I\u2019d say Danny Dickinson<\/a>. He was a senior playing in the (Washington high school) state tournament, and I watched him and had no idea who he was going into the tournament. It was June. He\u2019d already graduated from high school before he came and visited us at Utah Valley a couple weeks later, and he went on to be a Freshman All-American for us and then just went in the sixth round last year (after transferring to LSU).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Base_Houston_Bischel_Jordan__240419_9258_KeslarBates8770-scaled-e1770408041176.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Jordan Bischel went to the NCAA Tournament three times in four full seasons at Central Michigan and has been once in two seasons at Cincinnati. (University of Cincinnati)<\/p>\n
Who is the one recruit who got away?<\/p>\n
J.D. Arteaga (Miami): We felt pretty good about getting (Pete Alonso), and he ended up going to Florida. And of course, he did some damage against us, like he did against everybody else.<\/p>\n
Mike Bianco (Ole Miss): There\u2019s a lot. You lose more than you get. But I would say there\u2019s an in-state catcher named Ed Easley that we ended up not really recruiting because we had other catchers in our program at the time. And Ed went to our arch-rival, Mississippi State, and was a superstar there (2005-07).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of those where you sit there and scratch your head and go, \u201cMan, you know, we did what we did.\u201d And I understand it because you can\u2019t always recruit that position \u2026 only one catcher can play at a time. And we had good ones, but he was one of the best to play in the state. So that one, I don\u2019t know if it stung, but we had to live with it, and he was really good.<\/p>\n
Jordan Bischel (Cincinnati): When I got here (after the 2023 season), I don\u2019t know if he really got away because I don\u2019t know if we ever really had a shot at him, but Ryan Nicholson had had a great year here the year before, and was in the portal. We tried to get him to come back, and he was open to it. I like Ryan a lot. I\u2019ve gotten to know him. But he ended up transferring to Kentucky, had a great year there, played in the College World Series and is in pro ball. Now, we replaced him with Josh Kross, who ended up doing the same things here, so it didn\u2019t hurt us too badly.<\/p>\n
Dan Fitzgerald (Kansas): When I was at (Division II) Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, I thought we had a shot to get Mat Gamel. He ended up having a nice big-league career, but that was one at Flagler that I thought would have been a massive steal. He was at Chipola (junior college) at the time, and I remember we really liked him and tried to get him. He ended up being a fourth-rounder (in 2005) and played in the big leagues, and I remember thinking that would have been the greatest steal of all time. He might not even remember, but I thought we had a shot at him.<\/p>\n
Scott Forbes (North Carolina): A lot got away. You don\u2019t get them all, but one that still haunts me to this day is Carson Fulmer. He went to Vanderbilt (2013-15). I felt like he was such a leader. I felt like wherever he ended up, they were going to win a national championship. That\u2019s how strongly I felt. That\u2019s a credit to Carson. He had that much ability. He had the \u201cit\u201d factor for sure.<\/p>\n
Wes Johnson (Georgia): That list is long. Way back to my time at Central Arkansas. I thought we snuck a young man named Jalen Beeks out (of Crowder College in 2012). I thought we had him. Man, we were right there, but he blew up, and Arkansas came in and got him. And that young man had a tremendous career at Arkansas and then went on to have a really good career in major league baseball.<\/p>\n
Pat Hallmark (UTSA): I don\u2019t know that we ever thought we had him and I was recruiting him, but (Rice head coach) David Pierce was doing most of it, but (Alex) Bregman (LSU, 2013-15) came on a visit. Again, you know, when you\u2019re at Rice and the places I\u2019ve been, you\u2019re never really people\u2019s top, top choice. But still, like, we knew Bregman was really good, and we didn\u2019t get him, and then he\u2019s done everything he\u2019s done. But that\u2019s one that got away.<\/p>\n
Skylar Meade (Troy): I loved R.J. Austin. I knew R.J. since he was 14. I will admit that, as much as I loved him and was the one bringing him to the table (at South Carolina), I don\u2019t think I pounded the table hard enough and understood what he would be as a position player because he also pitched when he was young.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think I absolutely \u2026 I was convicted, but I didn\u2019t fight for it. Then you see R.J. obviously do what he did at Vanderbilt (2023-25).<\/p>\n
I got to be on the coaching staff with Team USA when he was there. The work ethic that you saw, the dynamic nature of what he could do day in, day out at every position on the field. I think I knew this, but why did I even hesitate for a millisecond on that?<\/p>\n
