Latest / Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball / Episode 123: Recruiting Question & Answer #1

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Episode 123: Recruiting Question & Answer #1 · Dugout Dish Baseball Recruiting Podcast powered by EMD Baseball

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:11
  Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of the Dugout Dish podcast. I'm Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host, Keith Glasser. How we doing?
• 0:18
  Speaker A: Great. How are you?
• 0:19
  Speaker B: We have matching hats on today. We do EMD sponsored podcast. We, we, we were forced by our, the powers that be to wear this particular outfit today. So.
• 0:31
  Speaker A: That's right. We got a, we got a note from our, our sponsor. You better put your hat on.
• 0:38
  Speaker B: Put your hat on. Wear caps.
• 0:42
  Speaker A: Shine your brown shoes.
• 0:43
  Speaker B: Shine your brown shoes. Wear caps and sleeves in this league. All right, we got Q and A today. We had, we had quite a few questions come in, so we're going to take some time to answer and we're going to go one by one and we'll see where it takes us. All right, first question, Coach. Do college coaches. This is more of a, probably more of an academic question. Academic focus for some of these higher academic schools out there, which we're very familiar with. Do college coaches want ACT SAT scores prior to contacting a player? What do you got on this one, coach?
• 1:26
  Speaker A: Not particularly. I think, you know, I think a lot of coaches we've had on, have talked about this. You and I have talked about this. You know, does it help in a showcase setting and such? Sure. But I think most people are going to try to check the box of whether or not they think you are good enough to play in their program and then find out what the test scores are. I also think it's a little, it's a little bit different nowadays with schools being test optional where, you know, the, the strength of the transcript and such is, is weighted a little bit more than the, the test scores themselves. Obviously, if you have great test scores, then that'll sweeten the deal. But I think for the most part, a lot of coaches are more apt to find out whether or not you're going to be a good baseball player and see if the academics fit second versus solely searching for academic players that might be able to fit into their program. You know, everyone wants baseball players who happen to be smart, not guys who are very smart and happen to play baseball. There's a, there's a difference there. So I would say it's not necessarily the, the first thing that guys are going to be looking for, but it's certainly going to be a question that comes up shortly thereafter if they deem you worthy of being recruitable into their program.
• 2:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't have a ton to add to that. I mean, at the end of the day, you can have a 1600 SAT with 12 APS and a 4.0. But if you're not good enough to play for Coach Brady at Columbia, it's probably not going to move the needle, you know, so it does really start with your ability. Now, there's other factors that go into it, right? You know, you got the AI scores and all that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day you still need to cross that threshold or are you good enough to play at that school? As far as how we handle it, we have, you know, I'd like to say that we would be somewhat subject matter experts when it comes to high academic baseball. We generally won't reach out to schools if we know that, like, hey, it's not going to cut it here because we got a pretty good idea. But also sometimes we'll send stuff over to schools and let them make the decision because of how they, they might evaluate a transcript or the specific location of kids from could factor into it. But at the end of the day, the conversation begins with, and often ends with, are you a good enough baseball player to be recruited into that particular program?
• 4:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 4:07
  Speaker B: Next question. Are scholarships athletic. Athletic scholarships only reserved for Division 1.
• 4:19
  Speaker A: Nope. Division 1 and 2 can offer athletic scholarships. Division 3 can only offer merit based scholarships, which is based off of your transcript, your test scores and whatever else it is that you have in your application to said school. Division one and two, excuse me. And Division three can also offer need based financial aid. Division one and two are the loan ones that can offer scholarships. Division one, as we have covered on this podcast quite a bit, can offer up to 34 full scholarships. Now it is going to be up to each and every individual institution on how many they can give out. Not all schools are going to get the 34 scholarships. I think is, is something that we should hammer home when we talk about this right now. Not all Division 1 schools will be able to afford that. So you know that while, yes, the rule allows them to give up to 34, it's not going. Not every school is going to get 34 scholarships to give out. Division two can give up to nine if they are fully funded. Not all schools are fully funded. Same thing as what we would consider, Division 1, but they can give nine. There are no percentages there. I'll let you expound on that in a minute. And then just for clarification, of all divisions, junior college, division one and two junior colleges can give scholarship money. Division three cannot. So it kind of mirrors the NCAA and then NAIA baseball can give 12 scholarships and kind of along the same lines, they can use that money how they see fit.
