A question for those that are connected better than me. I’ve been to a few showcases and summer games and apparently the Kentucky high school coaches are not big fans of him. He supposedly doesn’t extend anything to Kentucky kids he expects them to just want to be here and he’s not offering anything . I hope this is bad information 🤷🏼
Nick Mingione
- Thread starter Mulder14
- Start date
Why would that be different than for other sports? Is the percentage of Kentucky hs players with baseball scholarships at UK lower than for say hoops or football? I mean if you want to be topnotch, go get the talent where it's at. How about blaming the hs coaches for not producing better talent? I do see that 7/15 incoming FR are from KY. how many are walk-ons? Don't know.
Kentucky Baseball's incoming transfer class ranked ninth best in the country
Kentucky Baseball's incoming transfer class for the 2025 season was ranked ninth best in the country by 64Analytics.com.
The 11.7 scholarship rule makes it almost universal that coaches at high level programs are more apt to ask in-state kids to take less money so they can recruit out of state as well, who often face much higher tuition. Let's revisit when the new scholarship rules come into effect.
At the end of the day there just isn’t enough super high level talent in the state to get too bent out of shape about it. He certainly does low ball in-state kids with scholarship money, but as it was mentioned above, you have to under the current rules. There are a lot of high school coaches in the state that think their guys are better than they are.
It is absolutely true that under the old system schools were forced to get instate kids for as little as possible. However, the reality is that coaches and players' biggest gripes with Mingione's staff isn't about getting money or not it's been about how kids have been treated and played around with. Past staffs didn't recruit in-state any more than this one has so it's not as simple as saying 'they're just mad because they aren't getting spots'...they get strung along without getting clear info and the staff has history of being evasive on outlining what they see with players, timelines, etc. They do not communicate their true stance on a player well and it's either intentional because they don't trust what they see or it's lazy. And locally people just got fed up at some point... I could share 10-12 stories from just this freshman class. But they have not recruited as professionally as many staffs out there do where they are up front about needs and timelines and what they need to see and are looking for out of them. They are notorious for showing up to tell a kid they are committed to taking them AFTER they have committed to another school. And some local kids they do take early tend to be slight head scratchers. Presumably because they weren't getting money or very little. These examples are not limited to just instate kids. I have relationships with multiple travel ball coaches in the south with high level programs that send kids many places and it has been the same sort of experience there. I think people get more frustrated with it locally because many of them would take less money or come for no money at all if they felt the staff was straight forward in the process. Let's be honest...Mingione's recruiting of hs players/developing them has been rather poor. His 3 successful seasons were with Henderson's players and then the last two by loading up with transfers. The new environment of teams going old with the portal gives them the opportunity to land a couple of guys this year like bell and schwartz because schools don't hold as many roster spots for freshmen. It still will come down to evaluation with hs kids no matter the rank. This will be the case even more so next season when rosters get shrunk by 6 spots. Because they had to go hard in the portal earlier than many other schools did just to save mingione's job, they have had an advantage there the last couple of years but now everyone is in on it heavy so it will be interesting to see if they can maintain an edge with identifying the right portal guys and getting them.
I will share 1 story that is not uncommon to hear about for this staff in the last decade. A nearby out of state kid was referred to them by his travel org as a freshman. UK never really followed up to put him on the id list. The summer after that one of the power SEC schools saw him somewhere and offered and committed. UK didn't follow up really but contacted the travel program asking about the kid after seeing that commitment because they knew the travel org. They were told by the travel org that they had already been given his name a year earlier as someone to get on early. The response was something like, but not exactly, 'well, it would be tough to beat 'school x' out anyway.' The point is that you can beat them out if you get on these kids and at least be upfront with them you can maybe withstand some other school getting involved later. That kid is now rated up there where Bell is, but has also probably shown to have a little more in the tank than Bell does after playing in a top level summer league. But the history of UK just kind of 'messing around' with hs kids... stalling, coming up with goofy reasons they aren't totally ready to move forward yet, not really trusting what they see, etc....and operating in a directionless manner is not unique. Maybe that gets better with a new RC but it was the same under the last few rc's with this staff.
HS recruiting has been diminished with the portal but there is no doubt it hasn't gone well with Mingione's time here. He's a system coach and now with the portal he can just do his best to find pieces that fit. Pitch down and play d guys with mostly kids that might be smaller than other sec teams but maybe run a little better. Pitchers that have 'stuff' don't really fit in here, see Travis Smith. They want to pitch guys down and try to play ground balls. So the guys that have the high induced break, or good ride, get called to throw pitches in places that aren't even their strength. The point is they have a specific way they want to play so even beyond uk being considered down the sec chain a bit historically with elite players , players with good skill aren't interested in going to places that may not even utilize their specific strengths.
