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Some of you guys (cough...cough hop) are trying to hard to pile dirt on Childress.

Once again, well said Lance!

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I'm not piling on Childress and I've said that numerous times. You simply need to read my posts where I've praised Childress for many aspects of his program. I'm piling on posters who choose to respond in arrogant quips with winky face emojis.

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It was inferred that "elite" talent was in the first 2 rounds, and that there were programs that made a habit of it.

If this is somehow a Childress shortcoming, he shares it with basically the entirety of the college baseball coaching profession. There are 2 players left unsigned from the first 2 rounds of the draft this season.....the next highest player that didn't sign went in the 7th round.

One is the player this thread is about, the other is committed to Vanderbilt and has until tomorrow to sign. To read about some of the advantages some private schools have, you can read this article.

In 2015, there were 3 players (Funkhouser to Louisville, Singer to Florida, Hughes to Georgia Tech) that didn't sign from the first 2 rounds. There was one player in round 2 that didn't sign and stayed in school (Miami), but zero that enrolled in a D1 program in 2014. There were 2 in 2013 (Oregon, Fullerton). There was one in 2012, and he ended up quitting baseball after playing at Mizzou.

So in the past 5 years, we have 8 players that didn't sign from the first 2 rounds, and zero schools who had more than one player skip their signing bonus. TCU would be the outlier with Baker going later in the draft after telling schools not to sign him, and now Lodolo. This is less of a common strategy and more of an anomaly.

Edit--Vanderbilt signee Braxton Garrett signed a couple of hours ago, so we're down to one player from the first 6 rounds plus who didn't sign from this year's draft.

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Using the example that 90+% of early round draftees sign with an MLB versus going to college is completely irrelevant to the discussion when you understand that MLB teams not named the Astros won't utilize a 1st or 2nd round pick on a prospect that has indicated they want to go to college.

It's not an anomaly when TCU has at least three players on the current team (and it may be more) who at one point during their high school careers were projected as 1st and 2nd round draft choices...the incoming kid mentioned here, Luken Baker, and Ryan Johnson. But, some kids inform MLB teams to essentially take their names off all draft boards. So teams like TCU, Vandy, Florida, Stanford, LSU, Virginia, etc. (considered elite) indeed have early round talent on their rosters even if the players were technically not drafted due to signability issues.

And in the same recruiting class, A&M lost quite a few signees in the 1st round like the Russell kid and Beau Burrows. The point here isn't that two 2015 early round signees went pro. It's that A&M has rarely gotten these early round talent guys to campus over the past decade. Turner Larkins is one of the very, very few who was a draft risk but went to A&M.

And as I've said, what hurts is that Baker and Johnson (along w the Feltman kid who became the closer as a freshman and got the save in game 3 of the Super Regional) all played for the baseball academy located in College Station operated by a bunch of former Texas A&M baseball players and one TexAgs recruiting analyst. See link...

http://www.baseballamerica.com/draft/two-way-prospect-baker-tells-teams-intends-uphold-college-commitment/#u1Av0oihYKK3S2qF.97

I think we can all agree that if this A&M team had Luken Baker and Feltman, it's a NC caliber team.

But looking at future signees and commits, it does appear CHildress is starting to change that result which is critical. He already has two commits from the local Twelves Academy for the 2018 class and Childress signed another good one from the Twelves in 2016 (Cameron Blake). Maybe he has indeed recognized that he needed to change his perception, and has adjusted. So this could be all a moot point anyway.

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It's not irrelevant, because those decisions are still incredibly rare. And there aren't a ton of guys that skip those first 2 rounds either when it's that sure of a thing. Of all those kids I listed, I think one of them improved their draft stock. Purke lost money on his deal as well. Childress didn't get Burrows or Ashe on campus because they were multi-millionaires at age 18 and were the #21 and #22 picks in the nation. Removing yourself from that situation is not common either.

And again, we had a NC caliber team this year, no doubt about it. If you're still stuck on that not being true, I can't believe you watched the college baseball season. Baker couldn't have scored 4 runs by himself on Sunday, and we weren't struggling at the closer position.

And here's Baseball America's blurb about Ryan Johnson (who hit .214 this year)

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Another TCU signee, outfielder Ryan Johnson of College Station (Texas), also has informed scouts of his desire to go to school in his own letter, sent by his father. Johnson began the year No. 41 on BA's High School Top 100 but has had a poor spring and was not in BA's Top 200. He struggled during the National High School Invitational in March.

