Episode Transcript
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[00:01:12] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of the Dugout Dish podcast. I'm Andy Kirikidis, joined by my Wonderful co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing?
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Great. How are you?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Good. Today, as we enter into the year 2026, we are going to present three musings, if you will, each to a total of six as we go into 2026 about college baseball and the recruiting process and development as a whole.
So we're gonna, we're gonna bounce some stuff around here, we're gonna ping pong it with a couple different topics, and we'll see where this one takes us. You ready to go?
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: All right. My first soapbox.
I've given this one a lot of thought and we've talked about this on the podcast before, but I'm going to hammer this one home.
I firmly stand in the camp with no caveats, that specialization before the age of 15 is detrimental to the physical and mental development of young athletes, period.
[00:02:24] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: I think we live in this world where I think there's a misconception that if you specialize in a sport, we'll stick to baseball. If you specialize in baseball from a really young age, that it's going to pay huge dividends out on the back end. And I just anecdotally know that it's not true. But there's also a lot of data that would suggest, and you know, people who are experts in this particular field, that locking into one Sport as an 8 year old, 9 year old, 10 year old, 11 year old is actually detrimental in the long run to motor function, athletic development, mental acuity, ability to Operate within a team. And then you even get into some of this stuff around overuse, injuries, burnout, all kinds of things that I think are very detrimental to young kids. And you know, I say this as somebody who played multiple sports growing up. I know you did as well.
I don't think that I end up playing baseball at the level that I did if I don't play other sports.
But I think more and more, I think a lot of the specialization that we're currently seeing in sports in general, whether it's baseball or basketball, and it's even gotten to the point where kids are specializing in football at a really young age, that I think a lot of it honestly is driven by money.
And I think there's a lot of pressure put on kids and families at a young age to be year round athletes. And by year round, typically the definition of a year round sports specialization is where you commit eight plus months to a specific sport.
I think a lot of this has been driven by money and in some ways it's kind of fear mongering that you know, if you don't specialize at age 10 or 12, like you're just never going to be good enough.
I think there's a ton of examples throughout professional sports, not just baseball, that it's just, it's, it's not correct.
Kids develop at different ages. Kids are different sizes at different ages. You know, we've talked about how the 8 year old is rarely the best 10 year old, is really the best 12 year old and so on.
And I think a lot of the reason that kids end up catching up to younger kids is because they develop athletically.
You know, if you play basketball, you develop proprioception and motor skills that you're not going to develop on a baseball field.
You know, if you wrestle the flexibility, the dexterity, the competitiveness that is required to be a good wrestler, these are all skills that ultimately pay dividends as kids get older.
The only caveat I have to this statement is that when you get to 15 or 16, I think that's when the conversation starts of hey, I really want to be a college baseball player. Okay, well now maybe we need to think about, maybe we drop a sport, maybe we spend a little bit more time trying to do some of the skill acquisition stuff.
But prior to the age of 15, I strongly sit in the camp that sports specialization specifically for guys who are looking to play baseball long term, I think it's detrimental to the development both physically and mentally.
End of rant.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I, I think that you're 100, right? I, I, I don't, I don't love sports specialization. I think that we're depriving kids of a lot of different things.
I think you hit the nail on the head that there's a lot of fear mongering at the youth level of saying, well, if you don't spend the time and dedicate all, all of this time, energy and effort and doing these things and spending the money to do this stuff, like you're never going to have the opportunity and you're going to get passed.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: And.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: I find that really hard to believe. At 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, the kids develop at such different rates and it's mind boggling to me when I hear some of the things from people. And it's not just baseball, it's a lot of different sports that the amount of time and money and effort and things they spend on to go all over the country to play in these tournaments and other teams and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah at such a young age.
And it's like, for what?
Right? And I think that you know, the land you have to look at the landscape of the sport in which you're, you're dealing with, right? Like baseball is a different animal than hockey, right? Like we have 400, you know, 300 plus, you know, 300, I don't know, 10, 12, 15, something like that. Division one baseball teams, there's like 60 division one hockey teams.
The chances of you playing division one hockey are far slimmer than playing division one baseball. And division one baseball is 2.8%.
Like it's a small percentage as is. And that's with 300 plus Division 1 baseball teams. You know, you're talking 68 or you know, it's in the 60s, I believe it might be a tick higher in the 70s. But you know, you have people playing, you know, year round hockey and you know, I don't, I don't think it's good, I don't think it's good for athleticism. I don't think it's good for, you know, the mental health of some of these kids. Like you end up burn out and you end up getting to the point where it's like, well, you know, everything is built up their whole lives to getting a college scholarship and going to college and then you end up in college and it's like, okay, now what, what, what do I do? Because the last 15 years of my life, this has been drilled into my head that this is the goal.
And now I've achieved The goal, what do I do now? And I've seen that a lot with kids that I coach that you know, were baseball specific players.
And I don't think that there's, you know, there's a lack of education and I think there's a lot of fear mongering on people's part of like, well if you're not going to do this, you're going to miss out. And it happens in baseball. You know, you have people that are like, well you should, you need to go to this tournament in the fall because there'll be pro scouts there. And you know, you, if you pop these numbers, you're going to get drafted. Like, okay, you're on the tail end of the summer, you're tired, you're burnout, you're beat up.
Are you really going to make a jump from 84 to 93 and in four weeks?
And I gotta be honest with you, ain't gonna move the needle on a lot of these guys.
So like, you know, but it's a multi billion dollar business and there's people who are in it to, to chase these trophies and win these tournaments that you know, and I don't want to diminish it because I think winning is incredibly important. But you know, when, when you're playing at the amateur level sometimes like that's not the, that that's not the ultimate goal for these kids that are going to college. Like they've now committed, like it's incumbent upon you to make sure that they're, they're intact when they go to college and not beat up because you wanted to win the, you know, Labor Day Classic at Diamond Nation in September.