• 6:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. The big change with division one, obviously everybody focuses on the 34. And to your point, there's actually probably a larger percentage of schools who will not see an increase in scholarships than there are schools that will actually see an increase in scholarships. But I think the biggest change is that there's no longer a 25% athletic scholarship minimum, which I think is a huge. Hugely beneficial to the programs, but also to the players for a variety of different reasons. But, you know, even, even sometimes you start breaking out 25% of 11.7. Like you don't. The math doesn't always, you know, add up completely. So you might be sitting on. You might be sitting there holding on to, you know, 20 scholarship that you can't give to anybody in any given year, but now you're able to distribute that money however you see fit. So you could give a guy a thousand bucks, you could give a guy 40,000. You can distribute that money. So basically you're working with a pool of tuition multiplied by the number of scholarships you have, and you can distribute that money however you see fit.
• 7:19
  Speaker A: All right, the other thing. Hold on. Before we get going to. I think the other thing we should touch on because it is so new, is that at the Division 1 level, you're going to have revenue sharing and we have the new nil clearinghouse situation going on in Division 1. So that the house settlement stuff which we've talked about on here, but to at least add to this discussion that you have revenue sharing that is going to be distributed amongst all student athletes at the Division 1 school for the schools that have opted in to said revenue sharing, and they will, depending on how they set their percentages, will share some semblance of that. My. Well, a large chunk of the money will be shared to the student athletes. I think the common thought or most popular thought is that football and hoops are going to take up a good portion of that money and the rest will be doled out to the other sports. But that, that is an opportunity to make some money that, you know, you might be able to use towards. Towards scholarship money and then the nil stuff where, you know, you can cash in on your name, image and likeness, things of that nature. So, like, there's. There's other avenues that weren't necessarily available in recent years, but that's also something that I think some schools are going to utilize to their advantage. Now, not all schools are going to be able to give you a ton of Money, but they might be able to set something up for it. So it's up to each and every individual school, but I figured we'd just add that in.
• 8:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, and I guess there's one other piece of the puzzle too, and it's the idea of quote unquote stacking, where you have the ability to give a kid an athletic scholarship in addition to merit money that they might be eligible for and potentially even financial aid. So you can pull those different resources together at the Division 1 and Division 2 level. You know, so you might get a package of $20,000 athletic, but you qualify for $15,000 of merit money, your package is going to be $35,000. So that's, that's very common across schools, that there's fewer and fewer schools that are making coaches making decision, like you either put them on scholarship or he gets the merit money. So most of these schools have the ability to pull money from a couple of different sources in order to put together a package that, you know, hopefully if you're getting an offer, is a package that suits your family's needs. All right, how do you know if a college is seriously interested?
• 9:57
  Speaker A: They're not going to be shy, right? Like, you're going to know if they're interested, they're going to reach out, they're going to text you, they're going to call you, or they're going to text you to set up a call, whatever it might be, they're going to want you to visit. That's generally how you're going to know that they are very interested in you, which is a little bit different from just the sheer amount of camp invites and such that you might be getting. But coaches are not going to be shy about reaching out. If they, they like you and want to recruit you and think that they might, at least your skill set is going to fit into what it is that they're looking for. From a recruitment standpoint.
• 10:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, we don't really pull any punches. If you like a player, you're going to make some phone calls either to that player, you're going to get in touch with them via text, email, social media. Like whatever mechanism that a coach particularly prefers for that initial contact, might try to get some transcripts, might start reaching out to, you know, travel ball coach, high school coach, some trusted contacts, you know, coaches, they, you know, they're not really operating in shy mode when it comes to that. So you'll, you'll know, you'll know pretty much right away if the school is genuinely interested. All right. This is kind of a two part. So generally when do coaches reach out or when are they allowed to reach out?
