Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
The thing that a lot of people need to understand is in baseball nowadays it?s pretty rare to get ?life changing? money in the draft anymore unless you are Stephen Strasburg or someone like that in terms of a bonus. Even if you are a college junior you?re likely to be getting something in the thousands of dollars range. To make the life changing money you need to make it to MLB, play in MLB and get to year six and get a big contract after you?ve been through arbitration before that. I think Kruger got 410K as a bonus and that?s probably the high end.
The benefit to coming back to college is because of their age and experience some of those players can shoot through a system- like Graveman did. Girodo wasn?t drafted until his senior year so he had no choice. Graveman also got an engineering degree from MSU I believe and had baseball not worked out for him he could have almost immediately transitioned back into the public sector without having to spend a year going to school to get his degree. The Marlins drafted Graveman in the 36th round also- he probably wasn?t going to get much more than what he ended up getting.
Basically, Kendall Graveman spent his minor league career at MSU, got a degree, and came close to winning a National Championship with us and then shot up to the Big Leagues. I doubt he has any regrets about the few thousand dollars he left on the table.
So, IMO you?re probably better off in most cases if you are in the round 12 and beyond range of going back to school, getting better to give yourself a chance to get to MLB more quickly, getting your degree, and also helping your college win a championship.

I?m not sure how Cann will handle the scholarships but if that was why we were losing so many Kruger?s and Zac Houston?s I?m confident that he will fix that especially having been at LSU where they are the masters of getting guys to come back for their senior year.
I guess it depends on what you define as life changing money. If you told me I could have 410k and start slogging through the minors or wait a year, have fun playing another year of college ball, get drafted 5 rounds higher, and make 120k, I would be mighty tempted to take the money. School can wait, and if I'm not mistaking, it would be on the MLB's dime if I decided to go back after baseball. Not everyone is like Graveman and makes a jump from the 36th round to the 8th round in one year. And you're much more likely to get cut than make the big leagues.

I think all our back and forth is proving is that it's a pretty personal decision. I'll be thrilled if he stays, and wish him best of luck if he goes.

I hope Cann can figure out scholarship issues, the problem is he'll have to hit loopholes to get it done here, whereas at LSU it was built in with the TOPS program. I do think Cann has the personality of a coach that players WANT to play for that Cohen never quite had (evident by that article about some of the LSU guys crying when he announced he was coming here). So hopefully that'll count for something.

As an aside, I think I've seen where Louisiana might be doing away with TOPS in the near future. It'll be interesting to see how that affects their program, if at all