9 Hard Truths About Recruiting You Need To Hear

Hey, team Alex here. And in today's episode, it's going to be a little bit of tough love, but it's going to be well intentioned to get you in the right direction. Hopefully take some blinders off going through this recruiting process because I know it can be hard to know what you don't know going through this recruiting process, especially if you've never done this before. So we're going to be talking about nine hard truths about recruiting. If you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swinson. I'm A former Division 1 college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help high school baseball players and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. And if you're looking for more personalized help, you can visit my website down in the description or you can pull it up right here. So let's go on and start with number one, athletic ability comes first. Then grades. Now, I'm not saying grades are not important. They are certainly important. But to play at the college level, we have to have an athletic set. We have to hit athletic standards depending on the levels that we are going for and the beauty of it, at the college level, there's all different types of levels. There's the D1 power fours, there's the D1 mid majors, there's D2, D3 NAI and JUCO. But we have to have an athletic set because you can have grades all day, but literally if you can't throw a ball or you can't hit a ball, it doesn't matter. We have to hit athletic standards for the levels that we are going after. Number two, coaches won't find you unless you are the.001% that throws 95 miles an hour and it's hitting 15 home runs. All of that, hey, they are not just going to find you. That kind of saying is, hey, if you're good enough, they will find you. Well, that's not true for most of us. It's a small truth for a very small percentage of us. It wasn't true for me. I wasn't the elite athlete. I had to be proactive. And my point of saying this, you need to be proactive in putting yourself in the best position so college coaches find you. All right? Because you've put yourself in a good position, make it easy for these college coaches to find you. Number three, physicality matters. Getting strong in the weight room can solve a lot of our issues. And the reality of it is a lot of these coaches want, and I would say most coaches want one. Physical players. Now it's going to be on a position by position basis. They're going to expect more physicality from a first baseman, third baseman than maybe a second baseman or a center fielder. But hey, getting strong in the weight room solves a lot of problems and will help you, especially if you're undersized. I'm undersized. It helped me a lot get to the Division 1 level just being strong in the weight room because I could kind of compete up from a strength standpoint with guys that were bigger than than me. Number four, you don't have to use travel ball or have to play travel ball to play at the next level play in college. Honestly, in my opinion, travel ball is watered down and overrated most time. Are there good travel organizations out there? Certainly. But man, they're starting to become fewer and fewer of them because they've just gotten so many and so big that again, it's watered things down. And playing at a random field in Georgia or Texas or Florida or California, no college coaches are there is not going to help us from a recruiting standpoint. Now from a developmental standpoint, and hopefully your coaches and your organization does a good job from a developmental standpoint. We're starting to lose some of that as well. That is great. All right. You want to develop, develop. But you could probably ask yourself, could you just do that locally? Do you have to spend all that money going out and traveling with gas, hotels, flights sometimes? Understand there can be a better way than just travel and you don't have to play travel ball to get to the college level. Number five, position needs vary, meaning not every school's need of you or your son's position. So targeting schools that are in need of your position helps a lot. So there's going to be some schools out there just not in need of your position in your recruiting class. And you need to ask these coaches, are you in need of my position in my recruiting class? Number six. Scouts recruit up the middle. They recruit most consistently the positions that are up the middle of the field. Because if you're not strong in the middle of the field, you. You're not going to have a strong team. So what are those positions? Pitchers, catchers, shortstops and center fielders. Those are the positions that get recruited the most. Now, of course, are they going to recruit corn guys? Third baseman and first baseman? Of course. But just from a number standpoint, they're going to recruit up the Middle because a lot of times a shortstop is the most athletic on the field. So he could go over to second base, he could go over to third. Sometimes he can go on the corner, outfield or even center field depending on his speed and how he tracks balls and things like that. And of course catchers and pitchers is self explanatory but got to be strong up the middle. Number seven and I get questions all the time, how hard do I need to throw to pitch at the D1 level? Well, I've run a lot of these numbers and have a good average of where you need to be by the time you're a senior year at least going into college. So from a right handed pitcher's perspective, you need to be sitting around 86 to 88. And notice I said 60 sitting, not topping out. You need to be consistently throwing 86 to 88 miles an hour as a right handed pitcher topping out 89, 90, 91. All right. Obviously the higher the better and you need to be a strike thrower, guys. That is very, very important. Be a strike thrower. Don't just be a thrower, be a pitcher. From a left handed pitcher's perspective for the Division 1 level you need to be averaging and sitting around 84 to to 86 miles an hour, topping out 88, 89 somewhere right around there. As we go through that, you do that, you're a strike thrower, you're going to have opportunities to play at the Division 1 level. Number 8, D1 or bus is stupid. That mindset is not smart. Now I get it. You want to play at the highest level that you possibly can. And going after division one is great as long as you are going after D2, D3 NAI or juco if that makes sense for you. But you need to make sure you're covering all of your bases because not everybody's going to play at the Division 1 level. Only 2.2% of high school players make it to Division 1. It's harder to be a Division 1 athlete than it is to be a Navy SEAL. And only around 10% of high school players will make it to college. And that's all of the levels. D1, D2, D3, NAI and JUCO. All right, make sure that you are casting a wide net at first, managing your expectations. It's perfectly fine to dream big, but you need to make sure and get professional evaluation. People that are around you and to be honest with you, of where you are projecting as you go through this. Number nine roster cuts have made it harder all right. It was already really hard to get and play at the next level. So we were at 40 and we're cutting it down to 34 for the Division 1A level for D2 in D3 usually. Typically we're seeing anywhere from 35 to 40 players on a roster. And that is. That ranges big time as we go through this. And it's important to check what their roster is because you want to be careful of rosters that are way high up there in the 45s and 50s. All right. Because opportunities to play going through that. So do your homework going through this process. You can use the premier athletes app and get more information as we're going through this. But it has made it tougher. All right. It was already pretty tough. That's why it's so important that you are proactive in this recruiting process and you have a wide range of schools. And then also along with this, transfer portals. Right. I hear all the time like transfer portals. Just absolutely going to crush recruiting for high school baseball players. Has it made an impact? Certainly it's made an impact, but it hasn't crushed. They have to continue to recruit high school players because college players are going to continue to move up from freshman, sophomore, junior, senior and graduate. All right. High school players have to come in now. It's made a bigger impact. Typically we're seeing the power four schools, SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12. Yeah, it's more of an impact from a transfer portal, but D1 Mid majors, it's a small percentage of transfer guys coming in for the total class. They're still bringing in a lot of high school players. And lastly, you can control your destiny. You do all right. Nobody else controls your destiny. Your actions will help you get to the next level. Just don't sit back and hope that it happens. And if you have any questions, please let me know and I'll see you in the next video.