You know, so I, I don't love the, I don't love specialization. I think the kids need breaks, you know, and I, you know, I think that the multi sport athlete is a little bit of a dying breed. I hope that it comes back in the near future. I, I don't know what it's going to take.
You know, I played three sports, I played football, I wrestled, I played baseball. And I'm, I firmly believe in what you said. I don't think that I would have played Division 1 baseball if I didn't play two other sports. You know, I got a break from baseball, I picked up other athletic abilities playing football and wrestling, like being, you know, wrestling for, you know, I started wrestling in third grade. I, you know, I hurt my knee pretty substantially my junior year so I didn't wrestle my senior year. And you know, I was a catcher, like I was Able to do some things from a flexibility standpoint that not a lot of other people could. And I was able to kind of get away with those things. So, you know, I, I attribute a lot of those things to being able to play other sports and spending a lot of time doing it. And you learn other attributes in other sports. Like, you know, you learn in wrestling how to compete. If you don't, if you don't like to compete, probably ain't a sport for you. But it's one on one, man. Like, let's see what happens. Because there ain't no one you can blame. Ain't like you can be like, I made the pitch, but they made the air behind me. Like, no, man, you got stuck because you hung your head and you lost. Like, that's on you. And that's a hard thing to wrestle with. And I think, you know, no pun intended, but it's a hard thing to.
I was going to say grapple with him.
Another pun.
It's a hard thing, I think, as a young kid to, to be able to kind of figure out. And the earlier you kind of start to figure those things out, the easier it becomes when you start to facing adversity, when you, you know, if you're lucky enough to get to the college level of, like, all right, I've been in these situations before. I know what it's going to take to kind of turn myself around. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm against it. I'll. I'll never be. I've said it on this podcast numerous times. Like, our son and our daughter, I have no idea what they're going to play.
I have no idea if they're going to play anything, you know, but, like, we have had this conversation multiple times. They're going to play everything, and we'll figure it out as we go. You know, there's no, you know, if you're going to try to get me to go and eat you baseball tournament in September, like, yeah, we'll see you.
You can take some other people. Like, Glasser family won't be there. Like, thanks.
We're on to the next thing. So, you know, I couldn't agree more.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah, there's, I just think there's, from a resiliency perspective, relationships, gaining confidence, like putting kids in different sports. It, it does way more than just the athletic development, too. You, you, you meet different people, you meet different coaches, you're impacted by different people. I just, I just think there's so much that can, that can be taken from those experiences and, you know, making some decision that you're going to turn your kid into the next Bryce Harper, like, you know, you're talking about.
John Beck tweeted. It was a really good follow on Twitter for, for anybody listening. Kids have a.00001% chance of playing a professional sport. And I believe that's a 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 100,000.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: I think the other thing too, like, and this is something that I think is hard to wrap your mind around when you're a parent and maybe you didn't play sports or play at a high level, I don't know. But when you start talking and you know, outside of the NFL, the other, you know, every, every major league is, is international.
Like, you're not just competing when you get to professional baseball. You're not just competing against the best players in America.
You're competing against best players in the world.
It's not, you know, football. There's not a lot of international football players that are showing up. Like, you might get some rugby players in there, maybe a couple of guys from Europe, but by and large, 98% of those, those guys that play in the league are American guys. Like, that's not the case in baseball. It's certainly not the case in the NFL. You see the rise of the Euro guys in the NBA. I mean, MLS will throw in there. Like, I mean soccer is an international game. You know, you're competing against the world. You're not just competing against the people in your town, in your state. And you're like, you're competing against the world. And I think that that's a hard kind of concept to wrap your mind around of. Like, yeah, no, he's really good. He's going to play professionally. Like, yeah, okay, we play hockey. There's some pretty good Canadians out there. I think there's some pretty good Swedes. Russia's pretty good at it, you know, I don't know.
You know, they will see, you know, but. And I think that that's hard to kind of wrap your mind around sometimes that like you to get to the. I'm not saying you're not good, but to get to the professional level, you have to be one of the best in the world in order to do it. And that's.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: It doesn't happen at 8.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: It certainly does not happen. Yes.
Like I was 8 years old, I thought I was going to be, you know, Hulk Hogan. I remember being the basement. He was talking about his 24 inch pythons and I had a Ruler out, measuring my arm straight. I was like, yo, my arms longer than that.
What's Hulk Hogan talking about? I got longer arms than him and realize he was talking about, you know, his bicep.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, I mean, I think it's just, it's something as, as a parent, I think you just got to check yourself on kind of the realities of it. And it doesn't mean that your kid can't be a Division 1 scholarship athlete or play professional sports. But specializing as an eight year old isn't getting them to the major leagues.
Specializing as an eight year old isn't getting them to the NBA. Like the best player of the, of his generation. I'm a Jordan guy, so. Well, Jordan, same way, like he's a baseball guy. Baseball is his first love. But LeBron James was a football player. Like he didn't specialize in basketball.
[00:15:56] Speaker C: You can go across a lot of those guys, I mean every year in the draft or like in the NFL draft, they're like, oh, he's a dn and in high school he played hoops and he played baseball and he wrestled. Like a lot of these guys play multiple sports.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: The bright Bryce Harper is an outlier of outliers.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Like he's like, literally he, he might be the first guy who at the age of 15 was the best, was world class, the best at his age group. Every age that he went up to until his existence. Right now, what he's like 31.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: There's nobody else in recent memory. The two guys that I would say from a baseball standpoint, I don't really know his background. I mean Brace Harper was put on this earth to play baseball. Josh Hamilton's the other one. And Josh Hamilton ran into some issues. I don't know if he played other sports. I'm just. Because like, I mean he was drafted before Josh Beckett.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: And you know, got ran into some personal issues and ended up having a, a fairly, a very good career.
