The college baseball season begins Friday. The sport has never been in a better place. More games are on television. More fans are attending games in person. And the talent level is at an all-time high.
We talked to 11 coaches to get their thoughts on various topics impacting the sport. In Part 1, we asked the coaches to name the best players in the game and identify teams to watch this spring. In Part 2, published Tuesday, we hit on two of the biggest issues in college baseball: NIL and the transfer portal. Today, the coaches address recruiting and scouting.
Here are the coaches:
- Craig Gibson, Mercer (Southern)
- Chip Hale, Arizona (Pac-12)
- Link Jarrett, Florida State (ACC)
- Jay Johnson, LSU (LSU)
- Chris Lemonis, Mississippi State (SEC)
- Steve Owens, Rutgers (Big Ten)
- Kirk Saarloos, TCU (Big 12)
- Jim Schlossnagle, Texas A&M (SEC)
- Andy Stankiewicz, USC (Pac-12)
- Tom Walter, Wake Forest (ACC)
- Robert Woodard, Charlotte (AAC)
The NCAA recently changed the rules about when you can contact a prospect (not until Aug. 1 before their junior year). Has that been a positive change?
Walter: Yeah, I think it’s been a really positive change. We were getting to the point where we were seeing eighth and ninth graders make their college decisions. And the problem with that is, they’re making those decisions without all the information. They haven’t spent a night on the campus or talked with players on the team. They’re making a decision based on facilities or gear or success. And those to me, those shouldn’t be the primary drivers of your college decision. So moving this later in the process has been really good because now kids are more mature. And the second part is that the schools were making decisions without all the information. You were getting commitments from a ninth-grade kid. You don’t know what his work ethic is, and you don’t know what kind of student he’s going to be. And he doesn’t even know what kind of person he is going to be. I just remember having these conversations with these 14-year-old kids, and I’m like, “What do I want to talk to a 14-year-old kid about? Like, video games?” So point is, I love this decision to move the calendar back because it enables schools and recruits to make better decisions with more information, so there’s less swing and misses, so to speak.
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Owens: Well, it’s new, so I think whenever change occurs, I think you need a little bit of time to kind of digest it. And I think every coach and every school and every situation is a little bit different. So you’re gonna get different answers. For us, we have 25 kids from New Jersey on our team. We find these kids early — it’s our job, it’s an area that we try to know a lot about because that’s what we’re trying to do. So, for us, when we know about somebody early, we would like the opportunity to be able to get that kid (committed). And now with (the date) being delayed, I’m not sure that’s a benefit to us because we can’t communicate with a kid that we might know about a lot earlier (than other programs). So in our case, we are running a lot of camps and getting a lot of local, in-region-type players, because we’re not really recruiting coast-to-coast right now, that’s not what we’re doing. I think that that’s kind of a hindrance to us.
Stankiewicz: I do. I think it helps everybody just slow down. And I think it’s great for the families because I think what happens is, a young man and a family get excited about a university, freshman year, they go to a camp and they’re kind of wowed, and they’re offered a verbal scholarship, and they get excited and they (commit). And then all of a sudden a year or two years go by and things change, who knows if that coach is still there and maybe that young man all of a sudden, he has different interests and now he’s having to go back and say, “Hey, I’m gonna decommit and open it back up again.” And it just kind of gets things tangled. I think now we’ll hopefully slow the process down for both parties, colleges and players, student-athletes and their families, and so now hopefully when you start speaking to them and recruiting them, they’re more ready to make that decision. Now they can go out and visit other schools and really make an educated decision and one that they feel really good about.
Hale: I think it’s a really positive change for kids. … I think committing as eighth graders and ninth graders, it’s just too young. On both sides, you see the kids (sometimes) don’t get better, and then we have to say that, “You’re better off going to junior college, you’re better off going somewhere where you can compete better.” And then sometimes they get super great. And then now they’re reaching for these NIL deals at other schools. So let’s just simmer down a little bit and relax and let them get better and see what they look like as juniors. I think it’s super great for the kids and the families. I think they can relax a little bit, let them just play baseball.