Eddie Smith (Washington): Jackie Bradley Jr. was a guy who I remember really early on in my coaching career. He came on a visit (to Virginia). This was kind of when early recruiting was first starting, where I think it was maybe his sophomore year of high school, which felt really early at that time in that era, and he committed to South Carolina (2009-11) and was like, \u201cWait a second, I kind of liked that guy.\u201d Obviously, he had an incredible career in college and in the big leagues.<\/p>\n
The rules changed a few years ago \u2014 you can\u2019t contact recruits until the summer before the junior year of high school. Has that been a good change?<\/p>\n
J.D. Arteaga (Miami): Absolutely. I think it gives you the chance to really get to know some of these kids, right? And watch them play. And there was a time there where you watched a 15-year-old or 14-year-old kid pitch, and if he touched 90, by the time you got to your car, he had seven offers from other schools, and you had no choice but to make him an offer \u2014 not knowing the kid and the character, his background, his family and everything like that. So it\u2019s kind of slowed things down. You make less mistakes.<\/p>\n
Mike Bianco (Ole Miss): Awesome. And it would just be so crazy if we were still talking to 14-year-olds and then you get to June and July and you\u2019re talking to 23-year-olds, fifth-year seniors trying to transfer them in. You have a (high school) freshman recruiting class, sophomore recruiting class, junior recruiting class, senior recruiting class and you recruit the portal. Not to mention your own team. Yeah, it\u2019s just overwhelming. So that\u2019s a win-win for everybody. I don\u2019t think anybody, or at least I don\u2019t know of anybody that thought that was a great system. But you can\u2019t sit there and say, we\u2019re going to be holier than thou and not recruit a ninth- or 10th-grader when the rest of your league is, right? These are the rules. And so, you\u2019ve got to do your best to be able to compete. And so I think most people are excited.<\/p>\n
Jordan Bischel (Cincinnati): I do. I think it is really, really valuable to let these kids be kids. \u2026 There\u2019s one change I would love to see. It would be that we can put offers in writing. Right now, you can\u2019t put an offer in writing until August of a kid\u2019s senior year. Obviously, there is a broad, broad strata of what\u2019s available to kids. Under the 11.7 (scholarships) with no NIL, there wasn\u2019t that much room to wiggle, but the gap between a low offer and a big offer now is so substantial. When you talk to a kid and you\u2019re trying to explain outside NIL, revenue share, scholarships, academic awards, it\u2019s really confusing to kids. There can be a lot of misleading stuff.<\/p>\n
Some of it is unintentional. We just had a commit the other day, and I\u2019m trying to explain all of this. He said, \u201cCan you just email that to me?\u201d I said, \u201cNope. I\u2019ll send it to you next August.\u201d It\u2019s not really fair to the kids. I guess the answer is to wait until August 1st to make a decision, but we all know that\u2019s not realistic. To me, if we can tell a kid we want them, we should be able to write down what we\u2019re going to give them. That would be a lot more fair to the kid.<\/p>\n
Scott Forbes (North Carolina): I think it\u2019s fabulous.\u00a0 I think it helps us all. It gives us a chance to see the kids \u2014 the older and the more mature they are, the better chances we\u2019re going to get the evaluation correct. It prevents everybody from just committing to these kids when they\u2019re 14 years old, 15 years old, and just basically keeping them and seeing how good they get. If they get good enough, they keep them. If they didn\u2019t, back in the day, they would let them go. That\u2019s not what anybody wants. I think it helps tremendously. Honestly, I would be for it even later, but it\u2019s helped. I like it a lot.<\/p>\n
Skylar Meade (Troy): I do think it\u2019s a good change. \u2026 If you were to really dig back in my career, I was on the forefront of recruiting those young kids. When I was at South Carolina, I remember that 2025 class, I was recruiting those kids in 2018-2019 when they were 13-14 years old. We had three of the first four commits in the country that year. You get a little ridiculed from it, but the reality is, when I was at South Carolina recruiting those kids, they had offers from everybody else. You name a big school, they had it. North Carolina, Mississippi State, LSU. It didn\u2019t matter. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a great thing for the state of the game. I do think that for these kids, being able to just go play and compete and to be quite frank, maybe do other sports, not worry about being at their apex as a freshman in high school. This is baseball, this is a long play. Be really good as you get older.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Meade_4_Atkins-scaled-e1770408462654.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Skylar Meade is 148-89 in four seasons at Troy. (Troy Athletics)<\/p>\n
Do you find there is less emphasis or less pressure on high school recruiting because of the portal?<\/p>\n
J.D. Arteaga (Miami): I think that we\u2019re still trying to figure that out. And what is the line, right? Seven high school guys and seven portal guys? Is it 15? Every program is run differently. I think that we have to leave room for the portal guys. You don\u2019t know what your needs are going to be and whether it\u2019s guys have a good season and get drafted and leave after the junior year or guys that you think are going to be part of your future and they\u2019re not happy because they don\u2019t play enough right away and now you\u2019ve got to plug that hole.<\/p>\n
