New 2015 Baseball Commit

[Todd4State]

Excellent point. And I'm still peeved about the Burdick deal because its ridiculous that we lost him. Either he wasn't being honest with our coaching staff or our coaching staff was just hoping against hope that his attitude toward playing college ball would change but we can't bank our future on HS guys willing to forgo their college career for 150K.

Unfortunately, that's how it goes in the business of baseball. And it is a business at some point. I don't like it because I think it's outdated and I think it hurts baseball players as far as long term education goes, which you need nowadays more than ever and the money is less and less life changing than ever. If it were up to me, I'd have it so that the only guys that went pro out of high school were guys like Bryce Harper or Mike Trout- have an advisory board from MLB that tells these players their draft stock and if you aret a first or second round pick you can choose college or pro and the rest go to college. I'd also have it so that college players play for four years instead of being able to leave after three.

That said, I don't think Burdick misled our staff or anything. Cohen is really good about monitoring players signability, which is one reason why we haven't lost a lot of guys while he has been here. I think Burdick really wanted to come to MSU IF he went to college and we granted that wish- and came pretty darn close to getting him just from the standpoint that he almost went undrafted.

But for every Dale Burdick, there's a Hunter Renfroe, a Reid Humphreys, a Dakota Hudson that were drafted and came to school. Or even a guy like a Cole Gordon and a Jesse McCord that were draftable prospect that didn't sign.

It seems to me though that the new thing to do is just sign as many high end prospects as you can and then hope that a few come to school. I think the idea is, they won't come if they aren't committed. KB21 mentioned LSU as kind of an example of that, and I think North Carolina had the same philosophy and came out with a couple of high end players of their own. That may be what we start seeing Cohen do as well- with Riley, Padgett, and now Pickett.