Schlossnagle: One of the greatest changes in my 35 years of college coaching, by far. Because, No. 1, there’s no need. I mean, it’s asinine to think that a child, and they are children at that age, should be thinking about a college decision when they don’t even know how to make it to the math class. And then for us, we already have two recruiting classes to deal with, with the ages above that age, the major league draft and now the transfer portal. I would seriously have considered quitting, I mean retiring from coaching, had that been still in play this past summer. You know, when we’re trying to recruit two classes, hold players in the draft, hold together our own team and the transfer portal. It saved us a lot this summer.
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Lemonis: I think so. Recruiting had gotten so early, and I didn’t mind it per se as much, but the problem is now that we have the portal and NIL, all this transition, if we were having to do it all, I don’t know how we do it. Because with the portal, your whole summer, now you’re chasing transfers. Used to be you’re chasing the high school kids. It’s made for a nice balance, for sure.
Johnson: I think it’s positive. On the coaching and program side, you have a little more time to evaluate players. And so there’s probably less mistakes being made in that regard, of who actually fits. It’s great for the player too because they have a little more self-awareness of what they are, as opposed to maybe what they think they are, and they can probably find a better fit that way.
Saarloos: I’ll probably kind of be Switzerland here and say yes and no. Yes, in the fact of, when a lot of us coaches got into this, we were probably recruiting juniors and seniors in high school. And then it got to the point, probably starting in around 2015, where then you’re starting to recruit sophomores and then it became freshmen and then it became eighth graders. And next thing, you’re recruiting five different classes, and you’re spending 95 percent of your time as a recruiting coordinator thinking about recruiting and recruiting five classes. Where now it slows things down from the standpoint of I’m recruiting a junior college level, I’m recruiting a junior and a senior in high school. And that’s it. Do I really need to have a conversation with an eighth grader? Probably not, but if you’re not, that means you’re falling behind because everybody else is. So I think a lot of times for the kid, I think it’s great because it makes the main thing the main thing now. They should be focusing on development, they should be focusing on the classroom, they should be focusing on their high school team. They should be focusing on those things, as opposed to focusing on trying to win a beauty contest to get a college scholarship.
The negative is I don’t think … our recruiting coordinator likes to say, “Don’t tell me how I can and can’t work.” He loves to work. If it was up to him, he would be able to have started these relationships as early as we can because a lot of recruiting is about relationships. And so now all of a sudden, you have everybody starting that relationship at the start of a kid’s junior year. I think a perfect scenario would probably be Jan. 1 of the kid’s sophomore year. So then you can have contact with the kid prior to their high school season, be able to start having a relationship on the phone and have communication and recruited them the spring of their sophomore year and through the summer, and then on Sept. 1, be able to have them on visits. … So that way, it’s not just a shotgun, where all of a sudden, Sept. 1 rolls around, and it’s out of control in terms of conversations and visits and all those things. I think you can maybe have nine months where you can build up a relationship and then that kid on Sept. 1 can figure out, these are the schools I’m really interested in as opposed to fielding 72 phone calls and having to figure it out.
Do you find it easier or more difficult to efficiently scout high school players today vs. 10 years ago?
Walter: I think it’s easier because there’s access to more information, right? You got more videos online so that you can find out about a kid very quickly. The thing that makes it harder is the competition is also stiffer. You don’t find the diamonds in the rough anymore, like the kid who was relatively unrecruited and kind of comes out of nowhere. …The other thing I don’t like about recruiting now is so much of it is travel ball. So much of it is a conversation with the travel ball coach, and we make an effort to talk to the high school coach as well because I think that’s really important because I think the high school coach, a lot of times, has a better sense of who the kid really is and what his makeup is and what his work ethic is. Obviously, in a travel ball game, you’re gonna see the best version of that young man because he knows there’s 40 scouts there to see him. But who the kid really is day-in and day-out matters, and what I don’t like about how recruiting is, is that the high school coach has become less relevant in the recruiting process. And again, we do try to engage that coach, but you know, a lot of times you’re dealing with travel ball coach, so it’s different.
