What D1 Coaches Look For in a Hitter

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we are talking about what college coaches and scouts look for in a high school hitter. Especially now that we are in the thick of the recruiting process for this year and college coaches are out and about at games, at showcases, at camps, evaluating players and in this particular case, hitters, seeing if they are a good match for their program. What they're looking for, and ultimately what they're looking for is players to come in and make an impact and for their program and win a national championship. That is what it comes down to right there. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division I college coach, scout and recruiter. And now what I do is help high school baseball athletes and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and really help just best position them as best as possible to play at the next level. So if you get anything from this episode, Whether you're on YouTube, please smash that like button and subscribe. And if you're on the podcast, I would love for you to subscribe and put a review down at the bottom. I know that some people like to listen to this in the car or working out. So if you're on YouTube and you ever want to do that, go over to the podcast premier athletes, it's on Apple and Spotify and you can check that out there. With that said, let's go on and dive into what the skill sets are that these college coaches are looking for. Alright. The first one is hitability. All right. Alright. This one I kind of made up the word of hitability. I could have put a dash here, but I could, I could have just put that together and it's hitability. All right. How consistent are you of hitting the ball hard? Alright, that is really, really important. You're just, you find barrels a lot. That is the number one thing that these college coaches want, right? Is barrels, barrels, barrels. And how consistent are you don't get so caught up in the exit velocity and you know, trying to get that. That is probably the most overrated metric you will find out of all of the metrics. Okay. And it is really just all about how consistent are you of hitting the ball hard in game. Yeah, BP is great and all, but where it really matters is the game. Alright. Also the next thing that they're looking for is on base ability. You finding ways to get on base. Base. Hitting the ball hard is one of those things, right? Sometimes you just hit it right at guys or hey, they make an error because of how hard you hit it, right, or you're just walking. You find ways to get on base, because ultimately we need to get on base to score. That is what we're trying to do. So play discipline as well. This is a really, really good sign for college coaches when they're watching and evaluating a hitter is the plate discipline. All right? They have good awareness, they can control the strike zone. They know their strengths. They know even their weaknesses of where they hit the ball well within the zone. They strike out very minimal time. So low strikeouts and high walks doesn't swing at bad pitches. Now, every once in a while, you're going to swing at bad pitches, but you limit that. Your plate discipline is really, really good. The swing, okay? The next thing, they're definitely going to look at your swing and how that is. We want short, compact and quick swing. So your hand speed is really, really high, which ultimately turns into your bat speed turning into high, which can really help you compete against good competition. Because these college coaches are going to project out, right? They're going to see you in high school. And the talent level from high school to college is honestly just drastically different. So it's a hard thing to really evaluate and project out a hitter. But there's certain things that they're looking for, which are the things that we're talking about today. And the swing is a big one with the bat speed, okay? The bat speed. Because when you get to college, especially if you're at a division one level, we're going to be seeing 88 plus consistently. And nowadays it almost seems like it's consistently 90s. Okay? And we've got to have quick, compact swings as we go through this. And then there's game power. All right? Hey, bp, power is great and all, but does it translate into the game as well? And not every position coaches are looking for for power. Right center fielder, you're not necessarily looking for that much power. If it comes with it, great. But typically, center fielders don't have a lot of power. Their hit ability is high, all right? They get on base and they're speedsters, but their hit ability is not high. Catchers are. You typically like that as well, but we're looking for power big time on the corner. So third base and first base, sometimes the corner outfields. And if a short stop, if you got some power to you, that's a big plus as well. So extra base hits, doubles, triples and home runs is what we're looking for as well. But that's almost on a position by position basis and traits. Okay, what are the traits that we're looking at when we're evaluating a player? When whether it's in BP or whether it's in the game is the good presence at the plate. You have good presence against good pitchers and not a lot going on. Meaning you don't have all these things going on with your swing, your hands are all crazy, or you're doing stuff with your hips and things like that. It's pretty simplistic. But you have controlled aggression and you have good presence and you have good swings against good velocity guys. Right. It's, it's. It can be somewhat easy to hit if you're hitting 75, you know, 80 miles an hour consistently. It's like, it's hard to judge that because so many guys do that. It's really when you start bumping up to 85 and above, what are you doing against those guys? Okay. But your presence is a big way is. It's a. It says something about you that you're almost comfortable up there. Right. You're athletic is another thing. It's just how do you move, right? How do you move on the on deck circle? How do you move on the bases? Of course, at your position, how physical are you? You're going to fill out into your body. This is something. And this is coming from a guy. I'm shorter, I'm five seven, five eight on a good day and I had to really work to get in the weight room to get physical. But you're physical and you're projectible. Because another thing that these college coaches are doing, they're projecting out. Then of course they're going to watch you and look how coachable you are. Do you seek knowledge? What's your work ethic like? Do you lead and how are your academics? These are the things that these college coaches are looking for overall as a hitter. And each coach has like certain things that they look for in their certain programs. Like certain programs are looking a lot for bombers, right? Meaning they're looking for a lot of power guys. And there's some programs out there that are not necessarily looking for a lot of power guys. They're looking for speedster singles and doubles. And yeah, it's great to have a power guy every once in a while, but the majority of guys are not going to be that you will usually watch on a team, especially, you know, if we're not talking about the sec. A lot of guys, you'll have one or two guys with the pop and the other guys are hopefully just good hitters and that are. They're ball players, meaning they're fine ways to. On bases, their hit ability is high, etc. From there, man. So focus on what you do. Right? Don't lose your identity in hitting, meaning trying to be somebody that you're not. Okay? Okay. This is like the wolf pack mentality. Know what you're good at and do that well. So for me, it's like, I wasn't a power guy, but there would be times I tried to be a power guy or a bomber, and that would get me in trouble, where I was more of a ball player. Which means, like, hey, my. I'm just kind of a grinder. I do my job. I hit my singles, I hit my doubles. I honestly wasn't going to be the highest average guy on the team, but I knew what my job was and I just. When I knew what my job was and who I was, I. I did it better when I tried to be somebody that I wasn't. That's where I started to fall into mistakes. So, again, if you got anything from this video, please smash that, like, button. And if you are listening, go and subscribe and I will see you in the next episode. Have a good day. Bye.