Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball joined Wednesday's show to offer insight on the timing of the MLB Draft and scholarship renewal, Aggie baseball's future and how the entire landscape of college baseball is going to change in the next year.
Key notes from Kendall Rogers interview
- I have not heard anything from the MLB standpoint, and I think they like having the draft during the All-Star Game weekend. As long as that continues to be the case, I don’t think they will move it.
- College baseball fans have always complained about the timing of the draft. They moved it after the College World Series, and now we complain about that. The timing is ridiculous, but we wanted it moved for the longest time. Now they move it, and we don’t like where they have moved it to.
- Baseball is unique, and the NCAA hasn’t figured that out in terms of registration. Maybe we have a situation where the scholarship renewal for baseball is different than other sports because baseball has a draft in the middle of the summer. Maybe they move the scholarship deadline to the Wednesday of the draft.
- The coaches know by that Wednesday who is coming to campus because if an athlete is drafted on day one, there’s probably a good chance he’s going to sign.
- Link Jarrett at Florida State is the most obvious hire imaginable, but he’s going to do really well there. He was an outstanding coach at UNC Greensboro and a great coach at Notre Dame. It’s a place that he’s played and has a lot of passion for. That’s exactly what Florida State needs.
- If you can get Trevor Werner, Austin Bost and Brett Minnich back, talk about a really good foundation going into the next year. Three of the other D1Baseball writers and I had Texas A&M in our Omaha eight for next year. Things can change, but I like the transfers they are bringing in. A&M has an excellent freshman class coming, and you’re going to get those kids on campus unlike LSU because they are losing them to the draft.
- A&M hired an excellent coaching staff, and they got kids that really wanted to be Aggies. Dylan Rock had a lifelong goal of playing Texas A&M baseball. Not every time you bring in transfers, you have kids with that kind of passion. A&M built a perfect storm.
- The SEC is probably going to go to 24-26 full scholarships and other conferences may follow. Colleges at the lower lovel, 15 years ago, junior college baseball was rocking and rolling. Now with the transformation committee deal, a lot of these kids who are mid-level D1 players are going to get pushed out and go D2 or to junior colleges. It’s going to change the dynamic of college baseball probably forever.
- You look around at the landscape of college baseball, there are coaches who can go to big programs and not necessarily be a head coach. That’s going to happen in the next year. Memphis is taking a look at Michael Earley. If you’re Jim Schlossnagle, you can tell Earley in nine months that he can pay him X amount of dollars. It may not be a lot but that’s going to happen.
- When A&M played iffy defense against Louisville, that’s when I was impressed with A&M. I wouldn’t be shocked to see A&M and the Cardinals back in Omaha. The teams next year will look a lot different, but I don’t think A&M will. Even if they lose Werner, they’re going to bring in enough guys from high school and the transfer portal to where I think they will be really good no matter what happens.
