Latest / Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball / Episode 151: Top 5 College Baseball Recruiting Tips for the 2027 Class

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Episode 151: Top 5 College Baseball Recruiting Tips for the 2027 Class · Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball

• 0:02
  Speaker A: Hey, parents and coaches, are your kids using the right glove? The most important skill for youth athletes to learn is how to play proper catch. The problem is most youth gloves are made with bad leather and are too big for small hands. They actually make it harder to play catch. That's why former Major League Baseball shortstop Kevin Smith created Cali Gloves. Cali gloves are crafted from 100% Japanese kip leather and are the perfect size for kids. All Cali gloves come with palm slits, finger loops and elastic wrist lacing that encourage proper hand placement. The right closing patterns and give kids more confidence to go make plays. Cali gloves even allow parents to break in the glove without stretching out the fit. It's the glove Kevin wishes he had growing up and the glove all his teammates want for their kids. Visit caligloves.com to learn more and help your kids play better catch. Cali Gloves K a l I gloves.com.
• 1:11
  Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of the Dugout Dish podcast. I'm Andy Kira Kitties, joined by my Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing today? Great.
• 1:19
  Speaker C: How are you?
• 1:20
  Speaker B: Good. We're going to, we're going to provide some, some tips in order of our deemed importance here for the 2027 class. You know, we're, we're creeping up on the end of January, early February here, and I think it's time for some folks to prioritize. There's some stuff that we think is important. We stuff that we think that people should be focused on and, and try to tackle here over the coming months. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to try to prioritize some stuff and give some, some people and some families in the 2027 class some stuff to think about. You ready to rock?
• 2:01
  Speaker C: Ready.
• 2:02
  Speaker B: All right. Number one, we're all about honesty here. Those of you who listen, we try to speak very openly and transparent. I think the number one most important thing that a 2027 can do right now is get with someone, a collection of folks who is able to provide you a transparent and honest assessment of your current skills as well as your academic standing to drive a strategy, which we'll talk about later for what your exposure and what your target list is going to look like. For me, this is the one that can, you can break some hearts a little bit here, but I think it takes, I think it takes a pretty clear understanding of the current landscape from a talent perspective, what it takes to play college baseball. The, the expectations which we, we've talked about pretty frequently, and we've talked about it with a lot of coaches that we've had on here, but understanding the talent levels, understanding the overall fit for a kid, and I think it really starts with understanding where they're at from a skill set perspective. And for me, it's. This is two pronged. It's one, setting the stage for what, Tom, you're going to target in the future, what you're going to look to do from an outreach perspective, what you're going to do from a summer planning perspective, which we'll get into later. But I also think a big part of this is it helps you plan what the next six or seven months are going to look like from a development perspective. You got to kind of have a baseline. So, you know, a lot of guys are several months into their off season where they should be lifting and throwing and hitting and doing all the things that we talk about that are. That are incredibly important for your development. Um, but I think getting with someone who has some experience, understands the landscape, understands the different levels of play, the levels within the different divisions, the differentiating between different programs and what those programs require and what those programs look for. But I think it all starts with that baseline assessment. And I think you have to be, to a certain extent, kind of brutally honest here with. With where you fit. And I think that's the part of this process that can get a little bit uncomfortable, is that you have to have that conversation that may not align.
• 4:24
  Speaker C: With.
• 4:26
  Speaker B: Your perceived notions of. Of where you fit in this process. But I think it's really, really important for a lot of reasons. Sure.