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Owens: I don’t know if that’s gotten more challenging, but with increased travel and things like that, it becomes harder to get to those games. And then kids from New Jersey are playing in Georgia all summer. And kids from New England are playing in Georgia all summer. So there’s a lot of travel baseball. It’s evolved and it’s going to continue to evolve, and recruiting somebody that’s on your radar could require you to fly to go recruit him instead of just getting in your car and driving up and driving back home. The players also sometimes play for multiple teams. So, you know, you’re playing for Team X, and then all of a sudden, you go to watch Team X play, and you get there and the kid is, well, he hopped on this other team for this tournament in a different part of the country. So there’s a lot of things like that, that make it more challenging. And where a kid used to maybe pitch once a week, and you could maybe follow his progress, now the kid throws two innings on Friday and then another inning on Sunday in the summer. It’s hard to get a true evaluation. You can look at it positively, also. While you’re following players that are already on your radar into different parts of the country, you could open up your recruiting areas.
Stankiewicz: I think it’s a good thing in that they’re playing all the time, right? So you can see them in the summertime every weekend. So that’s a good thing. The bad thing is, sometimes they play so much that you don’t necessarily always get their best game because they’re just, you watch them and you can be, “Is this young man just fatigued? Is he tired? Is this game four in three days from playing in the summer heat of Phoenix or wherever it may be?” And it’s like, you wonder if what you’re seeing is, is what you’re gonna get, and you don’t really know. And so you have to try to handicap kind of where they’re at. And because we’re seeing them so young, and you know, you have to project I think, even more now, you have to be able to kind of trust your eyes and go, “Hey, where’s that player going to be in a couple of years? Is he ready to come into our program and help us?” I love, love high school baseball because high school baseball is, they’re playing for their school, it’s a shorter season, they’re playing for a state title. At times with that comes just a little bit higher level of energy.
Schlossnagle: Easier. There’s more accessible data on the internet. There’s more accessible video on the internet. The showcase circuit in the summer, they play against great competition. I think it’s in terms of evaluating them, it’s easier. They play more. So you get to see him play more.
Lemonis: I think it’s about the same. The timing is different. But the scouting is the same.
Johnson: Definitely better. There’s just more resources, with video. We’re lucky to be at a high-resource school where we can literally go see anybody we want to at any time. And that’s helpful. I think there’s more people interested in amateur baseball now and connected, I guess you would say, and so the resources are just better as far as being able to see them or talk to people about them than probably it’s ever been before. So I feel like we have more access to evaluate them properly.
Jarrett: Easier. Everything’s on video. You can watch it, you have access. You can watch it on your phone, laptop and you’re getting stuff. Social media. Easier.
Gibson: The recruiting calendar has certainly changed. They’ve taken a lot of days from us to be on the road. But I’ve coached for 35 years, so my network is pretty good. I would say it’s a little more challenging now because just the growth of travel ball, the amateur baseball has certainly changed. The number of travel organizations is probably tripled or quadrupled from what it used to be. But I think cutting the recruiting days down has affected that as well.
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Woodard: I would say it’s definitely easier. Heck, I remember my college coaches having to print off Mapquest and get in a car and they didn’t have a GPS, didn’t have cell phones. And so I just think with time, technology has made things like video, TrackMan, all of these resources, social media, all of these things in place have really kind of enabled the processes to be streamlined much more efficiently. So I think it’s now easier to gather information, using TruMedia and Synergy, all types of other things out there that you can get. In evaluating players, you’ve got more pieces to the puzzle. Whereas maybe 10 years ago, you got a few pieces to the puzzle, and if you liked those pieces, then you made a decision. But it feels like the combination of seeing guys in person and evaluating and talking to their references on the phone, gathering data, whether it’s performance data or skill-set data, putting the puzzle together, there’s a lot more information out there.
Do you like conference tournaments?
Walter: I do. I like them. I’m in favor of conference tournaments. I think it’s a great experience for the kids. I think the kids all love going to watch the other games when they’re there. They get to see one another. I do think a regular-season championship is more important than a conference championship. In the Power 5 leagues, or I guess Power 4 leagues now, the conference tournament is not as important as it is in the other leagues. But, again, as far as student-athlete experience goes, I love it.
Owens: I do. Our conference tournament is at TD Ameritrade in Omaha. I think playing a conference tournament is a good experience for the players. It’s kind of exciting. I think it can prepare you if you were fortunate enough to move on for the postseason. With our tournament, the venue is really enticing and cool. And then it’s in the middle of the country where most of the teams in our conference are. So going forward when we increase the number of teams that qualify for the postseason, I think we’ll wind up getting really nice crowds. And it could enhance the experience for everybody.
