Matthew Shilling

This one is a must read. I hope the takeaway is, at minimum, eye opening. To any player/parent trying to navigate the recruiting process right now - here is some perspective for you. I came across this video recently on Twitter - It’s a video of Juan Soto when he was 16 years old in the Dominican Republic. (Credit to @HagemanParker for digging it up and posting it.) I decided to do an informal case study. I sent the Soto video to 13 high-level baseball evaluators - 4 current MLB scouts, 7 current and former D1 recruiting coordinators & head coaches, 1 former pro manager/ college head coach, and 1 current JC head coach. All guys that I know and trust to give honest feedback. I told them that I had just started working with this 16 year old international player and that I was hoping to get their feedback from an evaluation perspective. 3 of the 13 knew it was Soto from the video. Of the other 10, here were the results: - 1 current D1 coach said “He looks like he’s gonna get paid. I have money for a ’26 if he doesn’t want to sign with an MLB team. Somebody will pay that swing.” - 2 of them liked his physical upside and bat speed and said once he puts on some weight they think he’s got a chance. - 7 of them said something along the lines of… “He needs to go to a JC”, “he has too much effort in his swing”, “looks like he has some timing issues”, etc... The video was taken shortly before he signed for $1.5m with the Washington Nationals. He is a future Hall of Famer. Let that sink in for a moment. The question is, why were the majority of these college coaches and scouts flawed in their initial evaluation of the short video I sent them of a guy who signed for $1.5m with the Washington Nationals a few months later? - Are they bad evaluators? - Was the video not a good enough representation of Soto’s ability? - Was there not enough context as to his track record and other tools to make an informed evaluation? - Is it just difficult to evaluate a player off of 1 minute of video? - Did the fact that he is an international guy change things? - If he had hit 3 homers in this video reel would they have a different opinion? In all honesty, I wasn’t surprised by any of these responses. I might’ve said the same thing if I didn’t know it was Soto. It is likely a combination of multiple of the reasons I listed above… but the point I am trying to make here is this: I hear all the time from high school and JC players/parents about how frustrated, disappointed, or defeated they feel because they aren’t getting interest from college coaches, and because coaches don’t respond to their emails & DM’s. So here is the perspective that you need to understand: even Juan Soto’s video from a few months before signing a $1.5m contract didn’t garner the type of interest that you would expect. Are you better than Juan Soto was at 16 years old? Are you a future hall of fame caliber player? There are so many factors that go into the recruiting process. It is a multi-sided marketplace where each stakeholder (college coach and player) has to have a mutual need and interest in one another. Baseball is the hardest sport to evaluate and it’s not even close, IMO. Coaches and scouts are wrong all the time. Players can get exponentially better in a short period of time. It’s not always a pretty process, but all it takes is one coach to see something in you and want to invest in you. Dial in the things you can control. Make sure coaches to have the full picture of who you are as a player and why you can help them win. And don’t be upset when you get limited responses/feedback. It happened to Soto too - and he is much better than you.