• 4:34
  Speaker C: You know, I. It's supposed to be kind of uncomfortable. Right. Like, I. I think when you're 15, 16, 17 years old, you have. I'm not going to call them delusions of grandeur, but you. Your world view isn't going to sync up with reality from a baseball perspective. Right. You're going to have, you know, I mean, shoot, I thought I was going to play at South Carolina when I was 16 years old. Unbeknownst to me, they had already committed a thousand people in that class. But I had no shot of playing at South Carolina coming out of high school. And I think it's great to be able to dream of those things, make those goals, try to achieve them. But understand that there's. The college baseball landscape is vast, and there's a lot of places where you can land to play college baseball. And understanding where you fit in can actually give you a leg up on your recruitment process, right? If you're not willing to have that conversation or people aren't willing to tell you where it is that you fit in, you're going to waste a lot of time chasing down a bunch of dead ends that are literally going to get you nowhere because you don't fit at that level. You don't fit at that school. You don't have the academics to get into that school, whatever it might be. And there's a plethora of issues out there that you could be facing and you're beating your head against the wall wondering why coaches aren't responding and why this doesn't happen. It's like, well, has anyone told you where you actually fit? Because you just Keep emailing Vandy, LSU, SC and Duke and you don't have the grades for, for half of them and you can't play at that level, right? So like, what's the point of continuing to email those people if you're, if you can never play there? So I think it's, it's, it's kind of made to be a little bit uncomfortable and it's set up for you to be able to kind of start to handle those conversations as you get older. And it's okay that it's uncomfortable that, you know, I, the truth doesn't have to hurt, right? But the truth is the truth and you can either sit there and lie to yourself or have people, you know, tell you half truth that, yeah, you know, if you do this, I think you can get there like, no, tell me where, tell, tell someone where they are now. And this is what it takes to get to this level. You might never end up in the ACC or the sec, but you might end up at a mid major division one or a very high end Division two or a super high end academic Division three or even a really, really good Division three school, right. And play, you know, and I think it gets a little twisted sometimes. You get the Division 2 and 3, like you could be a Northeast team and legitimately compete nationally and, and talk about going to the World Series and talk about hosting super regionals and doing those things in the Northeast where, you know, let's face that at the Division 1 level, you and I can probably go back and count on our hands the number of times a Northeast team has hosted a regional or a super regional in the last decade. You know, so I, I think the honest assessment and being able to, to legitimately a look in the mirror, but B, take the feedback because it's not, it's not negative. It's the reality in which is going to guide your process moving forward. Right. Because again, you, if, if you're not going to be told the truth or you're not going to believe it or do these things, you're, you're, you're likely to beat your head against a wall and, and go down a bunch of paths that have zero. There's nothing at the end of that path. Right. There's no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. You're, you're just going to continually waste time doing this and then get super frustrated on the back end. Be like, well, I, I don't want to do this anymore because you've exhausted a lot of your energy going down routes that aren't going to be very fruitful for you when it comes to college baseball. So I, I think that it's, it's necessary, it is something that you need to hear and I think it needs to come from, you know, people that you trust. Right. It could be people like us that do what we do, you know, but coaches that you trust, people have seen it, but you have to at some point put your trust in somebody who has legitimate credentials for one. But two has your best interest in mind too. Right. Like, you know, people call us and talk about stuff. It's, you know, we tell them the truth because it's, it's what we're going to do. It doesn't, it doesn't behoove us to lie to you and tell you that we think that you can play in the SEC when you can't play Division 1 baseball. It's not going to end well. Right. Like we're, we're going to tell you the truth and you need to find people who can do that for you so that you can really start to shape your process and what that looks like moving forward so you're not wasting time on emails and reach out and contacts, getting frustrated that no one's answering and going to showcases and camps and clinics all over the country that trying to get in front of these coaches at programs that you can't play at and just wasting money and be more targeted in your approach and the schools that you can play at and the schools that you can get into academically, what aligns with what you want to do from a student athlete perspective, what do you want out of your college experience? Those types of things that really start to matter at the end of the day where you can find the right fit so that you make the right decision for four years or five.
• 10:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I don't have a ton more to add there. I think the only kind of soft landing for some folks with this conversation is that it's not the end of the road, right? This, this evaluation, this in the moment assessment of where you stand, it's incredibly informative on what you, you, where you are right now and where you may fit in the college baseball landscape at this moment. But guys get better if they work. Guys get better if they get in the weight room. Guys get better if they stick to their throne program and they pay attention to their sleep and their nutrition. And a lot can happen in six or seven months. We've seen it happen with plenty of guys where we have that conversation with them this time of year and it's like, hey, this is where we think you fit. These are the type of schools that if nothing changes that we're going to focus our time and energy on because this is where you fit academically, this is where you fit from a talent perspective. This is the feedback we've gotten from coaches. Fast forward six months, that kid decides to get after it and all of a sudden I'll use a pitching example just because it's a little bit more quantifiable. But you know, the right handed pitcher who was 84, you know, sitting 84, 85, who's probably, you know, a legitimate Division 3 player and you know, somebody who probably needs to focus most of their time there will all of a sudden you get to June and he's 87, 88. Well, yeah, that conversation changes a little bit. You know, there's some schools that become more feasible at that point and you know, that's a part of this too. So this, this honest assessment up front can be a reality check for some folks but it also can be the motivating factor for them to get, get their button gear and, and really focused on the things that might move the needle form because you know, the reality is, is that for most 20, 27, the bulk of your recruiting and your evaluation period is going to happen June, July and August of this coming year. So you've got four or five, six months before coaches are really going to spend a lot of time getting out there to see you. So but yeah, it starts there. If you, if you can't get that part right and you don't have the correct information on where you fit, all the other pieces of this, specifically number four and number five that we're going to talk about become a little bit fuzzy. It gets muddy when you're trying to put Together a plan when you're starting to pull together a target list is if you don't have that grounded information on. Here are the schools that I fit at. Here are the schools that if I get a little bit better I might have a shot at. If you don't have good information there, the rest of it kind of falls apart.