• 11:33
  Speaker A: Okay, so I love that this is a Q and A the for Division One, they can start calling you on August 1st before your junior year of high school. So if you are a 20, 27, coaches can start calling you in a month. We are recording this on July 1st. So on August 1st, coaches can start calling you and reaching out and having communication with you from August 1st forward. That does not mean that everyone's going to get a call. It's okay if you don't. Don't hit the panic button. Doesn't mean you're not recruitable. Perfectly fine. The vast majority of student athletes are going to be recruited, you know, through the winter and into the spring and summer of next year. Division two is June 15, they can start calling. And division three, it is anytime after your sophomore year. Generally it's going to be, you know, a little bit later. You know, they're, they're usually sticking. And I think this is true across the board and we can probably have a little bit of a longer discussion about it now, but if you want to. But I think a good portion of, of college baseball taking out most of the Power 4 conferences, schools in those conferences, the vast majority of them are kind of focusing now senior year to senior year and you know, essentially saying like, we're going to recruit you during your junior year. And I, I think are there going to be schools that are, you know, a little bit projecting a little bit further out? Yeah, they are like, they're. That's. It'd be a fallacy to think that they're not. But I think with the landscape of college baseball and the transfer portal and the amount of people that are in there and not really knowing what your roster is going to look like year to year, I think has kind of curved the, you know, I don't even know what my roster is going to look like next year if some of these guys transfer out. Like, we might have to get in the portal. Like I, I need to be really good on all these really good 20, 20 sixes and make my decision there and not really, you know, for lack of a better term, waste my time with 27s because I don't even know if, like what we're going to get over the course of the next year. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not going to reach out or talk to you, you know, start a relationship, but I think the vast majority of people are Likely to start having more conversations towards the end of the fall than they are early, you know, late summer, early fall. But Division 1 is Aug. 1 for Division for being able to contact guys going into your junior year. Division 2 is June 15 and then Division 3 is anytime after your sophomore year. The Jucos and Nai is there's no real rules surrounding it. So they can reach out at any point in time, I would argue. And I, you know, it's going to be later in the process. They're not, you know, I don't think there's junior colleges out there for the most part that are recruiting 2027s and trying to get them to campus. So it'll likely be a little bit later there.
• 14:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think the only clarifying point I would add is around emails because, you know, guys will get emails or you might, your 20, 27, you might send emails. Just understand that coaches can really only respond with hey, thank you, here's a camp invite. They can't actively recruit you via email. And I'm sure some of this stuff goes on anyways, but technically there's no real third party workaround. Like guys are going to converse and you know, tell that kid, hey, we're gonna call him on August 1st or whatever. But there's no more backdoor and phone calls like you used to be able to do where the contact role was basically bs. You know, a guy could call me and say, hey Andy, tell, you know, tell Steve that I'll pick up the phone if he calls tomorrow at 7pm Would love to talk to him. Can't do that stuff anymore. So it's got to be direct contact to the player. And as you pointed out that the different, the different timelines there, as far as when they were, when they generally reach out, it's going to be school to school, it's going to be player to player. I think you laid out that Division 3 stuff's going to happen a little bit later. Like they're in their 26s. Those guys aren't concerned with 27s but coaches are going to call you when they deem that you're a guy that's worth calling. So there's no real set timeline there outside of the, the contact rules that you outlined. But you know, coach, you might not be good enough for a Division 1 school until the spring of your junior year. So you might not get any phone calls until then. But coaches, you know, once those deadlines pass, once the constraints on contacting past, coaches are going to call you when or reach out to you when you know you've, you've done enough for them to want to spend some time to get to know you and figure out if, if you're going to be a fit for the program. All right, talking about some phone calls, there's a good follow up question. What are, what are some proper protocols to handle phone calls with coaches?
• 16:52
  Speaker A: Ooh, I think one, be available when you first and foremost be available when you say you're going to be, you know, if, if they say call me at 8, call at 8. If they, you know, don't call at 8. O5, you know, if, if for some reason something comes up, shoot a text and be like, hey, I'm, you know, running five minutes late because I can't drive yet and you know, I'm, I'm not home. Fine. Things come up. But you know, you want to make sure that you're your prompt and your, your timeliness of, of being able to be on the phone. I think you want to keep it professional, you know, you know you're not going to say what's up dude? When you know, the, the coach calls like, hey, Coach Glasser, how are you? Hi coach Kira Keatis. You know, and I think you want to be, you want to have not necessarily a script, but you want to be able to kind of get some of your questions out of the way of things it is that you're most interested in from a recruitment standpoint or a program standpoint, right? Like you, you want to have an idea of, you know, the things that are important to you. You want to be able to ask, especially on that initial phone call because you'll get a feel for, you know, what that program is about, what they have to offer and if ultimately it's worth going down the road on because they align with the things it is that you're interested in from a baseball standpoint, from a school standpoint, from a development standpoint, all of those things. So I think having some questions prepped so that are aligned with what it is that you are most interested in are important to you so that you a can kind of take the stress and anxiety out of it and ask the questions it is that you know are important to you on that first one because it does a multitude of things. One, it allows you to get all the answers that you know are most important to you. It also shows your, your preparedness and what it is that you know, your maturity and the things it is that you can, you're most interested in. Coaches will walk away and Be like, damn, that kid was a kid was pretty prepared and squared away for this phone call. Like, I, that shows me that he actually cares and something that he's, this is something he's really interested. This is something he really wants to do, things like that. So I, you know, I think those would be my, my probably three most important things. Make sure that you're on time, make sure that you're professional and make sure that you have a, a good list of questions in which pertain to you specifically that you're interested in. In having the answers to because it aligns with where you're. You're aiming to eventually land.
