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Wake Baseball 2015

State was up 8-1 bottom 8th with a chance to go to the supers and choked it away and lost 9-8 in 10.
 
Yea, 8-1, B8 is about a 99% chance of winning. State was actually up 4-1 going into the 8th and got 4 more mainly off errors. The irony is State followed in the B8 with possibly the most horrendous inning I've ever seen in college baseball. Too much to chronicle but if you search the game stats and play-by-play you'll see what I mean. TCU got 6 so it was still State 8-7 going into the 9th, but TCU got the 1 run it needed to push it to extra innings and the rest is history.
 
So most MLB draft rankings have been finalized, and I think it's a pretty good time to talk BASEBALL RECRUITING. Wake only has two ranked guys heading into the draft next week (Garrett Whitley and John Aiello), but both will likely be drafted fairly highly, and neither is likely to end up on campus. Whitley is ranked #18 in PG's Draft Top 500, while Aiello is #149 there. In Baseball America's Top 500, Whitley is #7, while Aiello is #228.

This got me thinking about Tom Walter, and how he's done in recruiting over his 6+ years here. I took a look at the PG High School Recruit rankings over the years and crunched the numbers. They're... not great. PG has rankings going all the way back to 2004, which gives us 6 years before Walter's first proper class in 2010, and 6 classes since. (Symmetry!)

Here's what I found:
NKIM9aU.png


This isn't perfect data (for starters, it includes guys who bolted for the MLB), but it's surprisingly uniform. At every top 100 interval, our recruiting has dropped. The money shot here is the "% Top 200" line. That seems to be a sweet spot for college baseball recruiting-- most top 100 guys will bolt anyway (indeed, not including our two top 100 recruits this year, we've lost 2 of 3 going back to 2004, with the lone exception being an injury-plagued Daniel Marrs, back in 2008). In the pre-Walter years, we had some 10.6% of recruits come from the #100-199 range in PG's rankings. (Only one of those, 2009's Harold Johnson, left for the MLB.) Walter, by contrast, has gotten 3.2% of his recruits from that range-- just two players, with one of them (2013's Dylan Manwaring) leaving for the Braves. The other one was Kevin Jordan.

Some of Walter's percentages here are understandably diluted; he took in 17 more recruits than Wake took in the preceding 6 seasons. A lot of his recruits, though, got generic "Top 500" or "Top 1000" rankings from PG. Because PG went at least up to #500 in their actual rankings every year, I didn't include those generic "Top 500" indicator in the Top 500 rankings count in the above chart. For instance, in 2011, Walter signed the #499 guy in PG's rankings, as well as one with the generic "Top 500" indicator. The #499 guy counts in the Top 500 percentage above; the generic Top 500 indicator does not.
 
RedSoxFaithful said:
So most MLB draft rankings have been finalized, and I think it's a pretty good time to talk BASEBALL RECRUITING. Wake only has two ranked guys heading into the draft next week (Garrett Whitley and John Aiello), but both will likely be drafted fairly highly, and neither is likely to end up on campus. Whitley is ranked #18 in PG's Draft Top 500, while Aiello is #149 there. In Baseball America's Top 500, Whitley is #7, while Aiello is #228.

This got me thinking about Tom Walter, and how he's done in recruiting over his 6+ years here. I took a look at the PG High School Recruit rankings over the years and crunched the numbers. They're... not great. PG has rankings going all the way back to 2004, which gives us 6 years before Walter's first proper class in 2010, and 6 classes since. (Symmetry!)

Here's what I found:
NKIM9aU.png


This isn't perfect data (for starters, it includes guys who bolted for the MLB), but it's surprisingly uniform. At every top 100 interval, our recruiting has dropped. The money shot here is the "% Top 200" line. That seems to be a sweet spot for college baseball recruiting-- most top 100 guys will bolt anyway (indeed, not including our two top 100 recruits this year, we've lost 2 of 3 going back to 2004, with the lone exception being an injury-plagued Daniel Marrs, back in 2008). In the pre-Walter years, we had some 10.6% of recruits come from the #100-199 range in PG's rankings. (Only one of those, 2009's Harold Johnson, left for the MLB.) Walter, by contrast, has gotten 3.2% of his recruits from that range-- just two players, with one of them (2013's Dylan Manwaring) leaving for the Braves. The other one was Kevin Jordan.

Some of Walter's percentages here are understandably diluted; he took in 17 more recruits than Wake took in the preceding 6 seasons. A lot of his recruits, though, got generic "Top 500" or "Top 1000" rankings from PG. Because PG went at least up to #500 in their actual rankings every year, I didn't include those generic "Top 500" indicator in the Top 500 rankings count in the above chart. For instance, in 2011, Walter signed the #499 guy in PG's rankings, as well as one with the generic "Top 500" indicator. The #499 guy counts in the Top 500 percentage above; the generic Top 500 indicator does not.
Click to expand...

So is the bottom line baseball recruiting (similar to football and basketball recruiting) for the last few years poor?
 
It's fallen off, was the point. I'm honestly not sure whether or not it's "poor," because I didn't take the time to compare other programs, but it's certainly not where it was. And considering the program's lack of success over the past few years, I think it's probably fair to guess that it's not where it needs to be relative to our competition.
 
