6 Blind Spots In Recruiting ⚾️

Hey, how you doing, Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we are taking a look at the six blind spots in the college baseball recruiting process and helping you navigate this as you go. Because I understand as a parent and high school student athlete doing this on your own, hey, it can be tough. And that is what I'm here. I'm here to help you navigate this college recruiting process as best as possible. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division I college baseball coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help high school baseball athletes and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and best position them as best as possible to play at the next level. And hopefully this video will help you kind of know what to look for. Right. And know what to get help with if you need that certain help. As we navigate through this process, I'm going to go into detail about these things as we go. But with that said, let's go on and hop in. And if you do get anything from this video, please smash that like button that thumbs up. If you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening to on the podcast, go on and subscribe and please rate a review as well. That's super helpful for me. Would love to hear any feedback that you guys have. And if you have guys have any questions, please comment down below on the YouTube channel or reach out to me if you're listening on the podcast. Let's go on and dive in. So the first blind spot, and these aren't in any particular order, but there's just six of them. But the first one we're going to cover today is what schools are in need of your position. This is a blind spot. Do you know what schools are in need of your position? So not every school's in need of every position each year or they've already committed the player that players that are at your position in your class, whether you're the 20, 24 class, 2025 class, 2026 or 27. All right, have they already committed your position and are they still in need? So if you're a right handed pitcher, they're not just going to bring in one right handed pitcher. Typically they can bring in two, three, four, five right handed pitchers, left handed pitchers, they can bring anywhere from one to three depending on how many they have on their roster. And the same with all these different positions as we go through this. So are they in need of your position? A Lot of factors are involved with that. Well, how do you know when you could reach out to them or you could get some help? I'm actually coming out with a new feature on my premier athletes recruiting platform that's going to show all the commitments at every school that they have put out there from a verbal commitment standpoint. So you're going to know. All right. Hey. Who has been recruited or committed at my position in my class. All right, so that's going to be super helpful. I'm excited that's going to be launched. And actually this week, along with an assistant feature on my recruiting app, which is going to be super helpful. I'm going to do a video on that as we go. But what schools are in need of your position. The next blind spot is. Is travel ball worth it? This is a blind spot. Because the thing is, most people think that travel ball is the end all, be all and will help. It will get me recruited. Most of us, it does not help, honestly. Now, are there good travel ball organizations out there? Absolutely. But does is it necessary? No, it's not necessary. Okay. You don't have to play travel ball. And one thing that you have to keep in mind is what are you doing travel ball for? Okay. Are you doing travel ball for solely recruiting? If you are, great. Okay. Well, let's think about this. Is it helping me with recruiting? The thing is, these college coaches are watch a very small amount of games through the summer, and that is of the top team. So you got to ask yourself, am I on the top team? If you are not on the top team, it's probably not worth it from a recruiting standpoint. Now, if it's from a developmental standpoint and getting reps, it might be worth it from that standpoint. But if you're traveling across the country with your travel ball team or regionally spending thousands and thousands of dollars you got, you gotta ask yourself, is it worth it? Could I just train locally at home or around my state and not spend thousands and thousands of dollars from a travel ball's perspective? Okay, so you gotta ask yourself, is travel ball worth it? And you're gonna know a lot of this, right? Especially if you've been in travel ball and you've played. Are college scouts at your games? Ask yourself that. Are college scouts at your games or been at your games? You're gonna know. You're gonna recognize college scouts. They're very recognizable, right? They got a hat on, they have a radar gun writing notes down. They have a backpack or a briefcase on. Those are college Scouts. Well, if you're playing at a random field, at a random tournament, usually most of the time there's no college coaches there. Okay, so you're playing games and sometimes this is the worst thing, right? You play a travel, you play a travel tournament and you're across, you know, you're in a different state and you're playing a local team from your local area, hours away, where you guys could have just played locally, right? It's the same. And there's no college cops there, right? It's just like, oh, what are we doing? Right? This is kind of my problem with travel ball. I used to love travel ball, I really did. I thought it was necessary and really helped with recruiting. But the problem is it's become so big and there's so many teams and it's not actually really helping with recruiting anymore. Okay. It's just a small majority of players are actually getting help from a travel ball organization. And the thing is, you're going to know that. Okay, so that's the one blind spot in travel ball. And the next one, what coaches are looking for at your position, what are they looking for? Whether you're a middle infielder or a pitcher or a catcher or center fielder or a corner guy, what are they looking for? Do you meet the qualities of what