Um, I don't know if he played any other sports growing up.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: I'm going to try.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Like I remember, I remember seeing like hearing about it, but like eventually like he was hitting home runs off of it, out of yards, off of a tee at like 15, 16 years old.
Yeah.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: And those guys are, you know, we're talking about two, like even guys like Alex Rodriguez was an accomplished basketball player. Derek Jeter was an accomplished basketball player.
[00:17:23] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: And those stories are way more common than people they just think, well, are if they made it to the major leagues or the NBA or the NFL that it was just an easy path to get there. Right. And this gets to a whole nother thing about just not really focusing on being the best 14 year old or 15 year old or 16 year old. Like, God, there's an endless amount of stories of guys like Josh Allen and Aaron Rodgers and like these dudes who are afterthoughts and now they're all time greats that, you know, when they were 16, nobody gave about Josh Allen or Aaron Rodgers.
[00:17:54] Speaker C: I mean, Pat Mahomes played baseball in college.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean there's, there's just, there's so many of them.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: Texas Tech while also playing football.
It's just it.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: If your kid can pick up the character stuff from playing other sports, I think that's the biggest one.
[00:18:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: If they want to be tough, they learn how to be resilient. They learn how to be a good teammate. I think eventually when you get the skill that's required and the talent level that's required, if you have those traits, you're going to go farther than the kid who hasn't developed those traits because they haven't been tested.
[00:18:29] Speaker C: I mean, I remember you sent me a tweet a couple weeks ago where Wayne Gretzky in an interview was like, baseball was my first love.
Hockey was not my first love. It was baseball.
Every spring, all I want to do is throw my skates in the closet, not get him out to the winter and just go play baseball all summer long because it was awesome.
And arguably the greatest hockey player of all time. Yeah. But love playing baseball, you know, and I like, it gets lost on people. And I don't think that, you know, I mean, Dave Winfield was drafted in four professional sports.
He even played football and got drafted in football.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: I think Tom Brady was a Montreal Expos draft pick. You don't do that by accident.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: Kyler Murray was a first round pick with the A's.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the list is, the list is so long.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: And I think there's more, there's more guys that play other sports than there are guys that just straight up specialize. Yep.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: All right, so that was my first musing.
What is your first musing, Mr. Glasser?
[00:19:35] Speaker C: I forgot my three.
But one of them, the transfer portal, is not the end of the world. It's not the end of the world for high school kids.
I think we've talked about this enough on the podcast where we kind of know my stance. But, you know, I hope my famous line is that no one is committing to the transfer portal. You know, you still have to go to college in order to enter your name into said transfer portal.
You know, I think it's interesting that, you know, in today's the rise of the transfer portal, and I'm going to be interested to see if the NCAA tries to kind of curtail the, the unlimited transferring, because I think what's. What we're seeing in a lot of sports, not just baseball, but hoops and football and, and other sports as well, is that a lot of kids are entering into the transfer portal and then either staying in the transfer portal and don't have a place to go or ending up at the exact same level.
And I'm sure in some of those instances, it, you know, staying at the same level is getting out of a situation that maybe wasn't the best for you.
But I do think there's been a rise of people who want to leverage the transfer portal as a way for them to end up at a spot in which they thought they should have been coming out of high school. And I think that that's a, a fool's gold proposition and plan because there's so many, there's so many intangibles that have to go right for that to happen. You know, if you want to go start a Division 3 school and ultimately end up at a Division 1 school, you know, you're talking about having to be, you know, especially early, like you have to be freshman of the year or put up those types of numbers in that conference in order to, you know, sniff the ability of getting in the transfer portal and finding a spot.
You know, I was thinking about the other day, you know, we had two guys that, that played at the Division 1 level in the back half of their career.
And I, you know, I was, we were talking to, I was talking to one of our families that we work with and, you know, talking about the portal, and it wasn't a specific question they asked, but, you know, I think when you see, you know, it's kind of along the same lines as what we were just talking about with dual sport athletes like you. You saw all these guys that have gone from Division 1 or Division 3, Division 2, Division 1, some of the highest levels of Division 1. You know, it's like, well, if they can do it, I can do it. What you don't see is everything that has gone on over the course of the last three, four or five years, like, you know, Ryan Yerby and Chris Grohm, who pitched at San Francisco and Delaware after they left rpi, you know, they, they put in five years at RPI to get to that point. You know, Ryan, your view was pitcher of the year and went and pitched like he was not a Division 1 player. When he got to RPI, he was actually a walk on that. I told if you know, because I saw him once and I liked his velo and I really liked his break ball and he was wiring. He showed up on campus and was pretty good and we kept him. By the time he graduated, he had put on 35 pounds of muscle and was now 88 to 91. Could run it up around 93 and had a really good slider.
He didn't have that as a freshman. He couldn't get in the portal as a freshman and go pitch for Eric at San Francisco.
But the four, the four years that he put in at RPI of being in the weight room, being consistent with what he did and competing and pitching as many innings as he did got him to that point. And the same thing with Chris Groan. You know, he came in, he was like 160 pounds by the time he left. He was like 190, was an animal in the weight room, you know, was 86, 88 from the left side with a good change up and a serviceable break, serviceable breaking ball. But if you asked me and him after his freshman year, like, there's no way he would have said, like, yeah, I'm going to go pitch at the Division 1 level in the back half of this career. It's the work that they put in over that time, you know, and I think that we miss, you know, from the outside and not knowing what that kind of looks like. A lot of people look at it and it's like, well, if I just go and I'm really good At Division 3 level, I can transfer up. Like, no, man, you have so much time you have to put in in order to do so. And are there going to be a handful of outliers in that? Yes, there are, as always with everything.
