down to schools that you're legitimately going to make a decision on.
Coach, what are your thoughts on this?
[00:01:36] Speaker A: I think it's a little bit more nuanced than I think a lot of people want to kind of admit. Right.
You have, because it's a warm and fuzzy feeling when people start recruiting you, right? Like, you get that first one or two phone calls you get a visitor to under your belt, and people start to really show a lot of interest and kind of validates the hard work and the sacrifice and the stuff that you've done to this point for what it is that you ultimately aspire to do, right?
And I think you can very easily get caught up in the, wow, this feels really good. And it's validated.
What else can I get?
And we start going down a path of finding any and all schools that may be interested, regardless of where they are, regardless of the academic profile, regardless of the coaching staff, whatever it might be, you know, in an attempt to get as many offers, if you will, and I think ultimately try to leverage them against other places, which, if I'm being completely honest, like leveraging other offers against other schools is a.
Is not the best practice. And it's not really going to move the needle a whole hell of a lot of, you know, because it's, you know, you're not comparing the same kid, you're not recruiting the same type of kid, you're not recruiting the same position. It's a different profiled school, whatever it might be, right? So, like, if I'm at RPI and I hear that, you know, if you come in and tell me that you got an offer from Vassar, that doesn't really move the needle for me at all. Not because of anything really baseball wise, but like, it's two different schools. One's a, you know, liberal arts college and one's a STEM school. Like, those are two wildly different things, you know, so it's. I don't necessarily think that's. Not to put Vassar down and coach Scaly or anything. It's just a simple little exercise in what I'm thinking right now, you know, But I think that there's. You can get lost in the. Trying to accumulate all of these offers, thinking that that's going to help you in the long run, when realistically it should be going about the visits and the offers that you do have and figuring out whether or not those are places that you can legitimately see yourself being at and programs you can see yourself being a part of. And it's okay to leave a visit and be like, hey, I don't think that this is the place for me.
And that's fine. You'd rather know now than in October after, you know, after you've started school and you've been there for two months and you're like, yo, this is not the place for me. I don't like it. I don't like the school. It doesn't fit for me, whatever it might be. Right, you'd rather know early. But I think it's a very narrow line that you can walk between trying to accumulate offers and understanding that going on these visits and talking to coaches and doing these things are more so along the. Based along the lines of you figuring out, is this a place for me?
And conversely, the coaches are trying to figure out if you're a fit for them.
Right? Like you're going to go on that visit. Like, they might walk out of there and be like, hey, I don't think that that kid's going to be a really good fit for us. And they might move on afterwards, you know, and that's just the way that this all works, you know, so, you know, it can be a fool's errand trying to chase down as many offers as possible because, you know, it's.
It's empty at the end. And I think the other side of it is it kind of shows that you have no real plan or idea that you're going about in your process, right. If we're just trying to find any school that could potentially like me and offer me, like there's no real, there's no real plan there. There's no real, you know, if we're basing it off of things that don't necessarily matter, then, you know, you're getting away from what actually matters for what it is that you want to do. Right. Like if you're, if you're looking at a school that, you know, if you're, what you're looking for is an opportunity to play early, an opportunity to develop a winning program and culture and you know, you're looking at places, you know, based off of what conference they're in, that's you're getting away from what actually matters to your entire process and you're ultimately probably going to make the wrong decision in where you go. So like, you want to stay true to what it is that you're looking for out of your recruitment process, out of your college experience, out of what you're getting in the program, all of those things. And I just think chasing down as many offers as you could possibly, you know, attain is not necessarily the best. I mean, you know, we've had many guys that we've worked with on the consulting side of this who have only gotten one or two offers early and made their decision because that was the place that they knew they wanted to go. They felt comfortable, they love the coaching staff and it's worked out wonderfully for them, you know, so like, it's not necessarily about trying to get as many offers as possible. It's more about finding the right fit so that you can, you, you make the right decision to go in a four year window to be able to go play college baseball for your career at the right program, at the right college, that fits all the things it is that you're looking for for your process.