Ep. 81 | Recruiting: 101

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley and Baseball Forward recruiting advisor Aaron Cunningham launch Recruiting 101, a monthly segment devoted entirely to the college baseball recruiting process. Cunningham has been part of hundreds of recruitments, and the two open the series with the big picture: what actually changed in college baseball, why the timeline moved, and what a high school family should do about it.

The through-line is that the sport got older and more competitive without getting closed off. Roster pressure at the top has pushed development down to junior college, Division II, Division III, and NAIA, which means the path to a Division I uniform now has more steps — not fewer destinations.

The highlights:

• Why the college game has gotten older, and what revenue sharing and the transfer portal did to Division I rosters
• How junior college became the most intelligent route for most high school players
• Why pitching still travels, and why hitters face the harder climb
• What separates an honest evaluation from wishful thinking, and the human factors that decide fit
• Using X as a free, year-round recruiting tool that college coaches actually read
• The case against overshowcasing, and when to go back out and show real improvement
• Recruiting as a job search: build a resume, know where you are employable, earn the interview
• Rapid-fire answers on when the process starts, when to contact coaches, and which camps are worth the trip

The College Game Has Gotten Older

Hawley opens with the phrase he hears most often in recruiting conversations: the college game has gotten older. Extended eligibility, the portal, and longer careers have turned the top of Division I into something close to a finished product, and a player arriving on a Power Four campus is expected to be ready on day one.

Cunningham agrees and takes it further. Revenue sharing and NIL money have put real valuations on college players, and some programs now employ general managers to decide whether a player is worth his price. He notes that the age gap between the highest levels of college baseball and the professional ranks has narrowed to almost nothing — a gap that used to run two or three years. He is also careful not to blame the coaches: salaries went up, the job is to win, and the portal made experience easy to buy.

"Who do you want? You want the 18-year-old unproven kid, or the 22-year-old with 600 college at-bats that's proven he can be a commodity at that level?"

That same preference, both hosts point out, filters from the top conferences all the way down through the mid-majors. Smaller Division I programs may not be paying players, but they are still shopping for older ones.

Why Junior College Became the Smart Route

Cunningham has believed in the junior college route for a long time, and he thinks the current landscape makes the case for him. Academics are more manageable, the financial commitment is usually smaller, a player finds out whether he can really play and really wants to, and the development is genuinely built into the program.

"There's just so much development in junior college. There's not as much development happening at the Division I level, because they don't have to anymore."

Pitching is the exception to almost every rule in the conversation. If a pitcher has stuff and gets people out, Cunningham says, nobody at the Division I level cares whether he is 18 or 23. Hitters carry the harder burden, because a high school schedule offers only so many chances to prove a bat will hold up against college arms — and it has to be proven over and over. The result in the Texas junior college ranks is a run-scoring environment where elite high school bats are stacked up and the pitching is still catching up, though he notes the velocity in junior college is the highest he has seen.

It Is Not About What You Cannot Do

Hawley's own conviction is that recruiting should be built around what a player can do. Baseball, more than football or basketball, keeps the door open for the undersized and the late-developing, and any October postseason roster is full of players who came through NAIA, Division III, and junior college programs before they were household names. He encourages players to aim past college entirely — to carry the hope of professional baseball as a guiding light, because that is the mindset that produces the work.

Cunningham backs it with examples. Two of the best pitchers in the world today, Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes, had a combined three college offers coming out of high school, and neither went straight to a marquee program. He also points to a widely shared post about a 15-inning playoff game in which almost every pitcher who appeared had come from a smaller school.

"Most of the guys in this sport are really not going to hit their stride till they're 21, 22, 23 years old."

The game accelerates sharply between 18 and 22, he adds, and that acceleration is why the sport is nearly impossible to project. Players who look like certainties in high school flame out; players nobody discusses turn up in the big leagues. Hawley's companion point is about how families should hear the word no: much of the time it means not right now, and it is a statement about a roster rather than a verdict on a player.

Reading a Recruitment Honestly

Hawley says the reason he wanted Cunningham for this segment is his objectivity — fair, business-like, never too high or too low. Cunningham credits experience. After hundreds of recruitments, none of them identical, he has seen enough pathways to tell a family where a player genuinely stands.

The baseball evaluation, he says, is the easy part. Watch a player long enough and you know what a level requires and what he can do. The hard part is everything around it: academics and degree plans, what a family can afford, whether a player wants to stay close to home, and whether a program actually needs him. A high-academic player might be a perfect fit for junior college and still end up at a Division III school because his family will not spend Ivy League grades at a community college. A program may love a player and already have five infielders under contract for two years.

He also describes meeting family emotion with pragmatism, because every parent sees their child in the best possible light and few appreciate how many players are chasing a limited number of roster spots. The encouraging change he has noticed over roughly 15 years in the business: parents who once heard junior college as an insult now ask for it by name. Better information, he says, made the process easier.

The Human Side of a Commitment

Hawley's framing of the human element lands on a distinction worth keeping. A commitment is not an event to be announced; it is the beginning of a series of events. The question is who a player will become by the time he leaves that program — athletically, academically, emotionally.

That makes the people in the building the deciding factor. Are these men who build players up or tear them down, and what is their track record? Some players need to be the big fish in a small pond, some need to go unnoticed in a big one, some need more grace and some need less. Sorting that out, both hosts agree, is far more useful than arguing about a baseball evaluation that is usually obvious.