• 12:41
  Speaker C: I concur.
• 12:42
  Speaker B: Doctor number two and we hammer this all the time. It is the lowest hanging fruit for every single high school kid who's trying to play college baseball is you have to be hammer in the weight room and you have to be paying attention to your, your nutrition. Those two things move the needle. You don't. If you don't believe us, go follow Eric Cressy on Twitter. Talks about it all the time that everybody's dialed into throwing programs and yes, absolutely, those are incredibly important. But you want to throw harder, get stronger, put on weight. It's that simple. Like if you do that and don't do anything else, you'll throw harder. You want to get faster, get stronger, put on weight, move better. And these are the things that move the needle for college coaches. I'm going to throw a couple, I'm going to throw a couple stats out there. We've been doing a little behind the scenes study on size and weight analysis for the Division 1 level and we're expanding it to Division 2 and Division 3. Keep an eye out on the, on the socials for some stuff that'll be coming out here in the coming weeks. But the interwebs just wrap your head around some of this stuff. Coach Glass, this is across Division 1, right. So you're looking at 300 plus schools. This is all conferences. So you've got everything from the SEC to you know, the NEC to the Summit Conference. So you've got all these varying levels of Division 1. So here's the average weight across Division 1 baseball, 197 pounds. It's the average weight of a player on a Division 1 roster right now. Catchers 200 pounds. Infielders 195 pounds. Left handed pitchers 198 pounds. Right handed pitchers 202 pounds. Outfielders 193. That tells me that you, you got to be physical to play this game at this point. Like it's pretty simple. A couple other interesting stats that I pulled up. So if you're a right handed pitcher, 76% of right handed pitchers at the Division 1 level weigh 190 pounds or more. 70% of Division 1 infielders weigh 185 pounds. Or more. 80% of catchers weigh 190 pounds or more.
• 15:01
  Speaker C: Oh yeah, I was over that.
• 15:04
  Speaker B: 70% of left handed pitchers weigh 190 pounds or more. So if you want to put yourself in that conversation, and my expectation is that when we do this for Division 2 and Division 3 is that the gap isn't from a physical perspective, isn't going to be crazy. You're not going to see the average weight at division three be 180 pounds. I mean my hypothesis might be wrong. For those of you who have, have listened, I do have a little bit of a background in these types of topics, but we'll, we'll see if my hypothesis is proved true. But you know, when you break some of this stuff down, right, And I'll throw a couple other things at you just to give you a feel for like kind of what the top end looks like. So the average catcher in the ACC is 6 foot and a half 200 pounds. Infielders, 6 foot 1, 198. Left handed pitchers, a shade over 6 foot 2, 203 pounds. Outfielder, 6 foot 1, 196 right handed pitchers, almost 6 foot 3, 206 pounds. I'll give you the SEC real quickly just to kind of frame this all up for, for the listeners here. Average catcher in the SEC is 6 foot 1, 206 pounds. Infielders, 6 foot 1, 200 pounds. Left handed pitchers, 6 foot 2, 207 pounds. Outfielders, 6 foot 1, 201 pounds. Right handed pitchers. We're looking at 6 foot 3, 209 pounds. That's just your average dude running around in the SEC. Big boys, big physical boys. And yes, is there a trend, like if you look at the conference rpi, is there a downward trend in the average height, average height weight combination across those conferences? Yes. But as you can see from the averages across Division 1 baseball, it's not, it's not a massively different situation if you break it down height weight and you look at some of the distributions. You know, it's pretty clear that the Power 4 conferences have a little bit of an advantage from a height weight perspective. But there's also some other conferences that sneak up into that conversation. So we'll get into that a later date. But what I'm trying to get at is that you've got time to continue to get strong. That doesn't stop when you start your high school season. It doesn't stop in the summer that if you really want to get in the mix, you got to be Strong. You got to be physical. That is, it's, it's kind of a, it's kind of the bare minimum these days. Your skill and the skill acquisition and stuff like coaches can teach you that you can do that with a lot of reps. But being physically capable enough to compete at that level comes down to size and strength.
