New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Baseball recruiting adapts to the times
The sports world has been flipped upside down in recent months in response to the coronavirus, affecting athletes at every level.
For high school baseball players looking to continue their careers in college, the already daunting recruiting process looks much different.
New NCAA restrictions on the recruiting process and expanded collegiate rosters for players who will reclaim their lost year of eligibility make this new process more challenging for high school students.
Of the many hurdles coaches and players must work through, the current NCAA “dead period” — which was extended to Aug. 1 this week — might be the most daunting.
During this period, coaches are not allowed to watch players. The previous plan was to begin a quiet period in August in which kids are allowed on campuses for recruiting, but that has been pushed back at the Division I level with Division II to potentially follow.
“They just expanded the dead period to Aug. 1, where coaches are not allowed to watch, coaches can’t see you,” said Mike Porzio, director of The ClubHouse AAU program in Fairfield and a Major League Baseball scout. “If there is a tournament being played in an open state like Florida, there are no coaches that can watch the kids play in the tournament because it a closed recruiting period.”
Coaches unable to watch players until August will face some difficult decisions.
“With the dead period extended another month, that leads to the question of is that actually going to happen in August or is it going to be pushed back again,” Sacred Heart University pitching coach Wayne Mazzoni said. “That is the first thing us coaches have to think about, is if we are actually back in business in August or is the summer banged? Right now there is a lot of scrambling, we had events planned in July that will have to be moved to August and the same thing is happening with summer programs. It is basically chaos right now.”
This inability to watch players live has put an emphasis on the importance of video, and reliance on high school and summer coaches.
Glenn Lungarini, executive director of the CIAC, is a former assistant baseball coach at Yale.
“The biggest misconception is that any one particular season is more influential than another in a kid’s ability to be recruited,” Lungarini said. “I think for big-time Division I programs, if you talk to AAU programs, they have college coaches seeing kids as young as the sixth, seventh or eighth grade.”
Lungarini said athletes that cannot afford AAU will most likely be affected by a lost spring season.
“The only option is individual workouts,” Lungarini said. “Game film from the previous season can highlight what players have done to send to coaches.”
One of the changes the CIAC Board of Control made was to allow coaches for all seasons to conduct virtual out-of-season coaching for this summer only. Spring sports coaches have been able to work with players virtually since March and can continue to do so through Aug. 17.
“What’s important to keep in mind is the opportunity will open up again at some point, so it’s important for them to be ready and continue to condition,” Lungarini said. “So when they get that opportunity to go back and play, they can compete at a high level and show (college) coaches the level they are capable of performing at.”
Those who have access to video, and in baseball specifically those who have access to technology that highlights a players’ metrics, have an advantage.
“The obvious big difference right now is that we can’t see anybody play,” New Haven baseball coach Chris Celano said. “What that does is force our hands just a little bit in terms of using video and other technology that we are going to have to rely on more heavily than we have in the past. It is going to be a little bit tougher to get an actual talent evaluation. You need to see perspective players play in game to make a real evaluation, and that is out of the picture right now.”
Sending video to coaches has been a key element in the current recruiting process.
“Being in games and being in tournaments are a great vehicle to be seen and evaluated but it is not the only way. It is the preferable way,” Porzio said. “It is important to have someone with video with validated numbers that gives credibility to the video. If the numbers are in line with college numbers it helps, even though you’d rather see them play in a game so there are no surprises. But given the video, this is where the programs will have to rely on connections to speak with someone like myself if they need an opinion on somebody, and we can fill in the details to help our kids get opportunities.”
In baseball, many videos rely on accompanying metrics, such as how hard a pitcher is throwing or a batter’s exit velocity.
“For the upcoming 2021 class, to do real background on guys if you haven’t already is going to be tough,” Celano said. “We have to make our evaluations based on what we see in video and in metrics more than ever. I don’t go by the metrics a lot, if at all, but I think now they are going to come into play because of our lack of exposure.”
With so much uncertainty over when coaches will be allowed to watch competition, there are different ways for college programs to proceed.
