On this week’s episode of the ALL BEEF NO FILLER podcast, we are joined by Mike Current, assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for Creighton University. Coach Current discusses how recent changes to roster and recruiting rules are reshaping the world of college baseball. He also sheds light on the increasing importance of versatile, athletic players who can handle multiple positions, as well as the rising value of two-way players in this new landscape. 

You can read a sample of the interview below or listen to the entire episode on our website, Apple Podcast or Spotify. 

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Have you gotten a chance to get on that College World Series field and see what it's all about? I know you've probably been there as a coach, but now it's your own field. What do you like about that? And I know that's a huge recruiting tool for you guys. 

Yeah, we were on it this fall. We have the luxury of getting over there pretty much whenever we want. In the fall, we spend some time at our facility on campus during the week. And then we typically get over to Charles Schwab on the weekends when we intersquad. 

I don't know if a lot of people may not know this, but we're actually tearing down the on-campus facility that we have now at the end of the year. We're building a brand new one that will be done in about a year and a half or so. We'll operate full-time out of Charles Schwab next year until that facility is done. And then once it's done we'll have the ability to utilize both. 

But yeah, you're right. It's obviously a huge recruiting tool. Who wouldn't want to play in that stadium, right? It's the Mecca of college baseball. It's where everybody in college baseball is trying to get at the end of the year. And we get a call at home for all but two weeks of the year. I think it's definitely something that makes our program unique and it's definitely a selling point on the recruiting side. 

What is the new facility that you guys are building on campus? What's going to be in there? 

We're pretty lucky. We're going to have two first-class facilities. Charles Schwab is the nicest facility in college baseball, right, and then the on-campus facility is going to be as nice as a lot of teams’ primary facilities. It'll be a turf field. There'll be a building around it that's got coaches offices, a locker room.

But for us, it'll be a great tool. And with the field being turf, how the weather is here early January and February, hopefully we'll be able to get outside and get on the field.

Are there any challenges to playing at a massive field like Charles Schwab? Do you change your approaches when you develop guys, or is it develop the best hitters and we'll figure it out as the game goes? 

I don't know that you necessarily change your approach, but I do think in the recruiting process, you have to recruit the right types of players. I spent the last seven years in the SEC and the SEC is very much like a power oriented league. It's about hitting home runs offensively and it's about throwing hard on the mound. In that park, you might have to recruit a little bit differently than you did at say, South Carolina. We talk all the time to our guys about how we have to be multifaceted offensively.

There's going to be days where you wake up and the wind's going to be blowing 25 to 30 miles an hour straight in, and it's going to be 40 degrees. And if your offense just revolves around hitting the three-run homer, you're probably going to have a tough time winning that day, right? At the same time there's going to be days where the opposite is true. Maybe we're on the road, we're playing at Xavier or somewhere like that. That's a little more hitter friendly and you’ve got to be able to win a game 10-to-8. So I think it starts in the recruiting process. Identifying players that can kind of play that style.

There's going to be days where you have to play small ball. Like you need to steal some bases. You need to get bunts down. You need to hit and run and create some, create some action to be able to score runs because you're not going to rely on just the extra base hit or the home run. 

That's definitely been an emphasis on the recruiting side with our hitters and obviously on the development side. We're definitely making sure we're spending time on those things as well, to make sure that we can do those things efficiently. 

What are some of the things that you emphasize for hitters or what do you look for or what do you try to work on in the fall and that sort of thing? You talked about development. Are there certain aspects, certain numbers you dig into?

There's three pillars as far as being a good offensive player goes because, ultimately, that's what we're trying to do. It's about being a good offensive player as much as it is about being a good hitter. Ultimately when we come together, it's about, how many runs can we score? We talk about playing offense versus hitting. There's the power element, there's the bat-to-ball skills or the contact element, and then there's plate discipline.

Most of the stuff we do on the training side is geared towards working on one of those three areas. In order to be a productive player at this level or at the professional level, you need to be good in at least two of those three categories. That guy that has incredible raw power, but he doesn't make a lot of contact and he doesn't swing at good pitches. That guy's gonna struggle to have success.

You think about even like the Joey Gallos of the world, they've made a big league career out of barely hitting .200 but hitting 40 homers. But the difference is like Joey Gallo walks a ton. So he's got good plate discipline. He's got real power. He doesn't have great bat-to-ball skills, but he's good in at least two of those three categories. I think that's why he's been able to hang around the way that he has.

We're really trying to make sure that our guys can be really good or as good as possible in at least two of those three areas. And if they can be good in all three, now all of a sudden you're talking about like a really high level pro prospect and obviously that's where they all are trying to get to.

Talk to us about the Future Games and how you guys kind of attacked the Senior Future Games versus the regular Future Games this year.

We were in a little bit of a unique situation. As a new staff, you're starting in a little bit of a different place than maybe if we had been here for several years. So we were maybe a little behind. 

I've been out of the Midwest for the last 10 years. Even though I spent the first 30 years of my life in the Midwest and the first nine years of my coaching career there, I have a lot of familiarity with the area. Getting acclimated to the current players again took a little bit of time. We probably were a little behind where some of the schools that had been here and were more established.

To your point about the slower recruiting process, I think there's no question the process has slowed down and I think it's great. It's good for us as coaches and programs and it's great for the kids. The time of eighth graders deciding where they're going to go to college when some of them didn't even know where they were going to high school seemed a little bit ludicrous, but it just kind of was what it was. There was nothing to prevent it from happening. And as soon as one school starts doing it, like everybody kind of feels like they've got to follow suit. And next thing, you know, we're just doing crazy stuff and I don't think that was good for the kids. And I don't think it was great for us either. 

I think the new recruiting rules that went into effect a couple of years ago have really helped with that. Like we're not allowed to even contact kids or have any contact at all, even if they initiate it prior to their junior year of high school. So it's really slowed the process down because of that. 

I think the new roster rules are going to also help to slow things down because you have to be a lot more precise with what the guys you're recruiting are. Like in the past you were recruiting so far out that you didn't even know what your roster looked like. You were just gathering up as many good players as you could.

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