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Kentucky Baseball 2025

Patrick has been discussed here and he’s a big want, but does anybody have any intel on Kozeal from Vandy? Terry mentioned him in the article the other day and he seems like a massive get to me.
Kozeal would be a great addition. Had success as a Freshman in the SEC. Was the #1 recruit out of Nebraska last year. I think Eli Small was #2 or 3.
 
Kozeal would be a great addition. Had success as a Freshman in the SEC. Was the #1 recruit out of Nebraska last year. I think Eli Small was #2 or 3.
There aren’t many bad players at Vandy. To get real time as a freshman at Vandy is impressive. To see how he produced gets me excited that he could be something really special.
 
Portal ranking 926
After seeing what Roszel got out of O’Brien and Hogan last year and the public perception of them I’m not getting too worked up on a reliever being rated low. He posted 3 0’s against us in the biggest game of the year. I’m pretty confident he can get some outs in the SEC because I saw it regardless of what the metrics say.
 
waldy blew out his knee on one of those less-than-ideal fields they play on up there. Wouldn't be surprised if there is some hesitation to send guys on the staff's part, especially position players. I'd bet you see Cleaver there next summer though.
Found no UK players on Cape Cod rosters, what's up with that? Cape's not the "know all, be all" of collegiate summer leagues, know there are many fine leagues but still expect some sort of participation in the Cape.
 
OT: Ran into Mingione at the ISCO yesterday, where I was a walking scorer. Said hello to him and told him I went to Omaha, he thanked me profusely. Have to say he is a really good guy every time I have talked to him, which is three or four times now.
 
Hate to be the old guy screaming get off my lawn, but is the transfer portal and a complete overhaul of the roster annually (like basketball just did) now the new normal, and we can forget about signing 6 or 8 HS kids a year, keeping them together for two or three years and building a solid team with a stable roster we can follow?

If so, I hate to see that, really hard to keep up and a lot harder to stay engaged year in and year out with complete blank slate in the off season.
 
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Hate to be the old guy screaming get off my lawn, but is the transfer portal and a complete overhaul of the roster annually (just like basketball just did) now the new normal, and we can forget about signing 6 or 8 HS kids a year, keeping them together for two or three years and building a solid team with a stable roster we can follow?

If so, I hate to see that, really hard to keep up and a lot harder to stay engaged year in and year out with complete blank slate in the off season.
Pretty much. HS guys like schramm who have good desirables out of hs come in and sit and look up and think ‘they keep going and getting older guys’ so how does that guy get his playing reps in order to be able to play. HS kids have to find somewhere they can play fairly soon so they can then be desirable in the portal or develop for professional hopes. They get passed over at their own schools by guys who often come from smaller conference schools that did well but they also got to play. It’s not even a ‘wait your turn’ thing. Some schools are picking guys in the portal over kids they recruited and developed. In UK’s specific case this staff has always been poor at hs player development so I frankly don’t know why a well regarded hs kid wants to sign up for it. They obviously have knocked it out of the park with what they’ve gotten out of portal kids.
 
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OT: Ran into Mingione at the ISCO yesterday, where I was a walking scorer. Said hello to him and told him I went to Omaha, he thanked me profusely. Have to say he is a really good guy every time I have talked to him, which is three or four times now.
Did you tell him I was there too?
 
Hate to be the old guy screaming get off my lawn, but is the transfer portal and a complete overhaul of the roster annually (like basketball just did) now the new normal, and we can forget about signing 6 or 8 HS kids a year, keeping them together for two or three years and building a solid team with a stable roster we can follow?

If so, I hate to see that, really hard to keep up and a lot harder to stay engaged year in and year out with complete blank slate in the off season.

It appears that way, but I think Ming is also trying to some degree to alleviate that a bit with mixing younger and older transfers. Some of them have one year and that's it but others are sophomores who have a few in the tank. So maybe he's trying to balance out the roster a bit this way, but I imagine it's difficult with the current makeup and the desire to win.
 
I think it’s a must for Mingione to play the transfer game right now almost exclusively. High school recruiting has gotten better, but until you’re consistently plucking top 100 guys (that’s always going to be hard here when you mix in other top programs and then losing kids of that caliber to the draft) you have to get old, proven players to compete.
 
Jackson Strong drafted in round 7 so probably losing that transfer
#206 is a $276.70k slot value. Being that he has only 1 year left his leverage is not super strong. One would think he’d only stay if he thinks by betting on himself in the SEC he can move up to R4 or better and at least double the slot (with no bargaining power if out of eligibility).

If he goes, pay McCarthy! Rumor is Nolan just visited UGA and has visits lined up with Miss St. and Bama. My bet is he follows Ammirati to the Dawgs (barf).
 
It's like with MBB, people hold onto glimmers of hope but you would be much better off assuming anyone's name you see on the board is gone and be ecstatic if they shock everyone.
 
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Are there many pitchers left in the portal that didn’t get drafted as high as they wanted?
Really hard to say but I would think that Mason Moore in the 15th round to possibly the worst team in the league was not what he wanted. According to the draft portal rankings there were eight pitchers in the top 150 that were NOT committed that did not get drafted that I suppose could be UK targets?

I think the deadline to sign for the guys who committed to us that got drafted is August 1

Most people think if in the first ten rounds they are definitely gone. Drafted after round ten its possible not to sign. Whether it means anything or not both Verdugo and Strong have removed "UK baseball" from their social media bio's while Watson, Youngblood and Moore still have UK baseball in their bio (prolly doesn't mean a lot but just an observation)

IMO, Verdugo is the prize we would love to have in Lexington.
 
None of those drafted guys are coming/coming back. Need to mine the portal again for the good ones you can maybe pick off or re-allocate the funds you've gained back too. It'll be interesting to see if Pelletier is affected by Burkes' decision at all? And it really makes Cleaver's health/development important.

This is the dance with transfers from smaller schools. If they're good enough to play in the SEC they are good enough to get drafted.
 
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