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And of course it circles back around to recruiting from the local select team, as if Childress wasn't bringing in tons of Houston talent that also played on select teams. There's no guarantee that having someone that played local select ball means he's a superior player to someone from another town.

-There aren't tons of teams getting guys to skip millions of dollars in the first 2 rounds
-Childress brings in tons of local talent that considered top Texas teams from the Houston area
-The team this year was good enough to win the CWS. The pieces were there, and repeating that a good team would be better with 2 more good players isn't much of an argument because that would always be true. If you can name more than one team that had a clear talent advantage over us this season, I'd be willing to take the argument that recruiting and talent were a problem more seriously

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Yes, it is somewhat rare, which is why the elite teams are the elite teams. The few players who do forego seven figure bonuses, do so because of the allure of playing for an elite team where they'll get plenty of national exposure at the CWS and the coach is a great salesman of that opportunity.

Oh, and if you want to disagree with my opinion, you are welcome to do so. But the condescending BS needs to stop. I've watched more games at Olsen Field (over a 1,000) than just about any human and in the past 28 years my attendance rate is somewhere between 95-99%.

FYI, Matt Purke was a stud high school pitcher that went to TCU and had a combined 21-1 record in his freshman and sophomore years and helped transform TCU baseball into a regional powerhouse that has now become an elite national program. Whether he made a bad financial decision or not is irrelevant to this discussion.

Obviously, you have no results to back-up your assumption that this year's A&M team was good enough to win the CWS, because for the 10th year out of 11 years, A&M didn't make it to the CWS. And regular season baseball is different from post-season baseball because elite pitching depth is what wins at the Super REgional and CWS level. A&M had only four good-to-elite pitchers in the post-season (Hill, Simonds, Vinson, Ecker) and A&M's 2-3 elite hitters were shut-down by TCU's elite arms...which is usually the case in baseball. You see, that's the difference between winning in February-May, and winning in June. Since 1989, how many A&M baseball teams have spent time at #1 in the regular season? I may be off by a year or so on some of these going from memory, but let's see...1989, 1993, 1999, 2009, 2015, 2016. That's six regular season No. 1 teams in the nation, and all six have combined for one win in Omaha. (Ironically, that one win came in 1993 when A&M did have an elite pitching staff with three 1st round draft choices and a second round draft choice (Granger, Wunsch, Moore, Clemons)). That's not including the many teams that were Top 10 in the nation.How anybody can look at the most recent 25-30 year history of Aggie baseball and not want to at least have the discussion why so many good teams have faltered on the national stage is really bizarre for a group of posters who follow this program closely.

Once again, you will feverishly tell me "wrong, wrong, wrong, no, no, no..." when I provide my analysis, but I've yet to hear you or anybody explain that if the Texas A&M program has had sufficient talent over the past 11 years to win the CWS, as you seem to suggest, then what is the reason why the program has zero wins in Omaha? Has it been 11 years of bad luck and bad karma? In the short term, you have to account for the randomness and luck in the game of baseball. The better team will lose on occasion. But when the time frame is 11+ years, it's time to analyze the long-term reasons why the program consistently gets to the cusp but can't break through.

There has to be a reason that over the course of the last 11 years...heck, we could expand that to the last 20 years...why every major competitor in the state of Texas has more CWS wins than Texas A&M. Why did Rice win a national championship and go to the CWS multiple times? Why has TCU gone to the CWS three straight seasons? Why has Texas Tech gone from no NCAA Regional appearances since 2004 to the CWS in just two years and two CWS appearances in four years with a new coach?

Rational, analytical people must be curious as to why Texas A&M has not broken through as a regular or semi-regular participant in Omaha. Refusing to discuss what the program needs to do to get over the hump and ignoring that the program seems to hit a ceiling in most years in the post-season is worthy of a legitimate discussion and not a bunch dismissive responses with no credible information to add other than a cute laughing emoji at the top of the post.

Once again, I actually think there are signs that Childress has softened and has begun to tap into these local and regional academies with some recent 2017 signees and a pair of nice 2018 commits from the Twelves. It would be nice to see the recruiting classes fall consistently into the Top 10 when re-graded after the draft. I actually think the program can break through in a couple of years....but it has to be done.