Coach Beede

08/19/2026

Summer baseball is over—but did the tournaments, showcases, camps, travel, and expenses actually move your athlete’s college baseball recruiting process forward?

In tonight’s LIVE Coach Beede Q&A, we’ll examine the difference between being seen, being exposed, and being genuinely recruited. Parents and student-athletes will learn how to recognize real college-coach interest, interpret recruiting silence, evaluate summer results, and determine the right next move for the fall.

We’ll discuss:

• What genuine college baseball recruiting interest looks like
• Why attending showcases and camps does not guarantee recruitment
• The difference between exposure and development
• What silence from college coaches may actually mean
• How to honestly evaluate your athlete’s summer
• Choosing between fall showcases, college camps, and campus visits
• Updating recruiting videos, academics, measurables, and outreach
• Building a realistic college list across NCAA D1, D2, D3, NAIA, junior college, Ivy League, Patriot League, and NESCAC programs
• The next steps for 2027, 2028, 2029, and younger athletes

Bring your questions and include your athlete’s graduation year, position, academic profile, and current recruiting situation.

Exposure gives coaches an opportunity to see an athlete. Development gives them a reason to keep watching.

Coach Beede provides honest guidance grounded in experience as a former college head coach, drafted athlete, recruiting advisor, and parent who personally navigated the process with a two-time MLB first-round draft pick.

Subscribe and join the conversation for practical, straightforward guidance on youth baseball development and college baseball recruiting.

Learn more: https://coachbeede.com
YouTube:



Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: If you are interested in streaming, please check out my link!

08/17/2026

I wanted to release this one early today so you can tie yourself to a tree or duct tape yourself to a chair so you don't miss one second of this conversation!

What do you do when you sit down with someone who has spent more than five decades teaching the game of baseball?

You listen.

My latest guest is Mark “Lunch” McKenzie — one of the most respected and experienced coaches in the game, with more than five decades dedicated to teaching, developing players and giving back to baseball.

Longtime coach at Concordia University–St. Paul, USA Baseball coach, teacher, mentor, and one of the greatest baseball minds you’ll ever hear.

And this conversation went far beyond wins, hitting mechanics, and championships.

Lunch shared lessons about:
⚾ Why development can’t be rushed
⚾ Why “you can’t expedite maturity”
⚾ Teaching players to handle success AND failure
⚾ Why the best teams become about “US” instead of “ME”
⚾ Giving every player an opportunity while understanding that playing time is earned
⚾ Why coaches need to teach the individual, not force every player into the same mold
⚾ Why sometimes the most important thing a coach gives a player isn’t baseball instruction at all — it’s wisdom.

Listen. Learn. And maybe look at player development a little differently when it’s over.

theCTBshow.net

08/11/2026

Uncommitted in August, entering your senior year, and hearing nothing? This is the show for you, and it is not a pep talk. It is a plan.

Tonight we walk through the honest fall roadmap for 2027s, and what 2028s should be doing right now so they never need this episode. What college coaches are actually looking at between now and November. How fall rosters get built now that five classes can occupy them. Why late is not the same as never: sitting head coaches have told us on this show about committing a player entering his senior year and signing another just weeks before college began. And the difference between chasing exposure and earning evaluation, because they are not the same thing, and one of them wastes your money.

As of August 11, 2026: Division I programs that opted into the House settlement operate under the 34-player roster model, and the federal court order granting a fifth year to the 2022 class remains under appeal. The rules are moving. Everything I tell you tonight will carry its date and its source.

If your family is uncommitted and unsure what to do this fall, start with a free 60 to 90 minute family consultation call, no charge, conducted by David Rust, my co-owner at Baseball Blue Book. When you are ready for a full written skill-set evaluation, that is a separate service, $250. Book at coachbeede.com. I own shares in Baseball Blue Book, so you know the connection.

Books: The Process and The Shift, available at coachbeede.com and on Amazon.

New Coaches Corner conversations with college head coaches from every division, every week. Subscribe and turn on notifications.



Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: If you are interested in streaming, please check out my link!