• 18:02
  Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's, we've talked about it quite a bit. We've had a bunch of people on, talk about it. Easiest thing for younger kids to be able to do to up their game. But I think it's, it's obvious where most people are going to have to be at least have their foot in the door right there. There's. And it can be as easy as some of these coaches showing up and just being like, yeah, I don't think he's going to be physical enough. And that could be something that gets you crossed off of lists. But you have to know that like you listen, if you listen to this enough, you have to know that at this point in time that not being physical enough can be a deterrent or a, a detriment for you to end up at a certain program. But I also think, you know, it's, it's like anything else, right? There's, there's averages that said, if you're going to be, you know, what was the infield there? 61 1, 85? Is that what it was?
• 19:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. Infield average is £195 across Division One base.
• 19:10
  Speaker C: Sorry, £195 doesn't mean that you can't play at 185 or get recruited. Right. But if you're going to be someone who is 165 pounds, you need to do some elite stuff that is going to make up for your lack of physicality to play at that level. Right. Like you're going to have to be able to defend at a super high rate. You're going to have to be able to run, you're going to have to be able to handle the bat because the reality is you're, you're like, you're not likely to drive a lot of balls out of the yard or all over it, right. Like you're going to run into a couple doubles here and there, but for the most part you are going to be a singles guy and you're going to be asked about a lot whether or not anyone wants to admit that people still. But in this game, that's how you might end up there where you can bunt, you can handle the bat, you're on the barrel, but you're going to have to do those elite, you're going to have to do those things at an elite level to wash away the lack of physicality that you currently have. And by the way, you're going to be asked to put on weight when you get there too, right? So you're going to get there and we've talked about it a lot. It's not just the physicality of it, of being able to hit the ball harder, throw it harder, run faster, all those things. It's also the fact that you're going to have to be able to handle a 56 game season or a 52 or a 40 game season in a super condensed time frame. Right. We're going to fire up Division 1 baseball here in three weeks, ish, four weeks on the 13th of February and you're going to roll that for three and a half, four months. You know, Division 1, or excuse me, Division 2 can open up February 1st. I think they can actually open up a tick earlier because February 1st is like a Sunday. So I think they might actually be able to open up in January this year. And then Division 3, there's no real set open date, but most of those teams are going to fire up the middle to the end of February and definitely by March. But you have teams that are going to be playing only 40 games in March and April.
• 21:09
  Speaker B: Right.
• 21:09
  Speaker C: Like you're playing 40 games in eight weeks. That's a lot of baseball. And you have to be physical to be able to handle the grind of the game. If you're going to be an everyday guy, if you're going to be asked to go play nine innings, do all these things, you have to be able to handle that from a physicality standpoint. And being physical in the weight room gets you to that point. The other part of it, and we've talked about this before, you and I, I don't know if we've really got into it on the podcast, but you know, you can mask some things from a gameplay perspective, but you need to be in shape to practice, which I think is something that a lot of people don't necessarily understand. What that looks like at the college level where you have to be able to stay in your legs, you're going to, you know, you get one, one off day a week. Generally speaking, it's a Monday. So for argument's sake, we'll call it Monday. Monday is going to be your off day, right? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You're either practicing or playing baseball games, the lead up, which is going to be about four months, four weeks, excuse me. You know, you're, you're going to be asked to take a plethora of ground balls inside, outside, on the turf. If you're in the northeast, it might be 25 degrees and you're outside for 30 minutes because of cold weather policy, but you're going to be taking a lot of ground balls all day, every day. And that's not just mass fungoes. You know, it's going to be mass fungos. It's going to be fungoes during bp. It's going to be live ground balls during bp. It's going to be inner squads, it's going to be drill work. You have to be in shape to do that because if you're not in shape to do it, it's going to show out and there's going to be some questions there. And then the question is like, can you handle actually being able to play the season because you're not even in shape now. And, you know, it starts with being able to be in the weight room and essentially falling in love with doing it so that you're in shape enough to be able to handle what your body is about to go through over the course of the next 12, 15, 17, 18 weeks of baseball. And it's a lot. You're traveling. Let's be honest, the vast majority of college baseball is not, you know, we'll talk about nutrition on this podcast, but it's not like when you're traveling. You know, some of these schools out there still believe that $15 in meal money is more than enough for student athletes to be able to work, to eat well on the road. Like, find me someone who can eat well for $15 a day, right? As a 22 year old who, an 18, 19 year old who needs to eat well. You know, so there, there's a lot that goes into it and why we hammer it, you know, and I think that it's, it's, I don't want to necessarily just stop it. It's the lowest hanging fruit for younger kids in the recruiting process to be able to do. It's, it's setting the foundation for the long run where you're going to be, you want to be physical enough in your, in the recruiting process where it looks like you can put on more weight and then also more weight, where you're going to get more physical in college because you're going to be asked to lift more and do more and you're going to be playing more baseball. And it's just the bare minimum for you to be able to, to practice, not even be a guy who's going to start all the time. So, you know, I think those numbers are going to bear themselves out as we continue down this study, you know, so it's just a, it's an easy way to put yourself ahead of the curve when it comes to your recruitment process.