But the overwhelming majority are not just going to be able to show up on a campus, hope that they're, you know, be good enough, start enough. You know, you're hitting.330 at bats isn't going to get you a sniff.
Hitting 380 and 120 at bats.
Yeah, a little bit of a different argument, you know, but if you're only going to go play 10 games and then be like, well, I can transfer up because I'm better than this level. Like, you only played 30 games.
Like, you have 60 at bats yet to 20 good enough yet. And I think that's a hard thing for a hard pill for people to swallow sometimes, you know, but it's not. It's also not the end of high school recruiting. It's still the lifeblood of recruiting. It's slowing everything down because no one really knows what the roster is going to look like at the back half of the year. And sure, maybe some programs are going to take fewer high school kids than they have in the past, but that doesn't mean that everyone's doing it.
It's not going to be like everyone's dipping into the transfer portal. Not everyone can dip into the transfer portal to do it. You know, so the high school, you know, is it going to make college baseball harder to get to? Yes, it is, but it's gonna. So it's gonna raise the floor, but it's not shutting down high school recruiting and ruining everything for kids at the high school level. Those kids that five, six years ago were, you know, bottom end of the roster. Take a chance on this guy. Take a flyer. Probably not doing that anymore because you don't, you don't have to. You have a little bit more.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: You.
[00:25:26] Speaker C: You have the accessibility to better players, especially with roster, you know, roster limits going down to 34, you're going to see better players at the Division 2 and 3 level. So those guys five, six years ago that were playing Division 3 baseball, that were fringe Division 3 guys, probably going to be playing Division 3 baseball. And that's just how it is. It's, you know, it's not, it's not a right to do this. It's a privilege to do. But it's not the transfer portal that, that, that is. That is causing all of this, all of these issues, I should say, from a recruiting standpoint.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just, it's. It's not. The people who, who cite the transfer portal as a big issue with high school recruiting are using it as an excuse because they don't under the. They don't understand how it's actually being used.
And they, they cite the things that support their evidence and like, oh, this particular program brought in 20 transfers. Okay, okay. Well, look at them. Previously, they probably did a lot of work in juco, which is really not much different than the transfer portal when you really think about it. It's just proven college baseball players that they choose to recruit.
But I mean, for me, at the end of the day, like, it's not the biggest hurdle to play college baseball. I think the biggest hurdle to play college baseball Is being good enough, like you need to be good enough. And that has, that has changed and I think we're going to get into that.
I think this is one of your musings as well. But like there's, it's just harder to play now. There's better players, there's more players that are good and it's not, it's not the biggest hurdle. If you were going to pinpoint it on one change that's happened in the last couple of years with college baseball and you say, what's the biggest impact to recruiting? The 34 man roster will have the biggest impact in recruiting short term.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: That's really, for me, like that will impact it because there's 1800 kids that used to be Division 1 players that are not Division 1 players anymore and those guys are going to go play somewhere. So that floor has risen significantly. But using the transfer portal as a crutcher, as an excuse doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You just need to understand that it exists.
But it doesn't really fundamentally change how you go through your recruiting prospect from a high school perspective.
You know, these, these really good high end Division 1 schools, they're still taking really good high school players. They're not not taking them, it's just that simple.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: No, I mean, no, they're not.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: They're going to go and they're going to every day. Yeah, they're going to go and they're going to find some guys in the portal that can help them win. Right. Guys either fill out their roster or fill a role. You know, you go get a bat because you feel like one of the freshmen might not be ready to play.
You know, you go find some bullpen arms and maybe go find a starter. But you know, fundamentally they're not going to be building their rosters just on the transfer portal there. The way I look at it, it's like free agency in baseball.
The New York Yankees don't go out and sign 25 free agents.
Right. The Boston Red Sox don't go out and sign 25 free agents. They go and they find guys that they think are going to move the needle, but they're still going to rel on their current roster. They're going to rely on their farm systems. They're going to leverage. Like it's not terribly different. It's just, it's just different.
That's all it is. It's just different.
[00:28:51] Speaker C: And we're past the point five years ago.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we're just past the point of it. Being an excuse at this point, we know how it works.
We know that teams are going to use it, but it doesn't fundamentally change.
Every single coach that we've had on that. We've talked to them about the transfer port on the podcast, and then other guys that we just speak to regularly, you know, from just conversations with different guys, because we're always trying to get a pulse of what's going on and how different people react and see it. And they're all still high school focused.
It's really that simple.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: So, all right, my second musing.
This is a hypothetical question that I'm going to pose, I'm going to answer, and then you can tell me if I'm an idiot or not.
[00:29:36] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Hypothetically, you can only pick one thing to do between these two things during the off season.
Spend your time in the weight room working on your body.
Your flexibility, your mobility, your strength. Just. Just your body.
[00:29:54] Speaker C: Right?
[00:29:55] Speaker B: You don't pick up a baseball, you don't pick up a bat, or you don't get to use the gym.
And all you do is skill work. You work on your swing, you work on your ground balls, all that kind of stuff. If you could only pick one, what would you do?
And for me, it's a simple answer.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: You.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: You hammer the weight room and you work on the skill stuff. After the off season, if you only could choose, like. Right. Obviously, Ideally, you do both. But I think that the reason I posed this question, something to talk about, is that I think that people underestimate how important the gym is, how important getting after in the weight room is. And I think that for 95% of high school kids, getting strong, getting fast, getting mobile is the lowest hanging fruit for you to put yourself in a position to be a recruitable baseball player. It's not adjusting your approach angle in your swing or engaging your interior core, latissimus dorsi in your mechanics. Right? Like there's a place for that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, for me, if you had to choose one, you go and you get as strong and as fast and as mobile as you can possibly get.
