Helpful Tips for the College Baseball Recruiting Process

If you’re a good enough player in high school, you may want to learn as much as you can about the college baseball recruiting process.

Going to college is a very expensive proposition these days, but your baseball prowess can get you a scholarship that will really reduce your educational expenses.

What’s more, if you’re really good you can even develop as a college player so you can play in the majors. Wouldn’t that be something?

But that’s thinking too far ahead, and it’s not exactly realistic According to the NCAA. Only 6.9% of high school players will play college baseball. And of those who play college ball, only 8.6% get drafted by Major League teams.

And of those who are drafted, only 2% go on to the big leagues! So playing in the majors isn’t exactly a sure thing.

Still, nothing’s stopping you from trying, and it’s a shame if you don’t try when your coaches and stats say that you’re among the best among your peers.

So here are some college baseball recruiting tips to get you started:

Start Your Preparations Early

In fact, hopefully you’re still in 8th or 9th grade when you read this article. That gives you time to prepare properly.

You need to focus on three things so that eventually you can play baseball in college: your studies, your fitness, and your skills.

That means you need to keep your grades up, you have to eat right and work out regularly, and you need to keep practicing and honing your baseball skills.

By the time you’re old enough you can then brag about good grades and show excellent work habits that can impress your coaches.

Contact the Coach

This is an important step if you want to be recruited, but it needs to be handled properly. You can’t just send a very long email with a bunch of stats. No coach has the time or the willingness to pore over those numbers.

And they don’t have an easy way of verifying those numbers anyway.

So what should you do? Just send a simple and short email, Begin it simply with “Coach (name)” and then make sure you spell the name right.

Then tell the coach who you are and where you’re from, and the position you play. Provide a link to a short video, as well as a link to your personal website.

What’s important here is that you put in some names of references in the area which the coach may then contact.

College coaches rely on their networks of contacts, and it’s great if you can put in names here that a college coach may want to talk to.

Making a College Baseball Recruiting Video

How do you make a short video? Here are some tips about that:

• Keep it short at about 2 minutes. You may have longer videos, but those aren’t the ones you use as your introductory video.

• Don’t even think about using a DVD. Nobody really watches those anymore. Keep it online.

• Don’t put a sound track. Coaches don’t like them, regardless of how cool you may think it is.

• Don’t include a long and heartfelt speech about how you really like the school or the baseball program. Coaches don’t care about speeches.

• When you make a video, use baseball drills and film from several angles. This includes hitting and fielding. If you’re a pitcher, have the cameras at all the bases so the coach can see your form from all angles.

• Then include some game snippets at the end of the video.

  You can find more tips on making a good video online, but at least now you now the basics.

Choosing a School

If you’re really good (and lucky), several schools may show an interest in you. It’s also likely that you can choose between several schools that may let you play while you don’t get a full scholarship (or any scholarship at all).

In any case, you’ll have to choose between schools.

If that’s the case, here are some factors to consider:

• Just what are your plans for baseball after college? Are you really serious about pursuing a pro career?

  If that’s the case, you’ll need to check just how many of the baseball players from the school have been drafted.

• You also need to learn just how well they develop players playing your position. Do they have specific program for the position you play?

  See also if they can provide you with names of other players that used to play your position.

• Don’t forget the non-baseball factors. Culture shock may be to jarring for you, such as if you grew up in San Francisco and then you play baseball in the Deep South.

  Climate can also be a factor, because of you’re from Florida then the cold of Minnesota may not be for you.

• What academic programs do they offer? You really want to aim for a college degree so that you can at least boost your chances of getting a good job after college.

  And since you’re an athlete, you also have to check if you get some sort of academic support such as tutoring for subjects you have trouble with.

Final Words on the College Baseball Recruiting Process

Make sure you do everything properly, so learn everything you can about the NCAA recruiting process. You can get all the pertinent guidelines online.

You have to be really determined during this college baseball recruiting process, but you have to be realistic too.

The truth of the matter is that very few can get to play baseball in college and in many cases even if you’re part of the team you may still have to pay full tuition.

Standing out among the crowd can be difficult. If you’re good enough however, then you may get noticed.

Keep playing well, keep sending emails, and keep on attending college baseball recruiting camps.

Make sure you have a personal website with all the pertinent info about your GPA and SAT, put your videos here, and then include your playing schedule so that a coach may be tempted to watch you play in person.

Now that you’ve read these top tips on the college baseball recruiting process get out there and make it happen!