• 19:40
  Speaker B: I think the only thing that I would add to that is be in a place where you can actually have a conversation. There's not, there's nothing worse with a kid picking up and you're like, are you at a party? Oh, no, I'm just, I'm at, I'm at dinner with my parents. Like, you know, get. If you've got a planned phone call, just be in a place where it's quiet so you can have a good conversation with that coach. You're not being distracted by things that are going on. I think that that goes a long way. But you nailed it with the timeliness and the preparation. Like now, once you start to have multiple conversations with a coach, they're going to be a little bit more relaxed, it's going to be more conversational. You're going to be checking in, giving updates. But those first couple phone calls, both parties are starting to probe. I'm trying to get as a coach, I'm trying to get a feel for you as a kid. What's important to you. How do you communicate? Can you communicate effectively? If I give you some homework to do, are you going to follow through on it? Right. If I tell you, hey, I need to get your transcript, like, are you going to get that to me? Different stuff like that. And coaches will, they're going to ask some questions. So I think it's important to potentially rehearse or at least work through your head how you would answer some questions from some coaches. But yeah, the preparation piece, timeliness, like coach tells you to call it 8. Like don't call it 801, call at 8 o', clock, call it 7:59, but don't, don't be late and then be in a quiet place so you can have a decent conversation. All right. How much time is expected outside of games for recruiting activities, emails, social media, video? It's kind of an open Ended question. But.
• 21:31
  Speaker A: As much as it takes, you know, I think on the front end, it's going to be a decent amount of time spent because if, if you really do want to do this, there's going to be some, some time and effort you're going to have to put into reaching out to coaches you have on your list and, and putting together videos and uploading them to YouTube and doing the things it is that you can do to kind of get on the radar of coaches. Obviously, as time goes on, that list will likely start to dwindle down to, you know, a handful of schools that you're really interested in, that you've had communication with. And it'll get a little bit, you know, less daunting, if you will. But I think, you know, it's. There's going to be time that you have to do it and I think, you know, there's a couple of different ways, and I know you talk about this, so I'll let you take it. But there's not necessarily a right or wrong way to go about doing it. You can break it up over time or, you know, do it all in one shot. I think it depends on the kids. So, you know, but it, it's going to take a decent amount of time in order to kind of send these emails out and correspondence and videos and that. It's not just something that, you know, magically happens by itself where, you know, you can just hit send and it sends out 47, 000 email. Like, does that, like, do those things exist? Yes. But you should be writing them yourself.