Then you figure out the skill stuff later.
[00:31:17] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I don't think that that's.
I don't think you're an idiot for that.
It's the lowest hanging fruit for, for younger players, you know, and I, I don't think that people think about it at the high level of, of the coaching aspect. Right? Like one, it's. We've talked about it in. You Know your body is your billboard, right? Like if you look physical enough and the things it is that coaches are looking for, it's going to open some doors or at least get people to watch and see what you're capable of doing.
I think one of the things that get it's lost on kids and families, especially for younger kids, is when you're going to college. Like, yes, we've talked about it ad nauseam on here, about how much you're going to be in the weight room and how much, you know, the weight room has changed over the last 10, 5, 10, 15 years in baseball in general, let alone college baseball, and how much more physical guys are.
But the, the reason as to why, right? Like you're going to play high school baseball. Like let's say you're playing in, in the state of New York, you're going to start tryouts in March.
So maybe you're coming off of hoops or wrestling, whatever, and then you're jumping right into baseball season, but you're going to go March, April, May.
For high school, you're going right into summer ball, June, July, August, probably into fall ball, September, October. That's eight months of playing baseball.
It's hard on your body. Like you're not playing nine inning games, but you're playing seven inning games, you're playing double headers, you're doing a lot, your body starts to break down.
And one of the reasons that college baseball, and why college baseball coaches and every single one who comes on our podcast talks about this is because over the course of a 40, 52, 56 game season, depending on where you're playing in the college realm, your body will break down a lot faster if you're not in good physical shape.
It's not just losing weight, it's the ability to stay in your legs. On a ground ball in the ninth inning of game two of a doubleheader on Sunday because the Saturday game got washed and being able to make the throw across the diamond to get the out, right, like that's the weight room. It's being able to stay behind a baseball and backside it to the right side into the gap for a double to drive in some runs instead of just having nothing behind it and flaring because we don't take the weight room serious and we're not strong enough.
You know, it's those types of things. It's being able to sustain, sustain your velo through the course of a game and in start 14 because you've started every weekend, being able to not be 79 to 81 in start 14, when you were 87, 88 in start one. Because your body is just broken down over the course of the year because you don't want to take the weight room seriously.
And it's things like that that I don't think kids take seriously enough to kind of say, like, this can put me over the edge of other people. Like, yes. Is it. Will you physically look better? Will it help your game improve? Absolutely, it will. But it's those things that show up where it's like, hey, that's why you did that.
That's why you were squatting and lifting four days a week. Because now your legs aren't breaking down in the back half a double header, and you can't leg out a double or you can't stay in your legs on that ground ball to throw it across the diamond and get the out.
And that's where it shows up. And I think that, you know, it's little things like that where, like, it doesn't seem like much at the time, but that's where you're kind of giving those things away and not giving yourself the opportunity to be good.
And that could be the difference between you getting recruited to a school that you really like and not getting recruited or ending up at a lower level.
And, you know, I think skill acquisition nowadays is, is. Is relatively.
Is easier than it was. The access to being able to do that stuff is a lot easier than it was 10, 15 years ago or even when you and I were growing up in this game where, you know, if I had four months to just go left, I could probably take two weeks and go to a facility and crank up the hack attack and take a ton of swings to shake the rust off and feel pretty good about myself. Whereas when we were growing up, that wasn't really a thing. Right. Like, how many facilities were there in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where you could be.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Like, hey, I'm gonna go. I still don't think there is one.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: Right. I mean, there was. There was two in Albany, you know, and it wasn't like you just go in there and crank up a hackathon. Like, you know, we had the old Iron Mike yellow ball, and then it would reset and the ball would come down and the iron mic arm would circle back around and do it again. Right. You know, nowadays you can show up at some of these places and like, yo, here's a junior hack fired up and hit breaking balls and curtain sliders and change ups and whatever you want. Angle fastballs in on your hand. Whatever you can do where, you know, the access to do that is, is a lot easier now than it's ever been. So I second your, your musing that I think the weight room is, you know, aside from the obvious of like it's going to increase your game, it's going to, you know, make you stronger and help you in a lot of different things. I think that it shows up in little spots where you might not necessarily think that could put you over the edge, you know, not only from a recruitment standpoint, but when you get the college standpoint. Because you're going to have to fall in love with the weight room when you get there.
Correct.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Give me your music number. Yeah, you're using number two here, Coach.
[00:37:07] Speaker C: It came back to me.
The second one is that college baseball is harder to play than it's ever been.
The access to playing college baseball, I guess. Is that the right term I should use?
Yeah, the ability, the access, the, the, you know, the offer, whatever. It's harder than it's ever been.
You know, we talked about it briefly on my first musing but you know, with, with Division 1 rosters going to 34, that's 1800 kids that are now no longer playing Division 1 baseball, you know, are there going to be more than 34 guys on fall rosters? Yes, until they change a rule. Yeah, there are. So there's going to be programs out there that are rolling in 40, 50, 60 guys and whacking it down to 34, which is going to bloat the transfer portal that we talked about on the front end.
But it's going to be harder to play than it than it has in recent years.
You're going to have 34 man rosters come December one, you know, and that's just at the Division One level. Division. Now, while Division Two and Division Three don't have roster limits per se, I do know of a large swath of schools that kind of have self imposed roster limits based off of, you know, budgets and things of that nature where like, yeah, like I know we don't have roster limits, but we really only carry 30. Like we're only allowed to carry 35.
Really. Because that's what we're budgeted for from a school perspective.
And then you're going to have coaches out there that, you know, they like having smaller rosters. Right. Like, you know, just as much as you have guys at Division 2 and 3 level that like having large rosters and maybe having JV teams.
And I think there's a place for that.
