Quote:
Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA
This.
And the smaller the program budget, the tighter that stuff is.
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The extra year of eligibility is the right thing to do, but the fallout is way deeper than I think most realize and the NCAA has left it up to the schools to be the bad guy.
You have 35 man roster, a head coach, and 2 paid assistants. The NCAA has given everyone an extra year, but didn't increase scholarship money and aren't increasing the number of paid assistants. Schools are left to decide if they have the facilities to handle extra players, the staff to handle extras players, see how many seniors want to return, and then potentially pick and choose which ones they can take. It's such a mess that MLB is making worse by shortening the draft.
This isn't the thread for it, but the entire recruiting process for baseball is an awful experience and I feel terrible for the 2020 kids that haven't signed somewhere yet. Some were waiting on offers and some were betting on themselves to wait on better offers that may have opened up after the draft. These are all things that are a normal part of the process every year. This year, if you're not already in a seat you're going to have a difficult time because, for the most part, the music has stopped.
Baseball in Washington has been improving drastically over the past few years. It's not out of the ordinary for multiple Washington teams to make it out of pool play in Perfect Game national tournaments in AZ. The problem is D1 offers are very hard to come by up here. Oregon State has made a killing recruiting Washington heavily, Gonzaga has done a good job of recruiting local talent, but UW focuses heavily on CA while WAZZU is coming off possibly the worst coach in the program's history. Because of this you have Tacoma CC which is a top 5 JUCO and the NWAC as a whole is one of the better JUCO conferences in the country. Schools prefer to sit in California and Arizona and let the talent come to them so it's really hard for Washington kids to be seen and get offers.
To give you an idea of what it's like here, my son was looked at by the new coaching staff at WAZZU but signed a different catcher instead. He had a great summer where he led our travel team in homers, extra base hits, walks, and RBIs while being top 3 in average and a few other stats and catching 80% of our games. After WAZZU passed...nothing...until he made a trip to Arizona in October for the fall championships. He got back and his high school coach called him to tell him Tacoma CC wanted him to work out on campus. It turns out they saw him in Arizona and took interest (yes, we live 5 miles from TCC and they noticed him 1,400 miles away outside of Phoenix).
The nice thing is that if TCC offers then you're a legit D1 prospect and everyone in the PNW takes notice. Unfortunately, TCC already had 2 catchers committed for 2020 so my son worked out there and their assistant passed on a recommendation for an offer, but the head coach said he wanted eyes on him this spring. My take was they wanted to figure out their scholarship situation before they offered.
Once TCC invited him campus, though, interest started to really pick up. Another really good NWAC JUCO heard he worked out at TCC and invited him for a work out. This school is probably the best up and coming program with a new-ish staff and recently sent a catcher to Auburn. This school offered him on the spot, about a week before national signing day. My son loved the staff, knew 3-4 players already there and they all had great things to say, and I talked to parents of players there and they said much the same. He knew it's where he wanted to go so he signed.
On the bright side, he's signed as a priority in this class. Prior to this mess he was told he would start behind the plate next year and if he was on campus this year he'd split time at worst. So he has a home. We just don't know what's going on yet because his school doesn't know who's asking to return. Keep in mind this is an even bigger issue for JUCOs as they have to replace nearly half their roster every year and try to get guys locked in early. After talking last night my son and I are on the same page that if their primary catcher this year is returning it may be best to redshirt a year and get out of the 2019/2020 class clusterfuck. It's probably best to just avoid trying to come out of a JUCO in that double class.
I know two kids on his team that were going to try to wait out better offers believing they could just fall back on a NWAC offer late in the cycle. I can't imagine how panicked they are right now. I'm seeing several NWAC teams that already had full classes and I know WAZZU is full, and UW and Gonzaga have academic hurdles most kids can't clear. So these borderline D1 kids that were hoping something may open up are likely going to end up at a bad JUCO or locked into a D2 or D3.
Anyway, that's my rant. I thought there was nothing to worry about since he signed but now we're trying to figure out if a redshirt is in his best interest or not. I did mention that 3 of his friends are reclassifying with hopes of getting drafted and asked if he wanted to repeat his senior year of high school and I got a "Hell no".