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think when you hit on a lot of really good points there, and a couple of things I would add is when you, you go and see a couple of schools, there are schools that you've targeted and this kind of goes back to having a plan, right. This conversation doesn't mean as much if you haven't really executed a plan and you've, you guys got some schools who've reached out to you and they like you and they're showing some interest and you're not really sure if you should be interested in them or not. Right. It's a little bit of a different situation. But if you Walk in, you have a plan, you're looking for a specific type of school from an academic perspective, from a financial perspective, from a geographic perspective. And you, and you get some interest from schools that fall into that category. I think the big mistake that people make is like, well, I've got three really good options. Can I get a fourth, can I get a fifth, can I get a sixth? Instead of really peeling back the onion on 1, 2 and 3, right? Because at the end of the day, guys, they misconstrue interest with actual want, right? A couple phone calls, the guy sees you play, gives you a little feedback via text message, that's some interest. When somebody really wants you to go there, which is a huge piece of this puzzle, and I think it's something that a lot of families need to really consider is that you want to go somewhere where you really want it and to get fleeting interest just so you can have interest doesn't make a ton of sense to me. In this process, you start to get some good interest from a couple schools and you go on campus and you like those coaches and they're ready to make an offer to you. Regardless of what the level is, you need to bear down on those schools because I think a lot of people fail when they think that the next offer is going to be the better offer and they don't focus on what's right in front of them. And if you have a plan and you're tackling and you're attacking the schools that are of interest to you and you start to get interest from these schools, you don't need to deviate from that plan just to make yourself feel better about getting a couple other phone calls or, you know, maybe going to visit another school. Like, focus on what's in front of you, focus on the people who really want you on that campus. And I promise you that the end of the day you'll come away with a good decision.
But I also think when you get a ton of interest, it makes the decision making process a lot harder because you got to sift through a lot more stuff, right? So at some point, no matter how you slice this, you have to eliminate schools from the process.
And you need to make sure that you're eliminating schools for the right reasons, right? If you go on a campus and it's the right academics, it's the right coaching staff, it's the right location, it's the right price, right?
Just because it may not check one other box, right? Maybe it's Division 3 versus Division 1.
Don't discount that as a part of your process. Because at the end of the day, if you want to go compete for something, you want to be somewhere that's really, really wants you to be there. Because your experience is going to be so much better than getting fleeting interest from another school and, you know, kicking the can down the road or potentially burying an opportunity. Because at some point some of these coaches are going to say, hey man, we're moving on to somebody else. Right? And that's the last thing you want. You want to make the decision that that school is not the right fit for you, not hold on to this stuff so that these guys can tell you that you're not the right fit for them.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest one, right? Like all eventually coaches are going to, if you're just accumulating offers, eventually coach, you're going to be like, hey man, like, I need a decision.
You know, sometimes it's going to be, you know, pretty early on in the process of like, you know, quote unquote, being deadlined where you have to make a decision. There's going to be other times where, hey, like, we're not going to deadline you, but like, understand, you know, we might call you back if we don't hear in a month and tell you that we're going to offer a handful of other guys and if they have, you know, if they take it, we might not have a spot for you because, you know, if they're going to sit on, you know, their top one and two arms and they're not going to make a decision.
They can't afford to let their 3, 4, 5 on their list go away and go somewhere else. If 1 and 2 eventually say no.
So, you know, it's. There is a time frame involved, right?
And it's going to vary program to program and coach to coach. But understand that, like, if you're just in the process of accumulating offers, you could be left at the end with legitimately only one or two of places that you might not really like because you were more focused on just trying to get as many as possible, you know, and that's. It's a, again, I'll use the term like it's a fool's errand because you're just, you're trying to just get as many, you know, I almost equate it to like getting likes on Instagram or X, formerly Twitter, how long we have to say that for?
But it validates, you know, what you say on or post on social media validates what you've been doing instead of legitimately trying to figure out whether or not that's a place that you want to be at and could benefit you from a playing and development standpoint over the course of your college career. And look, the elephant in the room is that college baseball, the landscape of college baseball has changed. We've talked about it on here at Nauseum over the course of the last two years.