• 23:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think your answer of it takes what it takes. Research is important. So that's going to take some time. Right. Do a little bit of research on some of these schools. Do a little bit of research on some of these programs. Right. It should be just as simple as putting a list of schools down. Like, you kind of got to have a purpose for how you compile what you compile. Um, taking the time to get the emails out correctly I think is something that is wildly underrated. Um, you know, and it happens. It's all. It's happened to you. It's happened to me where you get an email from a kid and, you know, it says coach Glasser at rpi, but you meant to send it to Coach Kira Kitties at William and Mary, you know, and you go, hey, Coach Glasser, looks like you guys are having a great season down in Williamsburg. And you're like, well, that wasn't meant for me. Or, you know, you're emailing a liberal arts school and you say, I'm really interested in your engineering program. Well, they don't have engineering. So, you know, doing some research up front, taking the time to make, to give the email a little bit of a personal touch specifically for that introduction portion, like that's going to take a little bit of time. But to your point, as you get through it, the time you spend on the emails, the time you spend on the outreach is going to be a little bit less and less because you're going to narrow your list down. You're going to get interest from some schools and not interest from other schools. As far as social media, yeah, you should be taking advantage of it. And I, if I'm looking down my list of questions, we'll touch on that in a minute. But it shouldn't be something that's all consuming, right? You don't need to have these intricate posts. Make sure that you have your social media account set up. That should take you 15, 20 minutes to put the proper information in there. As far as video, I think people can really overdo this portion and you can spend a lot more time on it than they need to. IPhones, iPads take great video. They have applications on them that allow you to edit video down, right? Take out the dead space. You don't need to have the 17 seconds in between every pitch. You know, you can cut some of that stuff down, but it shouldn't, it shouldn't be this all consuming thing where you feel like all you're ever doing is editing video and editing emails. But up front you have to be willing to put in the time. Right? It's, it's a simple task of like, if you really want to play college baseball, you're going to spend some time doing this stuff. It's really just that simple. If you can't sit down and send out emails, if you can't take time to make a social media post, if you can't take time to follow some coaches on Twitter or Instagram, you probably don't care enough. So it takes what it takes. But understand that some of that stuff to lead up to it and those initial, the initial effort you put into it, yeah, it's going to take a little bit of time, but it should, because it should be important and you want to do it. Well, we answer this one. So I'm going to hit this quick. Did the number of scholarships increase? Yes. Technically you can go to 34. Right. But most schools aren't going to be at 34. They might see an increase. But yes, it went from 11 to 7. 11.72. Now you can have 34. How important are school specific can't. That's a good one.
• 26:32
  Speaker A: I think that they are invaluable. I also think that you need to do your either a due diligence or talk to somebody who is going to be honest with you about where you slot in about whether or not you should go to that camp. You know, if you're not a dude who can play in the acc, going to an ACC camp probably isn't going to benefit you at all. You know. So I think a. Having the understanding of where you slot in and what is where you can eventually land is. Is paramount. I think the other side is, you know, the, the camps on campus to me are great. You have a built in campus visit. You're going to actually be able to meet the coaching staff and get a feel for them as to whether or not you think that you could play for them. You're going to usually meet a handful of players on the team where you're going to be able to ask a lot of questions to away from the coaching staff about what it's like, what kind of coaching style, how, how do they like it, things of that nature. So you know, I think they're a great resource for people. I think that they're. You want to be targeted with the. The types of schools you're interested in, right? Like you don't want to just want to go to every single one under the sun. But if there's handful of schools that are running camps in the, you know, late summer, fall and you're interested in them, like go check it out, see what the school is like, see what it, you know, see what the players say, see what the coaching staff's like, you know. But again you want to make sure that you slot in at. At where that. At that level so that it's not a complete waste of time for yourself from an athletic standpoint.
• 28:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, nailed it. If you're targeting the right schools, I think it's one of the best ways that you can get on a coach's radar and especially if you're able to do it ahead of when coaches are going to see you a bunch in game, right? So like specifically for hitters, like some of those winter camps can be really valuable leading into your junior spring if you're targeting the right schools. But it's a built in campus visit, it's a smaller venue, it's a more intimate environment. You're going to Get a chance to interact with the coaches. You're going to get a feel for how they operate, how they communicate. I think all of this stuff is wildly important. And, you know, yeah, it's difficult sometimes to, you know, you can't go to 15 of these a summer. But if you know that you fit at a certain level, right, A certain type of school, and you've got some schools that are high on your list and you've got good advice, good information, like, hey, if you go and play well at this, there's a decent chance that coach is going to look at you or, you know, take you into consideration for what they're looking for. I think it's one of the best ways to do it. And it can. It can lead to a couple of things. It might get you an offer. Right. The other thing is, is that if you go and play well, it probably at least makes those coaches come back and try to see you in a. In a, you know, maybe a more competitive game setting. Right. Some of the stuff is a little bit simulated at times, but I'm a huge fan. It just really starts with, are you going to the right places and making sure that you're at the right types of camps? How important? We get a lot of these. How important questions, how important is social media?