• 24:27
  Speaker D: If you're the parent of a high school baseball player with college aspirations, you already know the recruiting process can feel overwhelmin. Endless showcases, non stop emails and big promises with very little clarity. That's why we recommend Diamond College Showcase Camps, the nation's premier academic baseball showcase. At Diamond College showcases, every college coach in attendance is there with a purpose to coach, instruct, evaluate and recruit. Every player is seen, every player is engaged, and every family leaves with a clear understanding of where they truly stand. This is not a mass camp. College coaches run the drills, evaluate every athlete and provide honest professional feedback that you can trust. Diamond College Showcase Camps are built for serious student athletes who value both baseball and academics. If you're looking for transparency, clarity, and a recruiting experience that respects your time and your players future, Diamond College Showcase.
• 25:21
  Speaker C: Is the place to be.
• 25:22
  Speaker D: To learn more, Visit Diamond College showcase.com.
• 25:30
  Speaker B: Nailed it. Number three on this list. And we talk about, you know, we, we'll talk about the summer and all that kind of good stuff here as we get to numbers four and five. But I think sometimes what gets overlooked is everybody gets worried about the recruiting piece, but you got a high school season coming up. The if you're not being heavily recruited right now, one of the best ways you can get on people's radar is go and have a great high school season, right? If you're a 20, 27 and you're going to be a junior this year and you haven't made varsity before, well, let's focus on making the varsity team and going out and having a good high school season before we're worried about what schools are calling us. You got to check some of those boxes first. And if you want to be a college player, a prerequisite to that is that you need to be a good high school player and you need to be able to go and prove that you're at least good against your peers, right? We've had some recent podcasts about the difficulty of evaluating high school players and all of that kind of stuff due to some of the level of competition stuff. But one of the bare minimums is that you need to prove that you're good against your peers, right? So you need to be good in your local league. That might not be good enough to be a college player, but there's no bad local players that play college baseball. You need to be good in your local league and then hopefully you extend it out. Maybe you're good within your county, maybe you're good within your state, maybe you're good within your region. And then you get good nationally and you start to, you know, you open up a boatload of doors. But, like, first things first, for a lot of guys who are 20, 27, we got to go and we got to prove ourselves against our local competition and go and have a really good high school season and not be so fixated on the end result of, well, I want to get committed. I want to, I want to be able to put that Twitter post up. We've talked about it before. Most of the recruiting stuff happens during the summer, right? Coaches are out. They're not tied down by game schedules. Distance is, is, is, is not the limiting factor that it is during the high school season because you're going to places where a boatload of kids are going to be. So, you know, understand that if you can put together a good high school season, you can put some good stats together, you can get some good video. That's a big step in the process because coaches do do their homework, right? They are going to go and look now, well, he's 6 foot 2 and he's 190 pounds and he runs a 6 foot 7 or runs a 6, 7. Well, yeah, some of those metrics are awesome, right? And that's probably good enough for a lot of schools out there. But then they go look at your high school stats and you hit 220, well, they're going to have some questions, right? So being able to put something on paper, start to build your resume. And I would implore families and players to, you know, understand that. Don't get too far ahead of yourself in terms of the performance piece. Like, you've got this high school season coming up. It's time to go out and perform and capitalize on it. Sure.