There are programs out there that are using the transfer portal as a tool in the recruiting process of, like, hey, if you come here and you develop, we're okay if you jump in the portal.
And that's, you know, it's something that coaches are using to kind of say, like, you know, if you come here and you become really good and you want to get in the portal, we're all right with it. That said, you have to hold up your end of the bargain. Like, you got to go in and you have to be good and you have to develop. And if you don't get to that point, then that's the place that you have to be comfortable with for the next two, three, four years. You know, not just, hey, I'm going here for two years and then jumping ship and going somewhere else. But, you know that coaches are being. Some coaches are being a little bit more upfront about it in the process, but I also think that they're. They are being transparent of like, hey, we're going to do the best to develop you, but if you end up not getting to that point, like, we expect that you're going to be here for four years, you know, so, like, that. That's kind of the elephant in the room conversation when it comes to some of this stuff where, you know, you can do it all you want, but, you know, on the same hand, the portal is a real thing, and coaches are recruiting out of it. They're well aware of it, and you know it. Not to say that that needs to factor into your decision making, but, no, I think this generation and what we'll see over the next couple years is far different than what you and I went through. And a lot of people our age and maybe, you know, a tad bit younger than us that didn't have the free transfer rule right? Like, you. You have kind of a little bit of a security blanket where if I did make the wrong decision, I can jump in the portal. But you have to weigh all options, right? Like, you. You want to make sure that you're going to a place where you can develop and do those things. Like, you Know, you want to make sure you're going to go to a place where you're going to actually play because it's going to be uber hard if you try to jump into the portal with one and a third innings pitched and a 10 ERA.
Like you want to go to a place where you're going to develop and if you end up, you know, popping and maybe you, you know, you are you out, you're at, then you have the ammo and the leverage to be able to get in the portal and find somewhere to go. But understand that if you don't, it's going to be really hard to get in the Portal. Pitching out of 20 with four innings pitched in your career and more walks than strikeouts. So like you know, or 12 at bats and you know, 15 punch outs, which is hard to do in 12 at bats, but you get what I'm driving out here, you know. So I think that it's, you know, like that you have to be on the field and you want to be able to find a place that is going to be able to do that for you. But understand that like at its core you want to be making a four year commitment to where it is that you're going and be comfortable with that coaching staff, with the school, with the program, with all the things it is that you're doing so you can try to go, you know, compete for championships and do those things. And I think just trying to accumulate offers, to say that you have as many offers as possible is, is not necessarily the best way to go about doing it.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: You bring up a good point about the Portal. Right. And I, you know, we were talking about it a little bit before we got on. You know, there's 5,500 kids and it's less than 500 kids committed.
If you're going to go to the Portal, you want to go in because you've outplayed the level that you're at, the school that you're at. Not because you made a bad decision, because if you go into the Portal because you made a bad decision, it's going to be hard to find the right place after that. Right? Because to your point, it's really tough to get recruited in today's game if you haven't proven that you can compete at that level once you get there. So, you know, don't, don't focus on how many, Focus on the quality of it, right? Not the quantity of the offers.
Have a plan for what you're targeting. If you're getting interest from the schools that are targeting you.
Focus on those schools. Right? Because it's kind of the betters fallacy that, like the next role is going to be the better role. Like you're going to get a better result on the other side of it. And I can promise you whatever, you know, whatever phrase you want to use to talk about it, the grass isn't always greener. Like, the next role isn't going to be a better role. Like, focus on the schools that really like you.
Do your due diligence on those schools and don't worry about how many. Worry about getting it right. Right. And you said it off the, off the jump. Like, we worked with guys that have ended up with two offers, but they were offers from two of the schools that they really wanted and they were able to make a really good decision and they're super happy with everything that they're doing in school. They're playing, they're playing for a good coaching staff. They're getting the degree that they want. They didn't need eight or 10 offers to get what they wanted. And I think a lot people get, get confused by that. So anything else you want to add here, Coach?
[00:17:48] Speaker A: No, sir.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you for listening, everybody. Tune in next week. We'll have another hot topic for you. Thanks, everybody.
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