Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / Baseball players have a massive mountain to climb to get to the next level - more so than any other sport

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Baseball players have a massive mountain to climb to get to the next level - more so than any other sport · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

• 0:00
  So does it make it because you know, we've talked about this before.
• 0:03
  You take a high school football payer in the state of Mississippi, who is
• 0:07
  what I would consider a fringe player, meaning five ten years ago, State
• 0:11
  Ole Miss, Southern Miss, anybody would have taken them, maybe you know,
• 0:15
  taking a chance on the last twenty four, twenty five, twenty six,
• 0:17
  twenty seven and that recruiting cycle. Now they're holding that for transfer guys,
• 0:21
  so that drops them down a level. It makes the junior college level
• 0:25
  even more competitive. But for baseball, which you know the transfer portals being
• 0:29
  worked as well, So is which is it? Baseball? Is a football?
• 0:33
  Is at basketball? Now that the guys have the hardest hill to climb?
• 0:37
  I think it's baseball just too sheer numbers. And I think it hurts
• 0:40
  the high school kids more than it hurts anyone. High school kids that could
• 0:45
  have potentially gone to a four year school now all of a sudden, they're
• 0:49
  going to a junior college. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with going junior colleges
• 0:54
  in this state, as good as the baseball programs are. But if there's
• 0:59
  so much a true and I guess hold over in these junior college programs where
• 1:08
  they're not sending players on to the four year level. It's a log jam,
• 1:14
  and these high school kids are getting there now instead of getting on the
• 1:17
  field right away as a freshman. Now they're having to sit a year and
• 1:19
  then you don't know what's going to happen in year two. You might have
• 1:23
  to sit for two years and then have to fend for yourself to find a
• 1:26
  four year school to go to. So I think it hurts baseball more than
• 1:30
  any sport out there, just from the standpoint of sheer numbers or a lack
• 1:34
  of opportunity because of log jams and these programs. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:40
  like you said, the sheer numbers. I mean, just look at any
• 1:42
  baseball field from perfect game to you trip or there's so many baseball players now
• 1:49
  and guys that are pretty good and want to compete. That just makes it
• 1:52
  even harder to make that jump from high school, you know, tournament team
• 1:55
  the high school to the next level. You got to be pretty damn good.
• 1:57
  Yeah, And well, people use to say, if you want to
• 2:00
  play college baseball, there's always a spot for you. You can always go
• 2:04
  to a junior college. There's so many junior colleges and that's not the case
• 2:07
  anymore. There's not a spot for everybody anymore. I bet I don't know
• 2:13
  what the number is. I'd say less than two percent of high school baseball
• 2:16
  players in America have the opportunity to move on and play at the collegiate level,
• 2:23
  just because of the problems that we're talking about.