• 28:32
  Speaker C: It's. It means something, right? I think with high school baseball, your, your goal as a team is to go and try to get as many wins as possible and go as far as you can in the, your local sectional tournament, into the state tournament, all of those things. The, conversely, the summer is, you know, a little bit more geared towards recruitment, things of that nature. You know, some of the teams you might play on aren't, aren't necessarily geared towards winning the tournament all the time. Like obviously you're trying to, you know, win games and still compete, but it's a little, little bit more geared towards the recruitment side of things. The, but the high school season still matters. Not only are you trying to win and compete and do things with your team, and I also think that you have the, the, it sets you up for success for the summer, right? You're gonna have, you're gonna have your more or less preseason in, in February, March, you know, depending on where you are in this country. But you know, February, March and then you're going to play April, May, June into June ish at the high school level would set you up for your success for the, the summer. The high school season. Again, it matters because you're going to have a lot of local coaches that are coming out and watch a play. If you have coaches that you've been talking to, maybe they might travel to watch you throw or you know, hit against a really good arm that they know about to see kind of where you stack up. But for the most part, you know, it's not a super heavy recruitment time period because colleges are still playing at the same time. You know, it doesn't always line up for, for guys to be able to get out and see you when they need to, but you know, if it does, it does, but it's not as high pressure I guess as you would consider the summer, you know, but again it gives you a three month lead lead time to be able to dial in, you know, your swing, your defense, your arm. You know, you don't need to be 92 straight out the gate in, in April. You know, you can still have that slow build through the high school season or at the end of the high school season you're, you know, now we're building up where we set. We started 86, 88 and now we're 89, 90 towards the end of the spring. Now we get in the summer. Now I feel really good. The other side too is, you know, depending on where you are in this country, it's not really, you know, it might be uber cold when you're throwing and you might not be able to get it up to the level in which you can in July, you know, where you can give a couple arm circles, throw the ball, you know, 125ft and all of a sudden you feel hot where, you know it's 26 degrees and you need 45 minutes just to feel like you're, you're starting to sweat, you know, so, you know, it's just, for me, it's, it's the lead time. It's caring about, you know, the winning and the team and being able to be the best that you can be in your area. Right. I think that's something that kind of gets overlooked sometimes where it's like, hey, you, if you want to go play in college, you got to be one of the better players in your area. You know, you can't be a average to mediocre player and think that you're going to be able to go play college baseball somewhere. You got to be somewhere in the mix towards, you know, in that top, top half of guys that are in your area. If you want to be able to get noticed for recruitment, to be able to have the potential of playing college baseball.
• 31:56
  Speaker B: 100% number four on the list. And this is where we get into some of the, the more executable things from a process perspective. But this, this goes back to number one when we talked about the honest assessments assessment, but need to start developing that target list. And it should be rooted in that initial conversation. And should there be some, some reach schools on there?
• 32:21
  Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:22
  Speaker B: Both academically and. And from a baseball perspective, you should have some reach schools on there. And this list can change, right? And it should change. It should absolutely change. You should have some schools that drop off of it. You should have some schools that, that get added to it for a variety of different reasons. Maybe decide that you're interested in a different major. Maybe you decide, I want, I'm comfortable with being a little bit farther from home. So the list expands a little bit. But you got to have something to work off of. You can't be doing this whimsically. You know, if you, if you know that you want to be three hours from home, three to four hours from home, and you've got a specific major that you want to study and you line up with a specific level of play. Well, that's a pretty good place to start when you're talking about building out that list. And it's, it's valuable for a lot of reasons. It's valuable for, for outreach, it's valuable for research. But you got to have something to work towards. You can't expect this just to come to you because you play for a specific travel team or you're going to go to this showcase and you know, you, you just think that everybody's going to come and call you. You got to do some outreach. You got to post some Stuff on Twitter. You got to be able to put together a video, and you got to be able to get your name across the desks of the. Of some of these coaches so that when the time comes, you're not just a fresh name for them that they go, oh, yeah, because we've all. We've all done it, where you get to an event and a kid does something, you look down, you go, oh, yeah, that kid emailed me last week. He's, you know, wants to be an engineer. All right, very good. Check out his grades. All right, I'm gonna do a little bit more homework on this guy. And, you know, sometimes that's how it starts, but I think you gotta. You gotta start to pull together a list right now, and you gotta have an idea of some of the schools that you're going to be targeting. Yeah, I don't think it needs to happen tomorrow, but in the next month or so, you should start to develop a list, and you should start to begin a lot of that outreach ahead of your high school season. But you got to know who you're sending stuff to. So number four for us here is you got to start to build that list out.
• 34:23
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's critical. Right. It still lines up with your honest assessment, assessment at the front, but you got to be able to start having realistic lists so that you can get in contact and get information in front of coaches that are going to be potential fits for you from a school perspective, from a program perspective. And, you know, in. In some ways start to build some sort of a relationship, letting the coaches know where you're at from a high school standpoint, how the team's doing, how you're doing. Excuse me. Things like that. The other side is, you know, to echo your point, I can't tell you how many events I was at, and I was like, yeah, this name rings a bell.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: Why?
