Baseball season has finally arrived and with that, it comes time for fans meet the new additions to the Auburn roster and welcome back returning players.
The Tigers were busy in 2022, adding 14 freshmen and 10 transfers from all over the nation. According to the Perfect Game, Auburn was ranked sixth for its class of 2022 recruits. Some notable freshmen additions were Ike Irish, Hayden Murphy and Zach Crotchfelt, all ranked among the nation's top 100 players. The Michigan native, Irish, was ranked 39th with Georgia native Murphy ranked 63rd, and the New Jersey native, Crotchfelt, at 93rd.
The recruitment process is cyclical because it is an ongoing and year-round operation. High school athletes are the primary focus of the team’s recruitment efforts as junior college players and transfers are looked at later in the year.
“Typically, we focus on high school kids. We start looking at them mostly after their freshman year. That’s the sweet spot between the end of their freshman year and end of their sophomore year,” said assistant coach Karl Nonemaker. “That’s the year window where we’re heavily looking at committing high school players, and we’re always adding, but then in the fall, we’re looking at junior college players, and then early in the summer, we’re looking at transfers.”
Head coach Butch Thompson, assistant coach Gabe Gross and Nonemaker are the only people — from an NCAA standpoint — that are allowed to leave campus and watch prospective athletes. Nonemaker has been a collegiate coach for 11 years at three universities: Monmouth (2010-11), Old Dominion (2012-17) and Auburn (2018-present).
He revealed that phone calls are the primary source of communication between prospective athletes and coaches. Nonemaker noted that these calls help coaches get a feel of the player's personality and their relationship with coaches and teammates, allowing the team's staff to decide whether they would like to move forward with the athlete.
“So you might be doing a lot of phone calls or Zooms, and I think that, of course, getting a feel for their personality is important, especially what others say about them like what their coaches say or things like that are important,” Nonemaker said. “How they act, body language, things like that. So maybe that’s not, per se, the interview itself, but you’re trying to figure out how much they love the game and how committed they are to the game.”
Collegiate baseball coaches can’t communicate with prospective athletes until their junior year of high school and compared to basketball or football, most players commit later in their high school career.
Baseball is the only sport where players can be drafted a month before they enroll. If the player is 21 years old within the month of the draft, he is eligible. This is made possible through the Rule 4 Draft.
Rule 4 Draft is the official name for the first-year draft held by Major League Baseball. To be eligible, the players have to meet several requirements.
The first is that the players must be residents of the United States, including the U.S. territories or Canada. Athletes who have completed high school but haven’t attended college and have completed at least one year of junior college are eligible. Athletes are also eligible if they attend a four-year college upon completing their junior or senior year.
Nonemaker compares this complex process to a puzzle because coaches must anticipate who may be drafted and decide who will be the backup for that player headed to the professional league.
“You don’t even know who’s going to get drafted until mid-July,” Nonemaker said. “So not only can the pros take your incoming players, they can take your (current) players.”
In 2022, Auburn lost eight players to the draft, with four going in the first five rounds — a program record. Headed to the Atlanta Braves, Blake Burkhalter went in the second round, going 76th overall. Mason Barnett headed to Kansas City as he went in the third round (87th) by the Royals. Going 137th overall, Trace Bright went in the fifth round to the Baltimore Orioles. Also, in the fifth round, Sonny DiChiara went 148th overall to the Los Angeles Angels.
It is important for coaches to look for a player who is college ready, specifically physically. Nonemaker summarized this individual process to look through an athlete’s reliable, dynamic performance.
“So the first thing we’re looking for is who are the most impactful players. If you’re a pitcher, are they winning a ton of games? Are they striking people out? Are they not letting up a lot of hits?” Nonemaker said. “Performance is probably the most important thing.”
When deciding to offer an athlete a scholarship, Nonemaker mentioned that one of the first questions the coaches ask themselves is, “If we don’t get this player, are there four other players just like him?”
The recruitment process can be a stressful experience for aspiring players. For some of these athletes, this process has been a recurring cycle for their whole high school experience, constantly trying to have a perfect game and high school career.
Chase Allsup, a sophomore pitcher from Dothan, Ala., went through this process in 2020. Allsup verbally committed to Auburn in November 2020. According to Perfect Game, he was ranked fourth in Alabama and 149th in the nation in 2021.
The sophomore pitcher described the process as stressful yet surreal.
“It was very surreal. It was a lot of stress because, when Auburn started looking at me, I didn’t have anybody really looking at me,” Allsup said. “I finally got in touch with coach Nonemaker, and it relieved a lot of the stress of ‘Hey, I really want to go play college baseball, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen.’”
High school athletes dream of playing for their favorite college team and, eventually, the major leagues. Players practice day in and day out, join multiple teams and work on and off the field to make themselves noticeable to colleges, but once they make it to the NCAA, they realize they still have a little ways to go.
“It’s difficult to say because you want to say yes,” Allsup said. “But in the back of my head, I was kind of like, 'Am I ready to go (play college baseball)?', and then after the season, it just kind of got further and further away to where I believed that yes, I could go play baseball.”
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Caitlyn Griffin is a sophomore from Huntsville, Alabama, majoring in journalism. She started with The Plainsman in fall 2022.
Twitter: @caitlyngrif99
