Wade Townsend

[colbyjack]

It allows 4 year schools a breather with recruiting. They have to compete against pro baseball already, this allows them to not have to compete as much on a year-to-year basis. For JC's, they are only two-year institutions, they have to recruit heavily all the time anyway, it does not affect them nearly as much.

 

Sorry, but that's just not true. College baseball is just like college football or basketball. None of these sports are granted any kind of "breather" when it comes to recruiting. The minute a team takes a break trying to recruit the best talent they can, that's the minute that team starts to struggle. It's very similar to player development. A bad year can be disastrous.

 

At showcase events there are usually as many, if not more, college recruiters than pro scouts following these players. They have to sell their institution just as hard as pro scouts have to sell their organizations.

 

And in fact, college recruiters may have it a lot tougher than basketball & football programs because they have to juggle between the best players in the nation vs. the best players they feel they can actually get on campus (of course the biggest debate in college basketball is the fact that more & more of the top recruits are heading straight to the NBA out of HS, so they're starting to feel that sting). The top players in the nation more often than not are going to be drafted early & sign with that drafting ballclub. Any college team that has a lot of recruits expected to be drafted early could get burned by those commitments that never come to fruition.

 

The top players that remain (those that aren't drafted in the top 5 rounds or so) for the most part still attend four-year institutions. There are a lot of players that fall in the draft because they make it clear that they want to attend college, and/or they need a hefty bonus to be swayed out of their college commitment (like Sean Morgan, Drew Bowman & Ty Pryor this past year), and some players will flat-out tell teams not to bother drafting them because of this.

 

On top of that, you have players that transfer, get injured, don't pan out, etc.