• 35:09
  Speaker C: And you go back and it's either in the database or it's an email where, okay, yeah, this kid emailed me, and I like this video, blah, whatever it might be, and I lock in. And that. That happens a lot more frequently than. Than you might think. But it's. It's critical for you to be able to build a list. And I think one of the big things, like, you know, start big. You know, put in every school that you think might be a fit, regardless of where it is, and then start narrowing down from there. How far do you want to be from home? Do you want to be a plane ride? Do you only want to Be two or three hours. You know, what do you want a suburban campus, an urban campus, a blend of both? Do you want to be out in the middle of nowhere and be super rural? You know, what size of the school is it? Do you want to be at a school where there's only 1200 people or 10,000 people or somewhere in the middle? All of those things. And if you can start to visit some schools, if you live in some areas where there's those types of schools, go visit them, see what you like about it. Maybe there's some things that. Some schools that, hey, I went and visited school, there's 10,000 people and they have like 9,000 graduate students. 20,000 people isn't for me. It's not really what I want to do. Okay, well, now you know that, like, you can, you can whack some of those schools that look like that off your list, and you could go to a school say, hey, this is 1200 people, that. This is way too small for me, you know, so it's. You can start to kind of figure out what you like, what you don't. And I think that it's. It's an easy way to kind of figure out how to start guiding your recruitment process and getting legs to it and start moving it forward by being able to kind of create that list, get in touch with coaches, and then start to visit some places, maybe not the places that are on your list. And obviously that would be the right thing. But if, you know, during the high school season might be a little tough, but if you live in an area where there's a bunch of colleges, go to some that might be a little bit similar from a feel standpoint. So you kind of get an idea of like, yeah, you know, what this might be for me, or, yeah, this might not be for me. I thought it was, but it's not. And all of those things are valuable in your process.
• 37:15
  Speaker B: Absolutely. The visit thing I don't think can get overlooked, and I strongly encourage folks to take advantage of some downtime. To your point is that it may not be one of the schools on your list, but a lot of these schools have very similar looks and feels. And you can just get an idea of the type of campus, the population size, Especially during the spring when things are up and running, you get a feel for what a college campus looks like and feel from a social perspective. Number five, the, the.
• 37:46
  Speaker C: The.
• 37:47
  Speaker B: The fifth tip here is to start to take a look at what your summer is going to look like. And this ties into the honest Assessment. This ties into the list development. So what we're talking about here is that a lot of players are going to have their travel ball schedule, which is, you know, kind of the, the organic way to get some exposure. You're going to be at some tournaments in different locations, different times, and those will definitely move the needle if, especially if you play in a, in a, in a good program and you're in the right places from a regional perspective, you know, if you're a kid who wants to play in the Northeast and you're down in Atlanta every weekend, you know, you might have to rethink a couple things. But I think we're speaking more to how do you supplement that summer schedule with either showcases or on campus camps and making sure that you're getting in front of the coaches that you have interest in. So doing, doing a little bit of legwork on, on the interwebs, checking out when camps are happening, where coaches are going to be reaching out to coaches to figure out where they're going to be and make sure that your summer schedule is conducive to you getting exposure to the schools that you are interested in and schools that you might be a fit at. And it's, it's not too early to start to plan some of that, you know, especially if, you know, I always, I always think about the west coast families who have interest in coming to the East Coast. You know, a lot of academic schools are in the Northeast, a lot of academic folks on the West Coast. You need to plan around. All right, well, if I'm interested in playing in the Nescac or if I'm interested in playing in, you know, one of the schools in the high academic schools in the Northeast, well, you got a plan around. Well, how am I going to get in front of them? You know, because if you want to play a tough Coach Stark and you're from Portland, Oregon, and you don't leave the state of Oregon for your summer team, I don't think Coach Starks flying out to Portland to go watch one guy. You got to find a way to get in front of him, you know, whether it's coming all the way to the east coast or maybe, you know, Tufts ends up on the west coast at some point, you know, and this goes to, this goes the same as any school, not just Tufts. I just, they were the first one that popped into my head. But, you know, making some good decisions with your time and making sure that you're not just running around with your travel team and you don't Actually get in front of the coaches in the schools that, you know, you're really trying to get into. So I don't think it's ever too early to, to hit the road running and start to put together a plan of how you're going to execute it.
