Darin must see something here, so welcome Nathan! Decent sized kid, .294avr. Has a video on Youtube I think he made as a senior in HS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqL_bakOulw
Basil? Any thoughts on his talents?
Swing looks ok. If you pause it at 1:25 you can see how is swing is at risk of being long. You can see his arm "bar" as he goes through the zone. In addition, he doesn't swing from the ground up. Notice how his legs and hips don't drive through his swing with authority? Not crazy about that. Now, if he played at a California Juco, I imagine his swing has gotten better as he has gotten stronger. In addition, I bet his swing is more inside out now than being so long. You can see why he is not D1 out of high school with the long swing and soft bottom half. Reetz is comparably a much better hitter.
The receiving video was gimmicky. I need to see a live pitching rather than just someone throwing soft 20 footers. I can't see anything from his throwing video. Blocking? Eh, more gimmicks. I can teach
anyone how to block at a college level in under 30 minutes...if they are not afraid of the baseball. Didn't see enough to make a call on him. The footage that I did see was all staged. He is a freshman, so he would have another Juco year. He hit .294 with 12 rbis. Not really stats that will blow you out of the water. He had 9 errors in 150 chances (.940) not great, but he had 10 passed balls. That is not good.
To compare, both Lubach and Fish only had 4 passed balls, each. Fish fielded 1.000 (0 errors in 122 chances) and Lubach fielded .992 (2 errors in 255 chances).
Maybe the staff sees something, wants to red shirt him, and get him going as a RS sophomore.
Or, maybe they are really worried they might lose Lubach and Reetz to the draft, leaving us with only 2 catchers. This draft is really light on catchers. That would be a nightmare scenario; as I think about it if they didn't pick up an emergency catcher. I think this is the most likely scenario and this guy might be the best of the remaining recruits and the best of the freshman JUCOs that aren't going to hold out for better offers.
This kid reminds me of a panic catcher recruit from the early 2000s...Can't remember his name for sure...Tito Rivera I think it was. Terrible player, but had some flash, could hit ok, but was really just a Juco left over.