What college baseball COACHES look for...

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about the six key areas college coaches look at when they come watch you play, when they come evaluate you, or they come recruit you. Now, there's a couple factors that are important before they even decide to come and watch a player. We're going to talk briefly about that. But before we get into that, if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swinson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout, and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is I help high school athletes go through this college recruiting process and help them find the best college fit. Hopefully, you get something from this video. If you do, please smash that, like, button that thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video on the recruiting process and how to just get better on and off the field. But let's get into this. So before even a coach comes out and watches a player, they need to know who they're in need of, meaning the recruiting class. Okay. It could be the 2023 recruiting class, 2024 recruiting class to 2025 recruiting class, and so on and so on. And they're going to have different needs in each class. These coaches and schools, they're not in need of every position. Every year it can fluctuate. One year they might need a catcher. One year they might not need a catcher. One year they might bring on two center fielders or three outfielders. The next year they're not going to bring on any outfielders. And there's a number of factors involved with that. Schools that. And their rosters. Right. So the first thing is rosters. What does their roster management look like? And they forecast that out. Who are the players that are going to be leaving the program, are potentially leaving the program? Who are the players that are coming in? Now we have the transfer portal. There's a lot of factors involved with that. So when they come to, for example, the 2024 recruiting class they're going to have, they're going to know what they're going to be in need of, and they're going to go after those positions. So that's also important for you to know which schools that are going to be in need of that position, of your position. So you can target the right ones and not waste time on schools that are not in need of your position. Very, very important. But once they know, they're going to go out and evaluate those players and Watch those players as they go as far as those positions and what are some of the things that they're going to look for? Let's dive into this. The six key areas that college coaches look for. The first one is physicality. Okay, why is physicality the first thing? Because this is the first thing that they see. They see your body type, right? And we want to be physical. We want to look strong, okay? We want to look like that. We have been in the weight room now, of course, there's all different body types and things like that. I totally get that. But we want to look strong. We want to look like we are in shape. Very, very important. Guys, if you think that you're just going to get in shape your senior year or when you get into college, you are way behind. It's going to be very, very hard for you to catch up. Okay? So we want to make sure that we are staying locked in and focused in on the. In the weight room. And the thing is, the weight room can solve a lot of things. As we get stronger, Our metrics start becoming better as we go. Our game performance can start becoming a lot better. So the weight room can solve a lot of things. So make sure that we don't turn coaches off of just basically not being physical enough. Okay? And if you are smaller like me, I'm a smaller athlete. I'm only 5, 7. And I had to make up areas, right? I had to make sure that I was super physical. I had to really make sure that I was focusing in the weight room, getting stronger. But my nutrition had to be on point. Your nutrition has to be on point, especially if you're a smaller athlete or it's hard for you to put on weight. Man, if you put in a lot of calories and you're eating six, seven, eight meals a day, that's going to help you put on your weight. Okay, let's go to the next one. The second thing that they're going to look at after they see you just as a player, as your body type is your athleticism at your position, your skills at your position. How athletic are you? This is going to show how projectable you are. This is a terminology in recruiting and scouting, how projectable he is. The more athletic you are, the more projectable you are. And the. The better the skills that you have at your position, the more projectable you are. What's the forecast of you going to be? Because as you guys might know, recruiting gets done pretty early. Okay? Sophomore and junior year is kind of the bulk of the Recruiting process in that. Now if you're going, if you just ended in your, the summer after your junior year, going in your senior year, you still have time. Don't worry, you still have time. There's a lot of recruiting going on, especially the Division 2 and Division 3 levels in NAIA and JUCO. So there's plenty of recruiting going on in that time frame. But that is the bulk of the recruiting process going through this. And the thing is, you're going to have different skills at different positions, right? A catcher is going to have a different skill set than a shortstop or a center fielder. And you're going to have to improve and know what areas you're going to improve. So