Stankiewicz: I do like them, I think it kind of brings all the schools back to a main diamond. You get fan support and you kind of get a renewed energy. I think most coaches would say they enjoy kind of that end of the year. Some that are already in (a Regional), maybe some of the SEC schools are like, “Hey, we’re already in it,” so maybe some of those coaches would tell you differently. But I think it’s good anytime you can play competitive baseball and continue to play, look at your game and create an environment where it’s high intensity and it means something. I think that’s where you have to be careful with tournaments is trying to figure out ways when it means something and I think that’s where sometimes with some conferences where they already have a Regional bid, does it lose a little bit because it doesn’t really mean much? In my experience in the WAC (while head coach at Grand Canyon), it meant something. And then this last year it meant something — if we would have won one more game in the tournament, we probably would have gotten in (a Regional). So I think you have to be careful. If it means something, that’s great. If it doesn’t mean something, that’s probably something coaches don’t want to get involved with.
Schlossnagle: I think they’re great competition. They’re good for the fans. They’re great preparation for postseason baseball. And I think they give every league that has them opportunities to get more teams in the NCAA Tournament.
Lemonis: Our fan base would tell you I’d say no. We didn’t play good in ours and we won a natty (in 2021). But I do like it. When you pull that bus up to the SEC Tournament, it’s awesome. And I think that’s a really cool thing. And it gives some teams some opportunities to get in (a Regional) who have had maybe a tough season or had a tough start or had some injuries and started playing well. And I think they’re good for the game.
Johnson: I do. I definitely do. I think that it gives all teams some hope — most teams, because in a lot of conferences you have to qualify for your tournament. But it gives most teams some hope to stay with it throughout the year. Baseball is a tough sport. You’re going to have some adversity, but if you still have a chance, it probably improves the dynamic of those teams to keep fighting, keep competing and pushing as the year goes along, and you’re working through some adversity.
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Saarloos: I do. I think anytime that you can bring your conference together in a tournament field and do it in a place that we get to do it indoors at a big league stadium, at Globe Life (in Arlington, Texas) and kind of just a culmination of a long regular season. I think the one tough thing is you always would want the winner of the regular season to be the automatic bid to the postseason. But when you have a postseason tournament, the only way to make that postseason tournament worth anything, you got to put something on the line. And so that’s why you have the automatic bid being from one weekend. So I think it’s a lot of great baseball. I think it’s a lot of fun because everybody’s there in one location.
Jarrett: I do. I’ve been in a variety of programs. I think it gives everybody something to fight for at the end. Does it produce the best representative in a one-bid-type league? Does that conference tournament produce the best representative going into postseason play? I cannot say that it does. But it gives all of those teams an opportunity to have some sort of postseason experience. So I do think it is good. … I don’t think it needs to be an over-the-top, long, grinding, grueling, dangerous in some cases, conference tournament like some of them can turn into, when guys are playing four games in two days and pitchers are trying to bounce back. I don’t like that. But the concept in general I do like. I think the reset and having a chance at the end to jump into it and win a tournament, I think is the right thing for the kids.
Gibson: You know, we’re sort of split on that in our league. I do like them. I think there’s certainly some value in conference tournaments. I mean, does the best team win it? That’s always debatable, but there’s obviously some leagues in the country that don’t do them, I’ve always had one, so it’s something I’ve always been involved in.
Woodard: I do. I grew up here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the ACC basketball tournament was here every single year. And I grew up going to those every single year, and that was the only opportunity as a kid where I got to watch every team play. And I think it’s good for growing the game to future generations and players and families and the visibility of it. I think getting all the teams together for a conference tournament, I think it’s a lot more positive than negative. Do I think that some formats are better than others? Sure. Do I think that there could be a little bit too much emphasis put on them, and this is coming from a team that we got in by winning our conference tournament last year. But we were also an at-large team in 2021. So we’ve gotten in from different avenues here in Charlotte. I personally would like to see more than 64 teams in the field, so that it didn’t feel like some deserving teams over the course of a 15- or 16-week regular season were getting bumped out by teams that had a strong week (at a conference tournament). But that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.
(Photos of Jay Johnson, Jim Schlossnagle, Robert Woodard: Steven Branscombe / USA Today, Texas A&M Athletics, Charlotte Athletics)