08/11/2026

If you’re serious about playing college baseball, keep things simple. You will get many emails inviting you to camps. Some will be mass emails sent through services. Some will be personalized and those are important. A coach that sends a personal invite wants to evaluate you on their campus. That’s just the beginning of a long process. Enjoy it! Coach Beede

08/06/2026

🚨 WHAT THE NEW NCAA FIVE-YEAR ELIGIBILITY MODEL MEANS FOR FAMILIES

NCAA Division II has officially adopted a new age-based five-year eligibility model effective for the 2026–27 academic year, aligning Division II with the model already adopted by Division I.

There is understandably a great deal of confusion across social media. Before families panic or change their plans, they need to understand what the rule actually says.

Calling it simply “5-for-5” can be misleading. The rule does not guarantee every athlete five seasons of competition. Instead, it establishes a continuous five-year period of eligibility tied primarily to the athlete’s age and initial full-time college enrollment.

The five-year period begins at the earlier of:

• Initial full-time enrollment at any college or university, including a junior college; or
• The beginning of the regular academic year immediately following the athlete’s 19th birthday.

Once that period begins, it continues running—even if the athlete transfers, sits out, leaves a team, takes time away from school, or does not compete.

This will change roster management throughout college athletics.

Some established college athletes will remain for a fifth season. That could create older rosters, fewer immediate openings, increased competition for playing time, and greater pressure on incoming freshmen.

Can anyone accurately say that opportunities for high school graduates will decline by exactly 15%?

Not yet.

Not every athlete will choose—or be able—to remain in college for five years. Graduation, cost, academic programs, playing time, career opportunities, and coaching decisions will all affect that number.

However, I believe roster opportunities will become tighter in many programs, and high school athletes will have to be better prepared academically, physically, and emotionally.

For years, I have shared the potential benefits of a properly planned gap year or postgraduate year. This new rule does not eliminate those benefits. It makes individualized planning even more important.

A postgraduate year can provide valuable time to improve:

• Size
• Strength
• Speed
• Skill
• Academic standing
• Emotional maturity
• Recruiting options
• Overall college fit

But families must now carefully evaluate the athlete’s birthdate, graduation year, and intended full-time enrollment date. A postgraduate year should never be selected simply because recruiting has not gone according to plan. It needs a defined academic purpose, a measurable development plan, and a realistic college-placement strategy.

Please do not rely solely on social media interpretations. Before making an enrollment or postgraduate decision, have the college’s compliance office evaluate the athlete’s individual timeline.

Development is not linear. The right extra year can still change an athlete’s future—but only when it is the right plan for that athlete.

I created a Post Graduate playlist to help families better understand the process, the benefits, and the questions they should be asking:

🎥 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEd1LZTyK12RsUai7XG5madWtSWCmLzcJ

The new landscape rewards preparation:

Develop the athlete.
Protect the academics.
Understand the eligibility clock.
Build options across multiple levels.
Choose fit over a logo.

The families who understand these changes early will be positioned to make better decisions.

Many families believe college recruiting follows a straight line. In reality, some of the most successful student-athletes take a different path. This playli...

08/05/2026

High school baseball recruiting did not slow down. It changed permanently, and most families are still running a college baseball recruiting playbook that stopped working three years ago.

On June 1, roughly 1,400 Division I baseball players entered the transfer portal. By the time the window closed on June 30, the total reached 2,614, roughly one in four Division I roster spots in the country, in a single month. Over half were freshmen and sophomores. Athletes who had already committed, already signed, already arrived on campus.

Meanwhile, D1 baseball rosters went from 40 to 34. Schools that opted into the House settlement are bound to that limit for ten years. Most rosters are still carrying over 34 right now under a temporary waiver, and when it ages out, the 2027 and 2028 classes absorb it.

Here is what almost nobody is talking about: as of late July, only two players in the entire transfer portal top 300 were still unsigned with eligibility remaining. The produced players cleared the market in eight weeks. Every roster hole a coach still has to fill now comes from high school and JUCO. That door is open right now.

WHAT WE COVER
• College baseball recruiting in 2027 and 2028: what actually changed
• The 34-man D1 roster limit and the House settlement, explained
• The transfer portal window and why it dictates your son's timeline
• The temporary waiver that made 2026 look better than it was
• Why coaches take a 20-year-old with a stat line over an 18-year-old with projection
• JUCO and prep school as a strategy, not a fallback
• The real odds: roughly 1 in 43 high school baseball players reach a D1 roster
• Where the Protect College Sports Act fits — and why it does not reopen the door
• College admissions timelines for academic recruits: ED, ED2, EA, rolling, academic index, test-optional
• What to do Monday morning if you have a 2027 or 2028

Every number in this show is public and sourced. I put the sources on the screen. Go check them.

