Quote Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve View Post
You know we mention James Wood and I think it's obviously safe to say he made the correct decision. But I think another good topic would be what about the guys who haven't made it? Because for every James Wood there's a Quentin Holmes or Regi Grace.

I mean let's take our last 10 recruiting classes and look at how many we lost to the draft. How many of those guys made the incorrect decision? Obviously NIL wasn't a thing then so they took the money, but it wasn't like we were some hop along program that hadn't put a bunch of people in the MLB. My top ones that probably made the INCORRECT choice, in no particular order, would be:

1. Quentin Holmes- 2nd round pick in 2017 and was out of baseball by 2019.

2. Austin Kendrick-NIL was a thing and had Cohen not been our AD we probably could've put together a very attractive offer to keep him. He hasn't really done much in 5 seasons. Career BA barely above the Mendoza line with a career OBP under .300. This present year is by far his best year.

3. Regi Grace-This one still confuses me. He was an 10th Round pick and barely made it past high A. He's now in the Mexican league.

4. Carter Stewart- This is obviously the biggest what if because a 19 rotation of Small-Stewart-Ginn would've fed families and we would've won a national championship. He's been good in Japan but he's never lived up to the top 10 potential. He could've come here with Ginn, stayed two years, and probably still been a first round pick. Instead he's locked into a contract in Japan til I think 2027 while JT is already in the Majors.

5. Blaze Jordan- I debated adding this because I do think Blaze will be in the MLB soon but he seemed to kind of plateau and I just wonder had we gotten him for 2-3 years would he have been like Christian Moore and hit the ground running and been in the majors in a year. He's also another one that had we had an inkling of a clue what we were doing NIL wise, we could've gotten him to campus. I think COVID was a big reason he went ahead and signed with a team.

6. Maddux Bruns- I think this a pretty obvious one. Career ERA over 5 and never actually won a game. I know the minors give you time to work on things but he could've worked on the same thing at State and made money doing it.

7. Jared Johnson-Another obvious one, and I think one Commerce and I discussed a few months ago, but this kid should've come to college. 14th round pick that just blew up extremely late. I think he's out of baseball now but he got his money. He probably could've come here and been a great bullpen piece early that turned into a starter.



I didn't add kids like Dante Nori, Jett Williams, Colin Houck, Conrad Cason, or Aiden Smith because it is just too early to tell on those guys. Did I miss anyone over the years?

To me the biggest "what if" on draft players is Austin Riley. Put Riley on the '16, '17 & '18 teams. Riley hit .271 with 20 HR in A ball in 2016 - put him in our lineup at 3B instead of Gavin Collins in '16, Cody Brown in '17 and a great team and a good team get even better. I don't know what you do about '18 - sit Foscue? Move Westberg to 2nd over Stoval so Riley DH's?? I do know that there is Zero argument you can make against Riley being huge in CBB