“The decision coaches are making now is to move forward with kids or to wait until August,” Mazzoni said. “If in July all of a sudden we say the summer is done without being able to see this 2021 class, we will still need players, so we need to find who to offer and who to recruit based on what we know so far.”
But this will not be a large issue for all programs, as some athletes regained a year of eligibility after losing the 2020 spring season.
“What the NCAA has done up front is for next year there will be no limit on the amount of scholarships you can give out and there is no limit on roster size,” Celano said. “Now where they go after next year remains to be seen and what the rules will be, but for now it is kind of unlimited. That is all institutionally dependent though, so each institution is going to have limitations. There will be a number of programs that are going to have to make tough decisions, that is just the nature of how this thing is going to work. I think after next year it is going to get back down to normal, and that is going to be a tough one.”
Each program is uniquely affected by these changes, as some have even folded.
“Budgets are getting cut,” Southern Connecticut baseball coach Tim Shea said. “I know our budget will have cuts from our athletic department and it trickles down to every sport. You do the best you can with what you have, but the financial side of it has definitely been impacted by COVID. In fact our season now is moved from a 50 game maximum to 40 games to eliminate travel and costs.”
Shea believes there won’t be much impact on Southern..
“In fact, it might help us a bit,” Shea said. “We had 12 freshmen that will come back and be freshmen again, and we have a group of six that we recruited and signed in September, so we are going to have a group of 18 freshmen coming in with another six or so that will be sophomores again. We are relatively young, so our needs moving forward shrink because we have all these kids coming back.”
Still, the additional class of players may make it even more difficult for high school athletes looking for schools.
“The ripple effect in terms of rosters is going to be some sort of a logjam,” Celano said. “In reality teams are probably getting 50 percent or more of their senior class and what that does is take roster sports with an incoming freshman class as well. In some cases that leaves very few 2021 spots, and I think that is going to trickle down for a couple of years because everybody has that season back.”
With the NCAA allowing players to retain eligibility without restricting scholarship money for the 2021 season, rosters may look a bit crowded.
“I think for the next three to four years it creates an issue of space,” Celano said. “However, I also believe it is going to create a lot of transfers. If you go on the NCAA transfer portal right now, it is filled with baseball players looking for opportunities to play elsewhere, whether it is their fifth-year grad or players switching in general. I think that is going to increase more after the draft and as we get later into the summer.”
Some coaches believe that the transfer portal will affect high school players significantly.
“This is an ever-evolving landscape as we all know, and right now it is going to restrict opportunities for high school players. You are competing with three classes above you when you come into a college program, and right now they will be competing with four classes above you as an incoming freshman,” Porzio said. “Every time you have a proven successful college player, coaches are going to want that player because they have already proven they can exceed at that level. It is nice having someone who projects success, but it is even better knowing that they can create it. Right now, with this free agent-like market things are crazy, and with some programs being dropped you have proven winners looking for new homes. High school kids now have the added dimension of competing with college players for the same job. The demand for a job is increasingly difficult.”
It is uncertain how long it will take for programs to return to normal in roster capacity and scholarship money.
“I think some people will rectify the problem faster and for others it may drag out into a five-year carry over,” Porzio said. “Nobody knows with full certainty, but without a doubt it is going to affect the next two, three years and then even maybe beyond that . ... Unfortunately, some will be weeded out just from the supply-and-demand aspect of this.”
Said Mazzoni: “Kids should be using the time to really develop. This will be a great separator for a lot of kids that are self-motivated when they come out of the gates and other kids haven’t developed without formal structure and practice. First and foremost is to come out of this fully ready to go because this is going to end at some point. The second piece is to try to establish some communication with a coach whether it be through video or if you have some coaches call on your behalf.”
The path moving forward is not entirely clear, but coaches and players are looking forward to a return to normalcy.
“I’ve never wanted so badly to be stuck in my car all summer driving around watching baseball games,” Celano said. “Right now, it is the thing you miss.”