How to Honestly Evaluate Your Son’s Baseball Tools

The most important thing you can do as a dad in this process is look at where your son actually stands compared to the level he says he wants to play. That is a hard thing to do because it is your kid, and you have watched him get better every year. Wanting him to be a D1 player is great. Pretending his current tools already belong there is how families get bitter when their son doesn’t reach that goal.

You hear it in the bleachers all the time. “He’s got a strong arm.” “He can really hit.” Those sentences don’t mean anything until you put a number next to them. 76 exit velo and “he can really hit” don’t go together if the goal is playing college baseball at a high level. Numbers don’t tell the whole story of his heart or whether he can play the position. They do give you a clear picture of where the physical tools sit against the level he says he wants.

What coaches actually look at

College coaches start with the three things they can measure: a 60-yard dash, arm strength from his position, and bat speed / exit velocity. Hitting for average and fielding take a trained eye to evaluate as they have to be able to evaluate the movements. You want someone honest who has seen a lot of players — not just a parent in the bleachers giving you feedback. The other three you can get this week. The chart by level is in The 3 Measurable Tools.

Write the numbers down

Get him measured immediately if you haven’t already. Time the 60. Get an arm reading from his position. Get his exit velo off a tee. Write those numbers down. Next to them, write out where he wants to be in 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months. That tells you where he stands today, and it gives him something real to work toward.

Compare those numbers to the level he actually wants — not to the kid who dominated his 13U league. It doesn’t matter which travel organization he plays with or how many showcases you sign him up for if those numbers don’t match. If he wants D1 and the tools sit at a D3 level right now, you have work to do in the backyard. You do not have a reason to buy a longer showcase calendar.

If you want a grade on the same scale I use when I look at a player to recruit or advise, put the numbers into the Free Objective Evaluation. I’ll send it to your inbox. It is not a recruiting service. It is a picture of the tools for where he currently stands.

Don’t build a school list off a wish

Too many families build a school list that has nothing to do with the player’s skills that are present today. You can’t get where you want to go until you know where you are. One honest evaluation is worth more than ten people telling you what you want to hear — including a second set of eyes that doesn’t share your last name.

Your job after you have the numbers is not to crush him. It is to sit next to him, tell him the truth, and match the work to the goal he actually has. If the goal is college baseball, the plan is years. One Saturday afternoon won’t make or break him. Stack the 20 minutes sessions every day. Let the tools move. Then the recruiting process gets a lot simpler because there’s something real to recruit.

If you can’t say the truth out loud in the car, the recruiting process will say it for you later, and that’s a much harder conversation. Before you even write the numbers down, there is a simpler question that still makes people squirm: how good is he against the kids he actually plays with? Rank him on his own team first. Then measure the tools.