they're looking for? All right, so and this gets into my next one, what schools are a good fit for you athletically, academically, geographically? All right, all these things that you need to consider and have preferences for, right? When you're putting together your school. My recruiting app actually helps with this. I have five questions that I ask you and it filters out all these new schools for you there. But what are they looking for? Hey, you know, sometimes I've seen this before, it's like, hey, a right handed pitcher wants to go play at Vanderbilt. He's a junior, but he throws 83 miles an hour. Hey, that's not what they're looking for. That's just not what they're looking for. Okay? You could possibly play at a different level, alright, lower level, but, but not, not going to be playing at Vanderbilt as a right handed pitcher throwing 83 miles an hour. Those guys, Coach Corbin and those guys are looking for guys throwing 90 plus the strike thrower with a hammer breaking ball and has a good strike percentage. All right? Left handed pitchers, 88 plus with a good breaking ball. That's what they're looking for in high school. Okay, so if we don't fit what they're looking for, then that's we want to make sure we're setting ourselves up in a good position to go after schools of that fit us athletically. All right. And where we're at in particular high school, are we a freshman, are we a sophomore, are we junior, are we going into our senior year? Because if we're going into our senior year, we kind of need to fit that mold right now. If we're a freshman, obviously we have time to develop into that as we go, but that's really important. And then what's a good fit for you? Making sure that you're looking at all the levels, as I mentioned, not only athletically, because baseball, you know, most of us are not going to play this game forever. Actually all of us will stop playing at some point. And we need to set ourselves up for success for the long career that we're going to have after baseball. Right. We're going to have a 40 year career after baseball. So getting a great education, using baseball as a conduit to get into a great school. And there's great schools at all these levels. D1, D2, D3, Nai Juco, you can set yourself up for success. Don't be so close minded on hey, the power fives, D1s or bus right where you could play at some other different level and have a great experience, have a great college experience, which is ultimately what matters is having a great college experience. Then when to start the recruiting process? Some should start earlier. All right. Some can start a little bit later. Start earlier. If you're ready to get the ball going and you're, you're thinking ahead physically you're ready to get the ball going. Some people start as early as freshman year and some, it makes sense, some start sophomore year. It's typically when I suggest kind of getting going on recruiting process, getting on radars of schools because why is that? Most schools will start looking at players sophomore year and getting on their radars. But some also, if they need more and more time, they're really late bloomer. Maybe you should start junior year. All right, when I say junior year, the recruiting process is really getting in front of college coaches. You can start sophomore year targeting schools and things like that, but getting in front of them. If we're not physically there yet, wait till junior year. Because still a lot of schools are still recruiting junior especially D2s and D3s as we go and even D1s junior year. Just it's one of those where a, as time goes through this college recruiting process, more and more of maybe the commitments happen. For your position happen. I'm not saying that to rush you, but that's just the reality of it as we go through this process. So. And then what camps and showcases are worth going to? So showcases are a third party, meaning a company runs that and then they bring in schools or hopefully bring in schools and bring in. That's the tricky thing about this and I'm going to explain that here in a minute. Camps are school specific, so the actual universities hosting the camp and the college coaches will be there. Okay. I really like camps. I think camps are a really good place to get recruited and most schools recruit out of their camps and just making sure that they're recruiting your position, they're in need of your position, etc. Showcases. Okay. We want to make sure that one schools are going to be there, that's a good fit for us and that the decision makers are going to be there. If they don't show the schools that are going to be there or the coaches are going to be there, it's usually a red flag. And then what are we looking for? We want at least one day, preferably two day showcase. Why is that? Because you have more time to showcase your abilities in front of coaches and usually two day showcases have games you want to play. Games you don't want to. Just do a pro style workout. Have a half a day. You want to, you know, you run a 60, you take 10 swings, 15 swings, whatever it is, you throw five balls across the field if you're an infielder or to the bases if you're an outfielder and then that's it. No, that's not a good evaluation from a college coach. Then they're going to need to see you play in game. Well, let's do the pro style and games all in one weekend. It will give you, the coaches a better evaluation of you as a ballplayer. Right. Because not everybody. Again, just because you play a showcase and maybe you have good metrics doesn't mean it translates over into the game and vice versa. You might not have the best metrics. I didn't have the best metrics. Why you with my metrics. But I could. Why you in a game? I was really good in the game. So that's, that's important going through this and that's something to look for as we go. So those are the six blind spots. Hopefully this, this video gave you something to look for and to target and to help best position you as you go. If you have any questions, please comment down below. If you got anything from this video. Please smash that like button or subscribe on my podcast. I'll see you in the next video. Take care.