Rick’s Targets

A few years back I had a baseball blog (with a partner) that accumulated tens of thousands of views per day. All you need is a few dollars to buy a domain name, and free time, to do it. Later we did a Podcast, which was even cheaper to start up. Had some fun and moved on. And you folks see my posts - what do I know? But once it's out there people see and hear it and then incredibly quote it like it means something. And hits equal advertising interest, and we learned that people love lists and love prospect stuff. So, we did prospect lists, and we would get huge traffic on the days we did this. And I say this freely, we knew nothing about prospects. We had never seen any of these guys play. And we were mostly in it for the fun so we would joke some on the site about that and make some disclaimers, yet we would still find people linking our dopey lists on Twitter like they were important.

My point is not to denigrate anyone who does that stuff, we have two members here doing excellent Podcasts. It is just forget these lists. They exist for clicks, and most of them are completely useless. Watch who else is recruiting the player. This works for portal and traditional recruiting.

SJU just beat out Ohio State for a transfer and Villanova for a High School recruit. It's not an exact science but I am more confident in the Ohio State and Villanova staffs time evaluating talent then a guy or gal in a room crunching Fangraphs data. The staffs have that data too.
 
IDRAFT said:
A few years back I had a baseball blog (with a partner) that accumulated tens of thousands of views per day. All you need is a few dollars to buy a domain name, and free time, to do it. Later we did a Podcast, which was even cheaper to start up. Had some fun and moved on. And you folks see my posts - what do I know? But once it's out there people see and hear it and then incredibly quote it like it means something. And hits equal advertising interest, and we learned that people love lists and love prospect stuff. So, we did prospect lists, and we would get huge traffic on the days we did this. And I say this freely, we knew nothing about prospects. We had never seen any of these guys play. And we were mostly in it for the fun so we would joke some on the site about that and make some disclaimers, yet we would still find people linking our dopey lists on Twitter like they were important.

My point is not to denigrate anyone who does that stuff, we have two members here doing excellent Podcasts. It is just forget these lists. They exist for clicks, and most of them are completely useless. Watch who else is recruiting the player. This works for portal and traditional recruiting.

SJU just beat out Ohio State for a transfer and Villanova for a High School recruit. It's not an exact science but I am more confident in the Ohio State and Villanova staffs time evaluating talent then a guy or gal in a room crunching Fangraphs data. The staffs have that data too.
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So you’re not I Draft Prospects?
 
Very good post IDRAFT. People love lists/rankings but a lot of them are total BS to drive clicks. I make them myself sometimes in my career (unrelated to sports) and lists always do well on YouTube or really anywhere online. I would add though, in defense of lists, many of them do incorporate some type of analytics/AI. Just for example, when you look at a list of top prospects chosen before the MLB draft they aren't too different from what teams ultimately pick. Sure, you'll have a projected first rounder or two slip into the third round at times, but for the most part things don't go too differently. Draft lists however are a big business so more effort goes into making those. Teams themselves have many different scenarios for draft day. I don't think these portal lists, or even high school recruiting rankings, have as much effort put into them. I do think they at least use analytics and aren't total guesses, but that's also why you have some outliers like David Jones. 13.2 points for a Power team and 14.5 the year before? Put him in the top 50! Of course those numbers don't tell the full story which is why he's still in the portal.

I agree that one of the most important things to look at is who else is recruiting them. Granted we don't know what type of roles other programs had planned, maybe the recruits simply figured they'd get a lot more minutes here, but regardless it's always a good thing to beat out top schools for any recruit.
 
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ADORAZ said:
Very good post IDRAFT. People love lists/rankings but a lot of them are total BS to drive clicks. I make them myself sometimes in my career (unrelated to sports) and lists always do well on YouTube or really anywhere online. I would add though, in defense of lists, many of them do incorporate some type of analytics/AI. Just for example, when you look at a list of top prospects chosen before the MLB draft they aren't too different from what teams ultimately pick. Sure, you'll have a projected first rounder or two slip into the third round at times, but for the most part things don't go too differently. Draft lists however are a big business so more effort goes into making those. Teams themselves have many different scenarios for draft day. I don't think these portal lists, or even high school recruiting rankings, have as much effort put into them. I do think they at least use analytics and aren't total guesses, but that's also why you have some outliers like David Jones. 13.2 points for a Power team and 14.5 the year before? Put him in the top 50! Of course those numbers don't tell the full story which is why he's still in the portal.

I agree that one of the most important things to look at is who else is recruiting them. Granted we don't know what type of roles other programs had planned, maybe the recruits simply figured they'd get a lot more minutes here, but regardless it's always a good thing to beat out top schools for any recruit.
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Paragraphs or Kranmars will give you a stern talking to! ;) 😜
 
gregbodkin said:
Paragraphs or Kranmars will give you a stern talking to! ;) 😜
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Haha I actually didn't realize it was a wall of text until after posting. Oddly enough I don't have the option to edit that post anymore, even though I edited it like ten minutes ago. Maybe because it was quoted editing is now disabled? :unsure:
 
ADORAZ said:
I edited after you saw my post to add to it. Jones is an outlier I think due to his career stats. Dingle I've only seen on one list (CBS #14), so any list that he's not on hasn't been updated yet. Not saying the lists don't have some glaring mistakes, they do, but the main issue now is late transfer decisions being omitted (such as Dingle).
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On 247 for example they have numerical ratings for kids on their latest to enter page but it doesn't automatically drop them into the appropriate place in their overall rankings, also rating based. For example Nelson would be right at the top in the 3-6 range, Dingle would be top 13 or so if their ratings stayed the same and their systems were automatic, at least as far I can understand it after looking it over.

And to idraft's point you do need to take it all with a grain of salt and try and dig too deep. That's why I generally rely on those that do consensus lists or those with folks who've been doing this a long time like Evan Daniels and Jerry Meyer at 247.
 
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dk423 said:
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4 pts 4 rebs with good shooting %s in 12 minutes as a freshmen.

1.5 pts 2 rebs with worse shooting %s in 6 minutes as a junior.

I know Jordan brown came into the mix and he is super talented, but to go from somewhat promising as a freshmen to non existent as a junior is a strange one.

www.espn.com

Isaiah Richards Stats | ESPN

Latest on Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns forward Isaiah Richards including latest updated stats on ESPN
www.espn.com www.espn.com
 
MugCostanza said:
Brooklyn kid from South Shore but yeah definitely hoping this "interest" is just a favor for somebody. Backed up former SJU target Jordan Brown but couldn't really hack it at that level
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If we are definitely looking for a center, then that is one position we are 100% recruiting a back up. Can’t be easy.
 
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