So I think that\u2019s very fluid right now. Everyone\u2019s trying to figure that out and what is the balance and what is your vision and what recruiting should be. Personally, I think that the portal should be something to just fill in gaps here and there. \u2026 But it takes patience from both sides, right? I mean, as a coaching staff, you got to be patient while you develop these guys, and the players have to be patient and, not really waiting their turn, but developing and getting better until they can come in and win games at a high level.<\/p>\n
Jordan Bischel (Cincinnati): I think there is something to that. I think if you ask me why have we been pretty successful, I believe our culture and player development have been really high level and our desire to not lean on the portal to be really good.<\/p>\n
I think in some ways, if you\u2019re in a position to really crush the portal, you\u2019re probably right (that high school recruiting isn\u2019t as important). If you\u2019re in a position where you\u2019re trying to beat those teams that have that ability to crush the portal, in some ways, it adds importance because that\u2019s our path. If we want to go to the Knoxville Regional and beat Tennessee, it\u2019s probably not because we kicked their butt in the portal. It\u2019s probably because we had great young guys that developed into top-end players that were really bought in. In some ways, we know to beat those elite programs that are going to land All-American-type kids in the portal, we\u2019ve got to do it a different way. So we better get it right.<\/p>\n
Scott Forbes (North Carolina): Yeah, I think the old recruiting class rankings are a little bit overrated. You still want to have the best high school players in the country. The biggest risk with that is you get the best high school players committed, they can sign professionally, and a lot of them are going to sign professionally, so you have to have a little bit of luck there.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t say less emphasis.\u00a0 I would say less numbers. You have to leave yourself room to fill some voids in the portal.<\/p>\n
Pat Hallmark (UTSA): It\u2019s slowing it down for sure. I find us at UTSA the last year or two, we\u2019re getting a tick better high school recruit because I think it\u2019s slowing down at the top places. They\u2019re going almost strictly portal. So, yeah, I do think the college coach, in general, feels less pressure to get the high school recruit right \u2026 because you just go in the portal and fill some gaps that way.<\/p>\n
Skylar Meade (Troy): You are certainly right (that you can use the portal to cover up recruiting misses). I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s good or bad or whatever, but being older certainly can help you be better. I think we\u2019ve seen that in a million sports.<\/p>\n
I think for us, we\u2019ve stayed very consistent. Just to speak to our program and our ideals, we\u2019ve tried to get six or seven high school kids (a year). We might lose one in the draft, which has happened a couple times, but the reality is we picked the ones that we feel like we landed that were dynamite. \u2026 We believe in them, their makeup\u2019s off the chart, they have good families, they\u2019re invested in us and our program, but you also say, I don\u2019t think we can get 15 of those. Therefore, with this cycle and the nature of it, we\u2019re going to have to sprinkle in our juco, and then we\u2019re going to have to be dynamic in the portal. And fortunately, we\u2019ve been very dynamic in both of those areas over the last three years, in particular with the type of player in which we\u2019ve brought in. So I don\u2019t think it\u2019s totally changed for us, but I think for a lot of others it has.<\/p>\n
Eddie Smith (Washington): I think that\u2019s a really, really true general statement. I think our path at UW is still a very traditional model with where we are in the NIL space and scholarship space. We aren\u2019t able to go out and bid on the open market for top-tier transfers. So we got to get people that are excited about Washington and grow them through our program. So for us, I think we\u2019re still pretty active at that high school level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 college baseball season begins Friday. And that means it\u2019s time for The Athletic\u2019s annual coaches forum.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2289],"tags":[5,13359,648,1703,5082,7184,5074,1694,2341,3739,5083,5087,13416,9522],"class_list":["post-566086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-college-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-cincinnati-bearcats","tag-college-baseball","tag-college-sports","tag-georgia-bulldogs","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-baseball","tag-north-carolina-tar-heels","tag-ole-miss-rebels","tag-troy-trojans","tag-utsa-roadrunners","tag-washington-huskies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116051950968607227","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}