• 30:03
  Speaker A: It's important, I think I actually was having a conversation on Sunday when I was at a game with a coach who was there that, you know, he asked us, he asked me if we have our clients, you know, get on Twitter if they don't have one. And I told him yes. And he was talking about how, you know, Twitter is a rather large identifier for them. You know, not to say that they completely recruit everyone off of Twitter, but, you know, being able to, you know, flip on your phone and see a ton of videos and some metrics and things of that nature could, could open the door and it shrinks the size of this country. You know, a lot of the college coaches and I still to this day follow, you know, a lot of the PBRs and flat ground apps and flat ground bats and uncommitted and a lot of those types of accounts that tweet out and retweet guys who, who tweet to them, you know, their videos and their, their outings and their metrics and things of that nature. So it's a relatively easy and free way to market yourself on, you know, in the social media world. I think that, you know, you need to be smart about the things it is that you're posting and you know, more or less keep it baseball wise. But you know, I think it's an easy way to quickly get out there, you know, videos and outings and schedule changes and when you're going to be playing, where you're going to be playing and you know, it's going to populate and guys can, you know, be able to see what it is and, and what it is you're doing, how you're doing, where you're going to be, things of that nature. So I, I think that it's a, a large component of, of the recruiting process.
• 31:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta have it. It can only help. The only way it can hurt is if you post, you know, dumb stuff. But you know, it should be just baseball. It's just a, it's another tool in your tool belt to get you some exposure. Gives you a chance to follow coaches, to get your name out there, post some video. And to your point, it's, coaches are on it, they follow it, they leverage it. So you got to be, you know, you got to get your name out there in places that coaches are looking. So you know, it might not be the reason you get recruited, but it's certainly not going to be the reason you don't get recruited. Right. Your coaches aren't going to recruit you. How do I want to put this? Let me take a step back, let me take a step back. Deep breath. You're not going to hurt yourself by putting stuff out there because it's an opportunity for coaches to be able to see what you can do. You know, you see what travel team you're on, they can see some pertinent information might give them some, some ideas of what you've been doing recently. Some metrics and as we started, we will talk about this here in a few. But you know, some of that baseline information can trigger a phone call to a travel coach and say, hey, I saw, you know, I saw Jimmy's post on Twitter. Like look like he's, he's doing pretty well right now. Like what do you got on him? And you know as well as I do that's how a lot of these conversations start. So it can't, can't hurt you if you're not using it. You need to, you need to take advantage of, can only be beneficial. All right, this is a parent specific question for all you parents out there listening. Is it appropriate to introduce yourself to a coach at an event if they have shown interest in your son?
• 33:41
  Speaker A: Short answer, yes with an asterisk. It's fine. When There's a lull in the action and nothing's going on. And you just want to introduce yourself and say, hey, you know, you're recruiting Joey. I'm his dad or mom. Really nice to meet you. Appreciate the interest and move on with your day. You have to also keep in mind that these guys are working. So while they're watching gameplay or something going on, while, you know, taking their time to, you know, talk to them about what's going on is. Is probably going to. They're going to be cordial. 98% of them will be cordial and be like, hey, really nice to meet you, and try to expedite that conversation along, you know. But it's also kind of one of those things that our coaches will look and be like, I don't walk into your desk and ask you what's going on and the. In the. You know, with whatever you do. So, you know, just keep in mind, like, you want to do it when there's a lull in the action. If, you know, they're walking in, walking out, whatever it is, just say, hey, how you doing? You know, super nice to meet you. You know, just. You recruited my son. Appreciate the interest. Just want to put a face to. The. Face to the name.
• 34:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. Keep it short, keep it brief. I would say don't go out of your way. Like, if it kind of happens naturally, that's even better. Like you're walking by them. Hey, coach, you know, Andy, carry kitties. You know, you talk to. You talk to Michael a couple times. Just wanted to say hello, like, hope you're having a good day. Move on. You know, the, you know, technically you're not supposed to, but it's not frowned upon. So just, just understand that coaches are there to work. Just try. Try to keep it brief. I would say that's probably the best advice we could give. All right, last question. Coach, what gets coaches interest first? I. E. Metrics, Rankings, video. What are your thoughts on this?