make sure that you surround yourself with good coaches. Know what you need to work on. Know what is important at your position. You might think you know, but you might want to talk to coaches. You might want to talk to a person like me, like what do I need to be focused on? Because you probably have a primary position, but you also probably have a secondary position and that's great too, okay? So focus on the important things at your position. Now the next thing is definitely game performance. Okay? Game performance really does matter if you are not a metrics person. I was never really a high metrics player. I didn't have like the world's greatest metrics or even excellent metrics. I was just pretty good. Okay. But my game performance was better. I played better. I was a gamer, as they call it, all right? I really played above my size. I played above what my metric showed from a showcase standpoint. And ultimately that is what matters. Okay? Make sure your game performance is on point and coaches are going to look at that. Coaches are going to look at your game performance. Now the thing is, they're going to look at your game performance versus good competition and bad competition. If you're always playing bad competition and you're really playing up, you know that's gonna. They were gonna wait to see you play against good competition. They want you to obviously perform a good, good competition because that's going to be able to project out, right? That's going to be able to project out of how you're going to play at the next level. Level. The next thing is metrics. That metrics are definitely a part of this. Now a lot of people like an end all be all on metrics. It's not that the case. You got to be careful of like the perfect games, the perfect game ratings, all that stuff. It's not as big of a deal as you Think it is. Now there is important. It's a piece of the puzzle. Okay, There is a piece of the puzzle. So pitchers, right. VLO is important to a certain extent. But the good thing is with metrics, there's all different skill levels and metric levels at all of these levels, right? Division one, you got the, there's like three tiers. You got the power fives and that's the top tier. And you have to be really, really good. Skill set wise, game performance wise, metrics wise, physicality wise. I mean there's so much at the tier mid major still very, very competitive. Lower level, division ones still very, very competitive. Then you got division two. There's, there's like almost two tiers in division two. There's division three and there's pretty much three tiers in division three. And then you have NAI and you have juco and there's tiers within JUCO as well. So there's a lot. The good thing is there's so many different skill levels at the college level. And if you are a starter on your varsity team and you contribute and you contribute well to your, your varsity team, there's a place for you, I'm very confident saying that there's a place for you to play at the next level. Now where that is, it's going to kind of be dependent on your skill level, your experience, exposure to the college coaches, your engagement with the college coaches and finding that fit, especially with positions, etc from there. And what these college coaches are looking for because ultimately they're trying to bring in guys that are going to help their program and they're looking for winners, they want winners and they obviously need to bring in the players that they're in need of their position, depending on that class. Okay? Then of course we get into academics. Academics are super important. Your transcript is super important. Make sure that your grades are as high as you possibly can. Don't let grades be a deciding factor for you in the negative way. Right? Because there's probably a comparable athlete out there. You player A, player B, a comparable athlete that they're trying to decide on. Well, they're going to and say you have the same metrics, game performance, skill level, all that physicality. And then the academics, player A doesn't have as good of academics. Player B. Well, they're going player B every single time. Okay? And then of course we have character. Character. It's just so important. Making sure that you're a good teammate, you're coachable, you're a leader in certain ways. Leader doesn't mean, like, you have to be rah rah all the time, but just leading by example. How do you play the game? Does it matter to you? Are you that type of player? Like, your team wins, but you're so upset that you didn't get a hit or. Or you had a bad outing but the team won, right? And you're kind of almost look into a selfish way. And I get it. We all want to perform well, but the ultimate goal is to win, right? And this is a team game, so when you win, that is a great thing. So there's been plenty of players out there that they win, but they're, you know, they're complaining and whining because they had a bad game, head sagging, all this stuff. But the team won, right? The team won. That's the most important thing. But making sure that you have good character. And lastly, wrapping this up here. Just be proactive in this process. Don't sit back and hope that you're found or think that you're going to be found. That's how you get missed. That's definitely how you get. So engage, engage in this recruiting process. Engage with coaches. So hopefully you got something from this video. If you did, please like and subscribe and I will see you in the next one. All right, take care. Have a good day.