Each year, Ms State must bring in freshmen different makers. Ryan Gridley is one of them. The failure of this season goes back to June of 2013. The coaches just stepped off the bus with a CWS appearance in hand. We came very close to winning the National Championship.
The 2013 recruiting class was 99% in the bag (Gavin Collins, Reid Humphreys). So we really needed to strike while the iron was hot and go after the 2014 class, the juniors in HS. After such an outstanding year, we needed to go after the most talented players. This is the first failure of the 2015 season.
We got 4 outstanding players in the 2014 class: RHP Jesse McCord, C Chase Vallot, IF Dale Burdick and IF Ryan Gridley. Another signee LHP Andrew Mahoney was secured but he had arm trouble so spring 2015 was up in the air for him. Another guy 1B/RHP Cole Gordon wasn't highly rated by PG but I love this kid. Why we redshirted him is a big question to me.
Vallot and Burdick were very good offensive players. These guys would have helped our club tremendously. But both signed pro contracts, Vallot in the 1st Supplemental and Burdick was 40th.
This is my big gripe. We only signed 8 HS players who were entering their senior year in June of 2013. Hence, we had to sign 8 JC players, a few late, after Vallot and Burdick signed their contracts.
The coaches should have done a better job at getting the premium HS players right after the CWS appearance. I know players are committing earlier now and there may not have been that many left. But to me, this is the root cause for failing in 2015.
Why? Look at Gridley. How much of a difference he made in 2015. McCord has premium talent. A nagging injury took him out midway through the season.
We should have signed more premium HS talent in 2013, riding the high from the CWS but failed and we had to make up the class with JC players.
Now, with that being said, we did an outstanding job with the HS sophomores (upcoming juniors) in 2013. Our class is ranked 3rd per Perfect Game with 4 top 100 players. This is the group we will be very concerned about in 3 weeks.
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