Bring your questions. I answer them live.

Coach Walter Beede — former college head coach, author, and recruiting consultant. Guiding families through the academic baseball pathway to elite prep schools and selective college programs.
coachbeede.com



Want to create live streams like this? Check out StreamYard: If you are interested in streaming, please check out my link!

08/04/2026

On Friday night, a federal judge in Colorado ordered the NCAA to grant a fifth year of eligibility to an entire class of college athletes, class-wide, covering everyone who started college in 2022.

The Division I roster limit did not move. It is still 34, and it is locked there for ten years.

So read that again: the court added players. Nobody added chairs. Every fifth-year athlete who returns this fall is a roster spot that does not open for a 2027 or a 2028.

If you have been wondering why the phone is not ringing for your son, this is a large part of the answer. It is not him.

But that is only the first twenty minutes of tonight's show.

The rest of the hour is on the one lane in this sport that got LESS crowded this year instead of more: the academic path, and the vocabulary that nobody bothers to explain to baseball families:

• Early Decision, ED2, Early Action, REA, rolling admissions — what each one actually commits you to
• Why at Ivy and NESCAC schools, a coach's support only works through Early Decision, and what that means for your family's timeline
• The academic index: the single number that decides how expensive your son is for a coach to recruit
• The pre-read — the checkpoint that tells you whether the interest is real, long before any offer
• Test optional: when it helps and when it quietly hurts you
• Ivy and D3 do not offer athletic scholarships. Here is how the money actually works.
• What a 2027 family should do in the next fifteen months

Every number I show tonight is public and sourced. I put the sources on the screen. Go check them.

Bring your questions. I answer them live.

https://www.youtube.com/live/568D6yP4T5c?si=R-AWMhzLCG1JS1Jc

08/01/2026

Fitchburg High Hall of Famer Walter Anthony Beede has advice for juniors to be when it comes to the college recruiting scene.

https://tritownfocus.substack.com/p/advice-to-baseball-recruits-be-patient

07/22/2026

Most baseball families are planning around a recruiting model that no longer exists. Coaches are still recruiting; they are just not recruiting high school players first. The portal, the 34-player roster cap, and year-by-year roster construction have changed who gets recruited, when, and how.

In this live session, I walk through what actually changed, what August 1 does and does not mean for your son, and why rising seniors have more runway than the panic suggests. I'll show you the numbers, including what a current Division I recruiting coordinator says about high school recruiting right now.

We'll cover:
• Why the old narrative made sense — and when it stopped being true
• The transfer portal by the numbers, and the math on D1 roster spots
• What August 1 actually opens, and the rule most families have backward
• The full contact calendar by division, including the service academy exception
• Why commitments moved to the spring, and what that means for rising seniors
• The resume principle: why you cannot transfer up from the bench

Bring your questions; include your son's grade year and position.

If you want an honest assessment of where your son best fits: https://coachbeede.com/player-evaluation/

Most baseball families are planning around a recruiting model that ...

04/17/2026

One of the most concerning trends in youth and high school baseball is the growing number of pitchers undergoing Tommy John surgery at such young ages. At the same time, too many velocity-based instructors continue to prioritize radar-gun readings over the long-term development of the athlete.

This is where parents need to be very careful.

Between the ages of 15 and 19, young athletes are still developing physically, mentally, and emotionally. Natural strength gains, proper nutrition, recovery, sleep, movement quality, and overall maturity all play a major role in arm health and performance. A young pitcher should not be pushed like a fully mature athlete before his body is ready to handle that level of stress.

Velocity has become a selling point in today’s game, but development must come before destruction.

Parents need to ask better questions:
Is my son getting stronger the right way?
Is he recovering properly?
Is he eating well enough to support growth and performance?
Is he being developed with patience and perspective, or simply pushed for short-term results?

Protect the arm. Build the body. Respect the process.

The goal should not be early hype.
The goal should be long-term health, confidence, and sustainable development.