There are school programs and coaches out there that don't like having large rosters, they like having smaller ones, you know, so I think in that regard it kind of does come out in the wash. But at the end of the day that the ability to be able to play college baseball is harder than it's ever been because that number crunch at the top means there's a trickle down effect into Division 2 and Division 3 and into Junior college baseball. So the floor now has been raised across all three divisions.
So those guys that, you know, used to be back end roster guys at the Division 1 level are now playing at the Division 2 and Division 3 level.
And those guys that were back end Division 2 roster guys are junior college, Division 3 guys and those back end Division 3 guys, you know, some junior college maybe not even getting offers extended to them to play college baseball.
And that's just how it is. It's, it's the reality of the situation.
It's, you know, it's not unfair. You know, life isn't fair. But this is, this is what this looks like. And you can pull the thread on how we got here and all this other stuff. Like we had bloated rosters because of COVID and then we had the house settlement that cut us down to 34, you know, and you have nil and revenue share and full scholarships. And you know, when all this comes into play, you know, you can't have 50 man rosters and pay everyone full scholarships. It's just, it's not financially sustainable for the institution. And make no bones about it, the institution's still going to make money. Like they're, they're going to make their money, you know, so like that means rosters are going to get whacked. And it wasn't just baseball. It's across every single sport, right? Like there were very few sports that actually saw increases.
Pretty much every one of them saw a decrease in their roster size. So it's not just baseball, but this is, this is what it is. So it's caused, you know, the cause of all of this has become that the college baseball has become less accessible for high school kids. It's not the portal, it's not the, you know, it doesn't mean that it's not a reality for kids. It just means that you have to be good enough to play college baseball now. And that's what it is. And I think that, you know, if you're on the fence about it or you don't know where you fit, like go watch college baseball, don't just watch on ESPN plus, show up to a real live, actual game and see what it looks like, See where you think you might fit in. And you know, I don't subscribe. I've said this on here before and it might ruffle some feathers. Like I don't subscribe to the thing. Like, if you want to bad enough, like there's a program for you out there. Like, man, if you're 67 to 72 on the fastball, many places for you, if any at all.
That's just the reality.
If you can't hit the ball out of the infield, not many places for you.
Just because you're good in your town doesn't mean that you can play at the collegiate level. And again, to do my point earlier about the parent, the specialization like you're now, when you enter into playing college baseball, you're competing with everyone nationally, right? Like a good portion of, of Division 1 is recruiting nationally.
You know, maybe not necessarily, you know, a good portion of Division 2, but a good portion of Division 3 is recruiting nationally because of the academics you're going to get. You can go look across schools in the Liberty League and the NESCAC in the Centennial Conference, like they're pulling dudes from all over this country.
So, like, you have to be good nationally in order to play in college now. And that's just the reality when you're talking about less than, you know, 8% of kids that are going to go play college baseball. It ain't just your town, it ain't just your city, ain't just your state. It's, it's national and you have to be in, that is seven and a half, 8% to be able to go play. And if you're not, unfortunately, you're going to be on the outside looking in. That doesn't mean there's no options, right? Like, you can still go play junior college baseball. You play NAI baseball. And there's other options out there too. You can go to junior college, develop for two years and go play Division 1, 2, 3 baseball. That's still an option. And I implore people to not look down their nose on it because it's good baseball.
But my point is it's harder than it's ever been, which means you're going to have to put in more time on your end in order to be able to play college baseball. And not to say you have to get specific and specialize in it because you can still be good and play other sports. You're going to pick up other athletic abilities like we just talked about. But you're going to have to put in your time from a baseball standpoint. You can't just do the bare minimum and think that that's going to get you recruited nowadays.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just the barrier to entry is higher.
It's a good thing for college baseball.
And I don't really have a ton more to add there. I think the only thing I'll add and it'll kind of parlay into what I'm my third and final musing. But having a plan and being educated on this process and being educated on the college baseball landscape is. It's paramount because there's a lot of people who chase their tails going through this because they don't understand the difficulty, they don't understand the level of play, they don't understand what type of talent and ability you need to be able to showcase in the success you need to have at the high school level in order to even have a shot at playing college baseball. And, yeah, I think that I'll try to spin. I'll try to hit this from a couple different angles, but kind of what I'm really driving at here is parents who are successful, families who are successful in this process, they don't project their perceived reality into the recruiting process.
What I mean by that is that the parents in the families who go through this process and are successful, they're willing to look in the mirror and understand that they don't know what they don't know and they're okay with not having all the answers. They don't have this.
They're not projecting out what they think this all should be.
[00:45:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:45:19] Speaker B: The parents and the players who struggle with this is. They have this notion that this is where I belong. I'm a Division 1 player. I'm too good for Division 3. Not really even knowing what a good Division 3 player looks like or what, what it's required to play at the various tiers of Division 1 schools that there are, you know, so some of it, I think, is a lack of education. Some of it, I think is hubris and ego getting in the way.
But to your point, there's, there's, you know, this is a national recruiting landscape for the vast majority of college sports, not just baseball.
And being good in your specific town, being the. The best player on your high school team doesn't necessarily qualify you to be a college baseball player. It's a great place to start and it's kind of a requirement, but it doesn't necessarily mean that, well, if you're an all county player and, you know, name whatever county, that doesn't mean that you're a Division 1 player. It just means that you were good against your local competition. And that's kind of a prerequisite to this.
But my, in, in my experience, and I know you've experienced the same thing, I experienced this as a coach and I've experienced this as somebody who does what we do now, that the, the best families to work with are the ones that don't come in with any preconceived notions of how this is going to play out. They have goals, they have targets, but they're willing to hear information, they're willing to give feedback. They're bought into trying to do what's best for their son. They're bought into providing the resources that are required for them to continue to develop in order to meet some of those goals.
