Analyzing Which Freshmen Classes May Face The Biggest Roster Crunch In 2021

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Houston Baptist has no commitments listed on Perfect Game. Southern Illinois lists just one. Of the 10 schools with three or fewer commitments, only Minnesota (three) is a power conference member.

The SEC has the most commitments per team of the 15 conferences studied at 15.14. The Big 12 follows with 14.44 commitments per team. The Big East has the least commitments per team at 6.5, slightly less than the Southland’s 6.77 commitments per team.

Unlike the seniors, which saw a close inverse correlation between the number of seniors per team and a conference’s RPI ranking, the commitment data is not as strong. College baseball’s power conferences are unsurprisingly concentrated at the top, but after the first handful of conferences, the ranking of average number of commitments no longer looks much like the conference RPI ranking. That’s likely attributable to the fact that some mid-major conferences are more reliant on junior college transfers than others.

What does all this mean for 2021? Are power conference schools destined for a serious roster crunch as they try to fit all these freshmen into their rosters? Will mid-major teams skew older, throwing off roster balance?

Those are certainly two potential outcomes. But it’s unlikely that it works out that way across the board or even at most programs. The draft is going to play a role, as it does every year, for the elite programs. Part of the reason teams like Arkansas, Miami and Vanderbilt have so many commitments is that they’re expecting some of those players to be drafted and sign with MLB teams, thinning their incoming numbers by the time fall ball starts. They also will lose several players from their own rosters to the draft, opening up spots for the newcomers.

What’s unknown now is just how many players those schools will lose. Instead of a 40-round draft, as is typically the case, MLB will this year cut the draft to as few as five rounds (though many around the game are hoping for a 10-round draft). In a five-round draft, only the very best prep players will be selected. Even a 10-round draft would greatly increase the number of freshmen in college baseball.

At some of these power conference programs, players were committed with the intention of having a larger roster in the fall before cutting it down to the 35-player maximum by Opening Day. Not every conference allows that – the Big Ten, for instance, has strict rules that prohibit excessive oversigning – but for some programs, that is business as usual.

There will be programs where freshmen face more difficult odds of making a roster and no one will be allowed to put extra players on the field. So, even if a team next spring is carrying more than 35 players, alleviating some of the crunch, many players won’t see as much playing time as they were expecting.

Meanwhile, some programs, especially at the mid-major level, will not be allowed by their administration to increase their scholarship or roster count to account for returning seniors. Those teams will then have to chose between returning seniors (or other veterans) and newcomers. It is not hard to imagine some newcomers being squeezed out in those scenarios.

Those factors are why many are expecting a strong freshman class in the junior college ranks in 2021. Even if players don’t immediately head to junior college in the fall, there likely will be a lot of players who transfer at the semester break once they’ve gone through fall ball and get a better sense of where they stand on the depth chart.

Much remains to be sorted out in the coming weeks and months. But after examining the commitment lists of more than half of college baseball, it becomes more clear which programs have some roster management questions to answer to accommodate their freshmen classes.