[Mr.Kimball]

I agree. Conditioning is one of the most important things to do to get yourself ready for the upcoming season. But, the only thing that D1 school's look for first is your hitting. They want someone who is going to bring in about 70 or 80 rbi's a season and hit atleast 350 or above.

I am going to respectfully disagree with you on that. Sure they want those kids that can do what you specified, but if they clock you across the diamond at 90 or 90+ and if you run a 6.5 or 6.6 and halfway look like you can swing a bat, they will droll all over themselves. Throw it over the first baseman's head, they dont care , they want to see that reading on the gun. The same applies for a pitcher. If you can throw 90+ MPH and are 6'4" they could care less if you could throw it across a yard stick, let alone an 18" plate. They all want to know what the gun says, especially if you are a right hander. Left hander is certainly not as vital.

College coaches and pro scouts have such ego's that they think they can teach anybody how to do anything. The two things they cannot teach is velocity and speed, so that is what they look for first. I know that there are exceptions to what I am saying, but there are only so many DH's or first basemen that you can put on a roster. What I am referring to are primarily middle infielders or outfielders that must be relied upon to play a postion as well as hit.

I am fully aware that both can be worked on to improve both of those aspects but in my experiences( and I have been there twice) is that they would rather have the two physical qualities that I mentioned first and teach someone how to pitch or hit rather than work with a pitcher that knows how to pitch and improve his velocity, teach him to throw off speed or to develope more speed out of a kid that can hit. Remember these kids have to be someone whom are not liabilities on defense as well, and you just flat out will not be on the field if you cannot run or have the arm with the specifications that I mentioned. Do I nesessarily think that is correct thinking? No, I dont in all cases, but those are the cold hard facts at the D1 level when it comes to recruiting. Again I have been in this situation twice concerning prospects at the D1 level.

Be Revere may be the most perfect example of what I am talking about. Acording to all of the scouting reports on him, his hitting abilty was lacking in just about every aspect that they look for when it came to playing at the professional level, but they took a chance on a kid that was deemed the fastest high school player in America and made him a first round draft pick. A kid that can run a 6.28 60 is somebody that just dont come along very often. Revere's legs are what got him a ticket to the biggs, not his bat.