Not many people have the money to send their kids to Wake. A baseball scholarship in not a full scholarship. It is only a small part of the cost of Wake Forest.
Vanderbilt is in the same situation. But most of their baseball players receive baseball and academic monies so that their cost of education is nearly nil. I would guess that at Vanderbilt 20 members of the baseball team have a full ride. Rice, Duke(just recently) and Virginia do the same thing. Wake does not make that commitment. Wake was good in the late 1990's early 2000's because the school allowed the admission of junior college players who only paid for 2 years of the Wake Forest investment. That was taken away in the early 2000's. Let's face it, baseball and sports in general means little to the brass at Wake. Many academic people have never been part of the life lessons learned in sports. Their loss. I would love for our coaches and players to be on an equal playing field with other members of our conference. It will not happen. I have been waiting a long, long time.
 
shaggindeac2 said:
Not many people have the money to send their kids to Wake. A baseball scholarship in not a full scholarship. It is only a small part of the cost of Wake Forest.
Vanderbilt is in the same situation. But most of their baseball players receive baseball and academic monies so that their cost of education is nearly nil. I would guess that at Vanderbilt 20 members of the baseball team have a full ride. Rice, Duke(just recently) and Virginia do the same thing. Wake does not make that commitment. Wake was good in the late 1990's early 2000's because the school allowed the admission of junior college players who only paid for 2 years of the Wake Forest investment. That was taken away in the early 2000's. Let's face it, baseball and sports in general means little to the brass at Wake. Many academic people have never been part of the life lessons learned in sports. Their loss. I would love for our coaches and players to be on an equal playing field with other members of our conference. It will not happen. I have been waiting a long, long time.
Click to expand...

Well said.

Question: why doesn't the BoT get involved? Surely there are some on the board who care about athletics.
 
None of that explains why Walter has recruited at a lower level than we did from 2004-2010. Besides, I would be pretty surprised if Whitley (or Aiello) committed to a partial scholarship. Top recruits are going to get a full ride if we attract them.
 
Very few full ride baseball scholarships. Total scholarships for baseball is something like 11.6 scholarships. That has to be split among approximately 25-30 players.
Here's what happens. Top notch prospect is offered half a baseball scholarship at Wake, Vanderbilt, Duke, UNC and Virginia. Remaining cost to attend Wake is $31,000 per year for 4 years. Total cost ($ 124,000)

Same player at Vandy. Offered half baseball scholarship. $35,000 per year in financial aid. 4 years at Vandy. Remaining cost 4years X $0 = ( $ 0)
Same player at Duke. Offered half baseball scholarship. $ 20,000 per year in financial aid. 4 years at Duke. Remaining cost 4years x $ 15,000 = ($ 60,000)
Same player at UNC. Offered half a baseball scholarship. 4 years @ $ 11,000 per year. Total cost 4years x $ 11,000 = ($ 44,000)
Same player at Virginia. Offered half a baseball scholarship. $30,000 per year in financial aid. Total cost 4 years x $ 5,000 = ($ 20,000)


Easy decision for parents and players. Furthermore ACC baseball has changed drastically since 2004-2010. Virginia and Duke have copied the Vanderbilt plan of giving financial aid to baseball players. Wake does little in this regard. Enter Louisville and Notre Dame into the equation. Notre Dame does the same thing with aid.
Louisville has a pretty good program to boot.

Keep in mind that Wake had some great players this past season. Craig, Mondou and Fairchild were as good as any around.(recruited by Coach Walter) What Wake did not have is depth. Depth in the pitching staff. The good teams, Miami, FSU, Louisville, Virginia, etc. all had 9-14 really good pitchers. The next one they brought in was better than the previous pitcher in many cases. Wake had possibly 4-7 pitchers of substance.

And keep in mind some of these school give full financial aid scholarship to a needy kid who just happens to be a good baseball player. Don't think that happens much at Dear ole Wake. It's all about commitment or lack of it.
 
So can you give financial aid to a scholarship athlete? Thought that was forbidden.
 
Don't know what it's called. Financial aid or academic aid. All I know it is money for education. And it cuts the total cost of education for that athlete.
 
Has the NCAA made any comment on that practice? What's the point of limiting scholarships if schools are still getting them money?
 
I would love to know the pitchers who were reliable other than Pirro and Dunshee. Maybe Johnstone and Craig but that is a stretch.
 
Anyone have a link to our incoming recruits for next year? The team never released a signing announcement like they normally do and I can't find it anywhere. Would like to keep an eye on our commits and who is drafted. Thanks in advance!
 
DeaconCav06 said:
Has the NCAA made any comment on that practice? What's the point of limiting scholarships if schools are still getting them money?
Click to expand...

I would like to understand this as well. The point of scholarship limits is to level the playing field and help Title IX compliance. If schools can just give athletes money from some other source that defeats the whole system and favors schools with more financial aid money to give. I am sure that you can't, for instance, give a recruited basketball player an academic scholarship and avoid having him count toward your scholarship limit - he would still count.
 
We have three of the best hitters in the Conference and, allegedly, some good arms coming in. 2016 has potential to get much better.

The most disappointing thing for me was that Kevin Jordan was never able to turn it around after he recovered. It was an awesome story in any event. . .
 
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