Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / Baseball players have to be smart on how they showcase their talents and where at a young age - we discuss
Transcript
- 0:00Kevin Griffin in with us side for another thirty minutes, and we were just
- 0:03sitting here talking about just y'all schedule, and you know, talking also about
- 0:07you guys going to Taiwan. I would assume, I mean, obviously you
- 0:12love all this. I'm sure everything's great, but whenever whatever settles out,
- 0:16you want to take a vacation, get out there and breathe a minute.
- 0:19Huh. Yeah, you know. And it's a blessing for Connor to be
- 0:23in the situation that he's in, So we don't ever want to take it
- 0:26for granted, for sure, But the main thing that he wants is he
- 0:32never wants this to be a distraction to his high school team. And so
- 0:36that's why we've kind of cut out all the MLB teams that want to come
- 0:39in with their front offices and do private workouts. We've kind of put a
- 0:43stop to all that until the end of the high school season. We'll have
- 0:46two months between the end of the high school season and the draft for those
- 0:50guys to come in and then we'll have decisions to make do you go to
- 0:53college or do you sign and if you're fortunate enough to get drafted. So
- 0:58the main thing is that it's not a distraction to the other guys. And
- 1:03I've really seen the other kids at Prep kind of step their game up a
- 1:06little bit with all the scouts coming in. We've had anywhere from thirty to
- 1:10fifty five or sixty just about any given game, and you can see these
- 1:15other boys on the team stepping their game up and working a little bit harder.
- 1:19And I think that's good for the team thing, it's good for Jackson
- 1:25Prep, and it's good for the community. So that's what it's all about.
- 1:29While the focus is on Connor, you know, he's enjoying the fact
- 1:34that these other kids are getting to experience this as well. And you mentioned
- 1:38you felt like, and I think a lot of people would echo this,
- 1:42there is some really good untapped talent here in Central Miscetipian baseball. Oh absolutely,
- 1:48You've got even the guys that play Jackson Prepp with Connor, Trey Bryant,
- 1:55Peyton Puckett, guys like that. But then you look at leftended arms
- 2:00Gardner young at Prep throws ninety miles an hour as a junior. He's gonna
- 2:04be recruited by just about everybody. Got a kid that I think is completely
- 2:08overlooked. He signed with Pearl River Community Cause Jackson Hood out of Germantown.
- 2:14I'm telling you that kid can play. He is one of the most talented
- 2:17baseball players that I've seen come through here in a long time. And I'm
- 2:23not sure who end up at Pearl River. I think some big four years
- 2:25gonna come and scoop him up before it's all said and done, and he'll
- 2:29have an opportunity. Walker Hook's picture at Brandon High School is legit. He
- 2:34could be a Day one guy this year in the draft. So there's a
- 2:38lot of talent right here in the metro area for sure. Chase Russell at
- 2:43Madison Central, He's another one. He's going to Southern miss but he could
- 2:46be a draftable guy come to July. Wow, that's impressive. So you
- 2:51know you talk about draftable guys day one. I mean that's decisions that guys
- 2:57and their families have to make, right Yeah, I mean you have to
- 3:00decide, you know what path you want to take. You can't go wrong
- 3:05with either decision. Going pointing in the sec environments every single night, or
- 3:08go ahead and start your pro career. The biggest thing is how young Connor
- 3:15is. I mean, if he were to sign, he would have a
- 3:17chance to potentially go through the minor leagues and hopefully get to the big leagues
- 3:23at a younger age. And then you get to arbitration earlier, you get
- 3:27to free agency at a young age, And I think that's why a lot
- 3:30of high school kids end up signing. But you don't want to do it
- 3:35if you don't have a shot and people don't foresee you making a run through
- 3:38the minor leagues fairly quickly. Otherwise you go to college and a place like
- 3:44LSU and get developed by the coaches that they have there, and or go
- 3:47to Ole Miss Mississippi State and get developed by those great coaches that are here
- 3:53in the states. So yeah, it's decisions that will have to be made.
- 3:57But right now he's just trying to enjoy his senior year of high school
- 4:00and help Jackson Prepp win that seventh straight state championship. Let me ask you
- 4:05this, Let's go back to the kind of move this hole back to and
- 4:09you could say baseball to it. We know about we were talking about Rosstellinger
- 4:14reporting that power programs equipped with NL and cash are poaching group of five rosters.
- 4:19We know that. I mean, that's that's happening if you're well,
- 4:23just look at what Cameron Ward did. He went to in carn Word as
- 4:26a quarterback kind of under the radar, had a pretty good, a really
- 4:30good two years. Washington State picks him up, then he goes from there,
- 4:35flirts with the NFL, and now he's at Miami for a final year.
- 4:38So he made that kind of three tier jump to big time college football.
- 4:44We know Trey Harris come from Louisiana Tech, blew up last year at
- 4:47Old miss. I mean you can go to I mean MacKaye Polk a couple
- 4:50of years ago. Washington State to Mississippi State had a fantastic year. So
- 4:55do you think privately And there's no way to know this, but I just
- 4:58wonder this. For instance, Alabama, We'll take the state of Alabama.
- 5:02Alabama and Auburn go to UAB and they go to South Alabama and they go
- 5:06to Troy and say, look, privately, wink wink, we'll send you
- 5:12some recruits, maybe that entry. We don't think that's ready yet, but
- 5:15they'll they'll bolster at your place, but to maybe where there's a quote wink
- 5:20deal, to where you are our feeder programs. Does that make sense what
- 5:24I'm saying, Yes, you scratch my back, I'll scratch your type thing
- 5:28type deal within within programs. And I think it's been going on for a
- 5:31long time. I think mid majors have almost been like junior colleges for some
- 5:36of the Power fives. Hey, i'll push push players your way if in
- 5:42two years or a year, you'll send them back to me. I think
- 5:45a lot of that's been going on even before NIL even came into play.
- 5:50And you know, the football money withinn I L is just crazy. I
- 5:54mean, there's baseball can't touch that, it's not even close. But when
- 5:59you start talking about these mid majors having players leave after great years and go
- 6:03to these power fives, it's a business decision and it's a financial transaction when
- 6:09it comes down to it,