First, my comments below have nothing to do with the young man who just committed.

I am amazed at the trend in all sports to recruit younger. I guess if more and more schools start doing it, everyone has to. If we stick to baseball, class of 2022 means only having played one year of high school baseball. Most have not played a season of varsity yet. If scholarships are offered to kids of this age, they have probably played select.

There are many issues here for me. First, these kids are probably not even 16 yet. At that age, I hardly knew what I wanted to do next week much less know what I wanted to do in three years, much less commit to it. These are verbal commits and things change. It seems like a school has to keep fighting for that commit until signing day. Things change. Maybe there are coaching changes. Maybe you become good friends with another kid and want to play together in college. Maybe your family moves. Maybe you improve tremendously and have all of the top schools knocking at your door.

At that age, I think it is difficult to judge talent and potential. Some kids have matured physically and some have not. I would guess that there are some kids who are physically ahead and can dominate because of that. Other kids may catch up to them after they get their growth spurts. However, some continue to get better even when the other kids catch up physically. How do you project the future for these kids? If kids dominate because of their level of physical maturity, how do they react mentally when the other kids close the gap?

I think this puts a lot of pressure on recruiters. If you have to offer kids at that age, do you only go after the proven ones or can you identify the potential of "late bloomers"? I can say that the best players in my leagues at 13/14 were not necessarily the best at 17/18, but some were.

Kids in small towns also have difficulty being seen. I know of someone who was 3 years all state at the 2A level, played short and pitched, and played in summers. Also was one of their better players in football and basketball. With no offers from D1, has played 3 years at D3 with a career batting average of about 360 with more walks than strike outs. I know he would not hit that in D1, but I don't think he would hit 250 either. If these kids had difficult odds of getting recruited to a D1 school previously, it is almost impossible if commitments happen prior to your sophomore year.

Sorry for the long post just to say that to me recruiting younger kids for baseball seems much more difficult and makes it harder to get excited about recruits until they sign. I think college recruiters have it more difficult projecting 15 year olds as 18 year olds than MLB scouts projecting HS and college players as pros. Also, it would seem that the recruiters have to lean more on the select team coaches than HS coaches since they would only have one year in HS.