• 35:55
  Speaker A: Who I. I would say the first thing that is going to catch my eye. Let's put this in the context of I show up to watch a game or a showcase, the first thing that's going to catch my eye is how you look in a uniform is going to be the first thing that I'm going to identify. Like, do you look like you belong in said uniform? And you look like you are physical enough to be able to handle baseball. From there, I'm going to see how you move. You know, are you do. Is there athleticism there? And then you Know, what is your gameplay like? And then the, the. What's the word I'm looking for? The superlatives. The. It's not superlatives, is it?
• 36:47
  Speaker B: Andrew?
• 36:49
  Speaker A: I'm struggling with words tonight. My brain's not working.
• 36:53
  Speaker B: When you say superlatives, I think of like, best sm.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's. That's why I was like, I don't want to use this. It's like a yearbook term. The, the intangibles. Intangibles is probably a better word that go along with it. You know, your body language, you know, are, you know, how do you treat your teammates, how do you treat your coaches, how do you interact with them, how do you interact with your parents? All of those type things. So I think it's more, you know, it's more how you look, how you move, how do you play the game? You know, do you hustle? Are you getting on and off the field? You know, what are those types of things that are going to include me into that? You're like, A, you really want to be there. B, this is what you want to do, you know, have you put in the time, energy and effort to look like you belong, Things like that. I think from an off the field standpoint, you know, video is, is a good way, obviously, because it's going to give me a baseline of where your skill set is and whether or not I think it fits into our program. You know, short, crisp emails are generally a good thing. You know, college coaches are getting a lot of them. So, you know, having a short, crisp email that kind of tells me who you are, where you're from, why you're interested in the school, what your major is, who you play for in the summer, what high school you go to, things like that that give me all the pertinent information with a video attached and, you know, maybe a transcript or a schedule, you know, those things will usually would have caught my eye. You know, the, the long, the long emails that tell me that, you know, you've been an all star since you were, you know, 7U and you've played travel baseball since 8U and this, that and the other thing, like I'll be the first one to tell you, like, nobody cares who you played for it at 8U. It doesn't matter. That was by the time you get to College. That was 11 years ago. So that is a far, far distant memory, if you will. So you know more of the pertinent information, who you play for now, what do you know, how good are you? You know, throw Some metrics in there if you want, but you know, the video, you know, couple swings, some pitches, open side, behind, you know, give me an idea of where your skill set is and go from there.
• 39:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's two different pieces to this puzzle. There's like the non game action stuff and then the game action stuff. For non game stuff, like if you're a pitcher, trackman is going to catch people's eye, right. If you've got numbers that match up to what a coach particularly recruits, that'll is a good way to get a coach's interest, right. You can post those, you can send them via email. Video plus the metrics from a pitching perspective will give a guy a pretty good indication of that is good enough for us to go and want to go see rankings maybe a little bit less. But you know, we've had some guys echo this as well that, you know, if you're a really highly ranked player, it's probably not by accident, right. People will tell you, you know, might tell you that rankings don't matter at all. I don't think that they make coaches make a decision on a guy. Right. You're not going to recruit a guy just because of his ranking. But if a kid's highly ranked, it might clue you into like, hey, I might need to go see this kid. As far as when you're at the game and you're at, you know, you're evaluating a player, like what catches your interest, like you nailed it. First thing you see is what does a kid look like in a uniform, right? Does, does he got some presence to him? How's he preparing himself and then obviously doing something that is impactful in a game. But up front, yeah, coaches are going to use social media, they're going to use trackman and in different rankings from PBR and perfect game. Yeah. They're going to leverage that as information to maybe get the story, you know, start, you know, start telling that story whether that kid might be worth their time. I personally, from an interest perspective, getting a call or a text message from somebody that has an idea what's going on, that always piques my interest. Right. Like there was a guy down in Virginia, those are William and Mary Shout Out Donnie Phillips, I worked with his son. But if Donnie called us on a kid, we were gonna go see that guy almost without second guessing anything. Because if Donnie took the time to pick up the phone and call us, he knows enough about that kid. He's seen that kid enough. He knows what we like, he knows what we value. He knows guys who've been successful in the program. We were going to go and probably check that kid out. So having somebody in your corner can, can certainly peak, peak a coach's interest if you get a good phone call from somebody, that matters. So anything else you want to add to that?
• 41:53
  Speaker A: Nope.
• 41:54
  Speaker B: All right, that's the end of today's Q and A session. Thank you for listening, everybody. Tune in next week. We'll have something else for you. 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 Spot. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MD Baseball. 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.