Visibility With a Purpose

Asked for practical strategy, Cunningham starts with the obvious mechanic: to be recruited, a player has to be seen. High school and travel teams provide some of that, and events run by the major showcase companies matter because scholarships do not come off a timeline. But there is only one place a college coach can watch a player all year.

"Twitter is probably the strongest recruiting resource that's available out there."

Hawley's addition is simply that it is free and that most college baseball coaches use it, which makes skipping it hard to justify. Camps belong in the plan when a program has expressed interest in a player or in players like him — a 2027 infielder attending a camp for 2027 infielders. Camps outside that fit can still be worth the trip for feedback about how far away a player is.

Cunningham's warning is about repetition. Showing the same numbers month after month teaches coaches nothing new, and eventually they conclude they have seen everything a player is. The time to go back out is when something has actually improved: better run times, better arm strength, real impact on the ball.

Physicality and Year-Round Skill Work

Improvement, he adds, comes out of the weight room. College baseball wants big, strong, fast, and skilled, so a player who wants better numbers next year has to train for them. He also offers what he calls a mildly controversial opinion: baseball cannot be shelved for six months. Playing other sports is fine and even good, but the craft still needs attention year-round — tee work, cage work, ground balls, catch play, keeping an arm in shape. Unlike football or basketball, baseball does not let an athlete simply out-physical the field.

The last piece is the network around a player. Cunningham looks for track record, and specifically for coaches and programs that move players to every level rather than only the obvious ones. The elite prospects at his academy recruit themselves. The player who needs someone to put in the work on his behalf is the one in the middle of a deep talent pool, and that is where an honest, connected advocate earns his keep.

Recruiting as a Job Search

Hawley's framework is deliberately plain. Recruiting works like looking for a job: build a resume, understand where you are employable, and do what it takes to earn the interview. Understanding where you are employable means knowing your athletic and academic profile honestly. Earning the interview means knocking on doors — emails, direct messages, following up when a coach follows back.

He is also direct about why families feel buried by the process.

"Most anxiety is caused because you're not prepared. What cures the anxiety is preparation."

For players: reach out to coaches without leading with the scholarship question. Ask whether you are barking up the right tree, whether you would fit the program, whether they will tell you what is missing. Cunningham notes that college coaches get placed on a pedestal they never asked for; most are ordinary people who went into the profession because they like helping young players, and most will give feedback if the question is a real one. He adds that the face-to-face conversation is often the most valuable thing a camp offers.

For parents: understand that a resume cannot be rushed. Experience has to be lived, and the current rules — which push serious contact back toward junior year — give a family more time to build one honestly rather than less.

"When you commit to a school, nine out of ten times you're literally the reason it happened."

Timelines and Camps

The episode closes with a rapid-fire round, stopwatch included. Cunningham puts the start of the process at a player's 15-year-old season, or freshman year of high school — not because coaches will be talking to him, but because that is when the resume starts. Communication with college coaches belongs after sophomore year, around the start of a 16U summer, because that is when programs begin seriously identifying who they will pursue. Reaching out much earlier mostly means competing for attention a staff does not have to spare.

Hawley offers a way to think about the coach's side of it: count semesters as seasons. A player entering his junior year still has four of them in front of him, so a staff feels no urgency to decide early.

On camps, Cunningham's answer comes down to skill level, academic profile, and desire. Go to the dream school's camp once, for the experience and the memory. After that, be deliberate: a program runs only four or five camps a year, so a family gets a handful of real chances, and a 16-year-old throwing 82 is not going to be recruited at a marquee program no matter how many strikes he throws. Target the camps where an offer is realistic, because recruiting is a copycat business and one offer tends to produce a second look somewhere else.

Build the Community Around Your Player

Hawley ends where the conversation kept pointing: nobody who reaches the highest level did it alone. Players need coaches, family, and honest advisors around them, and the community a family builds matters as much as any single decision in the process.

Cunningham's closing request is an open door. He and Hawley want questions from listeners — the things families have never been sure about — and if the answer is outside their experience, they will go find it. Both note the same thing about their own careers: they coach because they like helping people, and that is the lane this segment is meant to live in.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 3:06 — The college game has gotten older
• 4:18 — Revenue sharing, NIL, and general managers in the Power Four
• 7:57 — Junior college as the most intelligent route
• 8:33 — Pitching travels; the hitter's path is harder
• 11:29 — It is not about what you cannot do
• 15:08 — Two of the best pitchers alive and three college offers
• 18:34 — When no really means not right now
• 20:24 — Where an objective evaluation comes from
• 22:30 — Why the baseball part is the easy part
• 26:36 — Committing is a series of events, not one event
• 29:26 — How players actually get noticed
• 30:38 — Why X is the strongest free recruiting tool
• 33:42 — Why you cannot shelve baseball for six months
• 35:47 — Track record: who puts their name behind you
• 38:47 — Recruiting as a job search
• 40:44 — Asking coaches for feedback, not scholarships
• 45:03 — Rapid fire: when the process starts
• 46:08 — When to start communicating with college coaches
• 48:18 — Which camps are worth your time
• 51:02 — Nobody reaches the big leagues alone
• 52:22 — Closing thoughts and how to send in questions

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Aaron Cunningham is a Baseball Forward recruiting advisor and co-host of Recruiting 101, the podcast's monthly segment on the college baseball recruiting process. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.