The families that struggle, or the families probably more specifically to say that are more difficult, are the ones who come in thinking they kind of already have it solved.
And that's just a really bad recipe for this.
And I, I implore the listeners to this, that if you're, if you're a parent of a kid who has aspirations of playing college baseball is, don't, don't think you have it all figured out. Don't think that just because somebody on your son's team is a Division 1 player and you think that they're as good as they are, it doesn't mean that your son's a Division 1 player. Maybe they are, right? But you, you kind of got to let the baseball world tell you where you fit and sometimes it lines up exactly with what you're hoping for.
Other times, that information that you get isn't going to align with how you perceive the recruiting process to play out and the people who receive that information that differs from their opinion and go, okay, well, what can I do to get in that conversation? They're, they do good, they figure this process out, they find a really good home, they go and they're successful in the classroom, they're successful on the field. The families who take that information and go, well, everybody else is wrong.
That leads to harder conversations and it kind of gives the player an out to not want to go through this, which I think is a shame, but it's, it's not uncommon.
And the reason I wanted to bring it up because I think it's such an important part of this is that you take in information that provides you a path forward and you have to be able to take that feedback, whether it's good, bad, and use it to either continue to improve if that news is good, if you think you're a Division 1 player and you're getting some interest from Division 1 schools, awesome. You got to keep going. But it's just as important to get that feedback and go, hey man, you're not there.
Okay, well what do we do now?
Well, let's get to work.
Let's put together a plan to help you potentially reach your goals. But also let's plan for, hey, if you don't quite get there, like, there's still going to be some places that could be a really good fit for you.
So for me, I just, it pains me to see this happen and you know, get phone calls from folks and have people reach out really late in the process in trying to sort this all out. And a lot of it is due to like just, it's really just like a lack of education and a stubbornness in trying to think that the baseball world should bend to your, how you perceive it versus understanding that the baseball world doesn't owe anybody anything.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: Never has, never will.
I also think too, like, it's foreign.
I've lost my train of thought twice.
Oh, the market sets your value in this, which I think is something that gets lost on, on families who are going through this process. Like it doesn't, it doesn't matter what you think of your son. It doesn't matter if you're a player, what you think of yourself.
Like, does it in the grand scheme of things? Yes, it does. Like I don't, I'm not trying to diminish that in today's world. That said, because you think you should play at Miami doesn't mean that you are going to play at Miami.
You might be a Division 3 baseball player and you like, the market tells you where you're at, right? So if, if you're only being recruited by Division 3 baseball schools, the high likelihood is, is that you're a high end Division 3 baseball player who's probably fringy Division 1. But you, you might be lacking some things and is there some ability for you to make the jump? Yeah, there is.
But you know, if, if only you've only had conversations with, I say only like let's say you had conversations with six Division 3 schools that are really good and zero conversations with Division 1 schools. You're not a Division 1 player.
They've seen you play.
They've decided right now that you're not a guy for Them and you ha. Like, you have to take that information and digest it and figure out what your next move is going to be. And I think that like it's, you don't get to dictate the terms of the recruitment, which is why we always talk about everyone's recruitment process is different. And you know, every family we talk about like, don't compare yourself to everyone else. Everyone's process is different. Some is going to be short, some's long. You know, everyone is completely different. But a lot of it is because you don't get to dictate the terms.
Like, the terms are going to be dictated to you in this. And we talked about this too, where like there's give and take in this situation where you know, you're getting recruited. Like, you do have the ability to find out if you're getting into school earlier than everyone else. You do have the ability to, to get financial aid packages or merit scholarship package before anyone else even applies to the school.
You know, so like, there are some things that you use a lot of information that you get before anyone else that is a regular student that's applying to that school.
You know, so there, there's some give and take, like, yeah, man, like you can, you don't get to dictate the terms of this, but at the same time you can know in August that you're into this school and you're getting $40,000 in merit scholarship money and that could be affordable for your family where, you know, you don't have that otherwise without, without baseball, you know. So I think that those, those are some things that you just kind of got to keep in mind as you go through this like, and bare minimum, try to educate yourself. You know, that's why we do this podcast. It's why we have, you know, the things it is that, that we offer, you know, our online academy and you know, our one on one consulting and stuff that we do with families. But you know, a large part of it is being able to educate these families through this process so that they, you know, they can seamlessly and get through it as seamlessly as possible. We try to mitigate risk at every turn, but, you know, there's always risk involved. It's an ever evolving market and you know, if you're going to go into a blind thing, you got to figure it out. You're probably going to end up on the backside of it wishing that you had a little bit more education and did a little bit more research.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Well said, Coach Glass. It's wonderful. Piggybacking there. You've got one more amusing that we need.
[00:53:30] Speaker C: My last one.
Last one. Is that just because you have or excuse me, just because you are good at baseball and I this, we'll go on a little bit of a, we'll pull some threads on this for a couple minutes. But my initial statement is going to be just because you're good at baseball does not mean that you're going to be able to get into any college in the country.
And I say this because we work with a lot of families who are very interested in the high academic world. Right?
Just because you're good at playing baseball and are getting recruited does not mean that it's automatic entry into high end academic institutions in this country and specifically for baseball.
Can it help? Absolutely it can.
But you still have to have the requisite grades that are, that are going to make you competitive in the admissions process at that school. Like, you know, you're. And I think the two easiest ones to draw this comparison to are, you know, MIT at the Division 3 level, TC and I've seen it for years, right? Like I've known Todd Carroll, who's the recording coordinator at MIT for a very long time, just like you have.
I've seen TC recruit. I know what it looks like.
He can't just go to like, he can't just find really good players that he really likes and be like, yeah, no, we really like him. We can get an mit.
You have to be good enough to get into MIT more or less on your own in order for them to recruit you.