• 40:21
  Speaker C: No, summer is obviously going to be critical. I think the earlier you can, you know, the. As soon as you get your summer schedule, you want to start to figure out how you can supplement, like where you're at from a open weekend or open open day perspective. I think a lot of the bigger showcases, especially as you get into the summer, are generally going to be on weekdays. Yeah, I think the one thing if you are an arm, you want to be careful about what you're throwing looks like. Right. You know, so if you're going to, if you threw on Sunday, signing up to throw in a showcase on Tuesday probably isn't the best idea to be able to go out and, and give your best effort. So it can get a little, you know, dicey that way. But a lot of these ones are, you know, if you're, if you're signed up well enough in advance and you know what you're getting yourself into, I think for the most part, most people are going to be like, okay, yeah, that's a huge showcase. You're going to go get in front of a bunch of coaches you want to see, you know, instead of throwing on Sunday, we're going to throw you on Friday so that, you know, you have four or five days off in between your, you know, quote unquote, starts to be able to go throw on Wednesday. You know, so I think that's one thing that you want to pay attention to. The other is, you know, target the camps, showcases, clinics, things that are going to a be affordable for your family. Right. You know, and maybe it is some of the bigger, high, high end, more expensive showcases out there. Sometimes it might just be on campus camps, sometimes it's going to be the middle of the road, private showcase stuff and it doesn't matter. What you want is to be able to get in front of the coaches that you're interested in their programs and they're interested in you so that you, you can give yourself the best opportunity to be recruited by the schools. It is that you feel are, you know, the best fit for you, that are on your list, that have the academics that you want, that potentially have the program fit for you. That's what you want to do. And I there, there's a plethora of different ways to do it, you know, but you want to be smart about how you do it. You know, you don't have to go to every single showcase under the sun to do it, but you know, find a handful of them where you can get in front of the coaches that you've been in contact with, that you have interest in so that you could, you could showcase yourself in front of them. The other is, you know, find on campus camps of schools where, you know, and if It's a Division 3 school, find, ask the coaches where they're going to be. They'll tell you, hey, this is where, you know, our program is going to be at these events. You know, it might not be the, specifically the head coach, but the assistants might be there. They can get a look at you too and report back what they think. And in some of those, you might end up at a Division 1 camp, but there's 15 Division Threes that are working it and you can get in front of all those guys and have a legitimate shot of being recruited by some of those pools. So, you know, you want to be able to supplement. There's no real, you know, the only, the only thing I will say Indiana, it's not a, I'm not pushing back on anything. The on campus camps are likely to not be reported, announced, likely to not be announced for another couple of months. So like that, that's probably the one, the one caveat to this as we talk through it that, you know, those ones probably aren't going to be announced until midway through the college baseball season or even towards the end with, with what it looks like. But the bigger ones, you know, you can go on their websites and you can see them, their dates are set, they know when they are, you know where they are, you know, so we'll see what happens. But you know, I think the, it's, it's never too early to at least start kicking the tires and penciling in some of those events to see which ones are going to fit into your schedule when you're, when you finally get your summer schedule so that you can maximize your exposure.
• 44:11
  Speaker B: Well said. Let me see. In general, I think those are five things that are really important for 2027 to focus on. The only thing that I'll add is it's not really, I guess it's a, it's a piece of advice. I don't think it falls into the same category as the five that we've outlined. But don't worry about what other people are doing. Don't worry about who's committing don't get caught up in the social media, social media rigamarole. Focus on what you have control of, doing the things that you need to do, building out your list, sticking to your process, getting to the weight room, making sure you're working to get in front of the coaches that are fit for you. We hit this all the time, but timelines for everybody are going to be a little bit different. And for some guys, they may have this thing tied up by the end of the high school season. For other guys, it's going to happen in July. For, you know, a lot of guys, it's not going to happen until August, September, October. Don't worry about what everybody else is doing and make sure that you're expending your energy on the things that you can control and you're doing everything that you can to put yourself in a position to be recruitable in this process. And that's really probably the only thing I'd like to close with. I don't know if you have any closing remarks, Coach Glass.
• 45:31
  Speaker C: No, I think we did a good job covering these five things and I echo your sentiment there.
• 45:39
  Speaker B: Well, everybody, I hope that was informative. I hope it gives you a little bit of a clearer picture of, of some of the things that you should be focused on right now. Tune in next week. We'll have more on that and we'll talk to you then. 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 for us, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @emdbaseball. 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.
• 46:35
  Speaker C: Just watch.