Just because you have a 3, 8 and a 1300 SAT and you're really good at baseball doesn't mean that you're going to get into MIT and they're going to like you can play there.
And same thing at division one level. You can't have a 3, 0 GPA and 1100 SAT and think that you're getting into Harvard because you're good at baseball.
And I think that sometimes there's this misconception that like, well, he's good enough so you'll be able to play anywhere. Like that's not the case. Like if you want to go play high end academic baseball, you need to have the requisite grades that are going to make you competitive in the admissions process. And they vary across the board, right? Like not every academic school is the same. Some have higher standards than others. And to be completely frank with you, a lot of them hold the line on those standards. Like a lot of those higher end academic institutions are going to hold the line where if you're, you know, 92 unweighted and they only allow 93 unweighted in, in early. In their, their early read process, they'll hold the line on it.
And, you know, so it's, it's information to know and digest and at least have in the back of your mind, like, hey, if I want to go play at. In the Nescac, like, you need to have competitive grades to go play in the Nescac. You can't just be a good baseball player and think it's going to happen.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: 100%. I think the inverse of that is true as well, because I think sometimes we run into the exact opposite, which is you get, you get people who are exceptional students and they think, well, I can get in and I want to play baseball, so I get to play baseball. And that's also not the case because oddly enough, these coaches are looking at, are you good enough to play baseball?
And then do you have the great.
So both of those scenarios and exactly what you talked about, like, you nailed it. Like, you're 100% right. Like, these guys don't have a magic bullet where they're just sneaking guys in the back door. These admissions process. Like, if you want to go play at Yale, like, there's a certain bare minimum that you have to get to academically or else Coach Woja can't recruit you. But at the same time, you might meet that academic standard. But that doesn't mean that Coach Woj is going to recruit you at Yale or Coach Barretti is going to recruit you at Columbia. Like, you still need to be good enough to pitch or play for Columbia, not just have the grades. Like, you have to be the total package. You have to have the baseball skills that are good enough to be able to play at some of those schools.
But to your point, you can't get a 27 ACT with a 35 and 3, you know, three honors courses and one AP and think that you're going to get into Yale because you want to go to Yale, like, it's not happening.
Brian Hamm and Chris Woads, they can't do anything for you.
[00:57:59] Speaker C: Right?
[00:57:59] Speaker B: You could throw 100, but if they can't get you in, it doesn't matter.
[00:58:05] Speaker C: No. And I do think that there are, like, there's plenty of schools out there, and it's not to diminish them in any standpoint, but there are schools out there where marginal grades and being good baseball player are going to move the needle for you, be able to get into college, you know, but again, going back to my last one about college baseball being harder and more accessible. Like the grade, the grade stuff matters, you know, they're very there. There are fewer and fewer colleges nowadays where you can just be a qualifier and show up on campus and be able to play. Like you're going to have to have some semblance of an academic, of good academic standing in order to be able to get into those schools. The other side of it too, is that it generally, you know, not every Division 1 school is going to have full scholarships. As we've talked about.
There are no scholarships at the Division 3 level. You, you can command more merit scholarship money in that process with having better grades and you know, that lowers the cost of tuition and does a lot of things that, that can help you out in the process.
And you know, I, I just think that, you know, we think there's that age old adage of, you know, well, if you're good enough, they'll find you. Like, yeah, sure, like, or, you know, he's good enough, he could play anywhere. Like that's not the case, you know, especially if you want to play in the higher academic world. Like you've got to have the grades in order to do it and you know, you're going to have to put forward, put forth effort in the classroom. And that's just how it is because it, you know, he still to my guys when I was at rpa, like, you're going to get your ass kicked in the classroom. It's just, it's the reality of what this school is like, you know, and you have to really be able to, to focus and plan your time and have good time management in order to be able to handle the academics and the baseball side of things. Because I'm going to throw a lot at you on the baseball side too, you know, so it's, there's more, there's way more that goes into it than just being good at baseball or being a good student. Like you got to be both if you want to play at, at those levels. You want to play in the Nescak, you want to play in the Liberty League, you want to play in the new Mac or the Centennial Conference or the Patriot League or the Ivy League. Like, you know, they're not going to be able to recruit you if you don't have the grades. To be able to get in the.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: Academic world is a fickle beast.
Fickle beast.
I think the only other thing that I'll add is one final quick musing is that we talk about the difficulty level of playing college baseball. We talk about the importance of the gym.
You know, we talk about what it looks like to be a college baseball player.
I implore families and players to go and watch college baseball.
So much of your learning curve, so much of your understanding can be.
The knowledge gap can be closed by spending some time watching college baseball, whether it's on television, going to a local game, Division one, two, three, you start to understand why that floor has risen. You start to see what the baseline requirements are of a player that's going to, you know, be able to play college baseball.
It's the best education you can get to understand the landscape of college baseball currently. And I don't think enough people do it.
I think part of it is it's easier not to.
I think the other part of it is that sometimes people don't want to know what they need to know because it's easier to just walk through life thinking things are the way that you want them to be. And sometimes when you show up at one of those games, it's, you know, oh, geez, I, I thought I was good enough to play in Maryland.
Well, I'm not, you know, and that can be a gut punch, but it doesn't mean that you can't play somewhere else. It's just, you know, the barrier to entry at some of these schools is way higher than what people think it is.
So going to see college baseball, I think is. Is a. An incredibly valuable thing that anybody who's interested in playing college baseball can do.
[01:02:16] Speaker C: I concur. Dr.
[01:02:18] Speaker B: Anything else you'd like to add here, Coach Glass?
[01:02:20] Speaker C: There's not.
[01:02:22] Speaker B: All right, well, I hope you enjoyed our musings as we move into a new calendar year.
Tune in next week. We'll have some more good stuff to talk about. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @MDbaseball. If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week.
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