In this episode, I sit down with Jonathan Estes, assistant coach at Weatherford College, one of the top junior college baseball programs in the country.

Jonathan grew up in a town of 648 people in Arkansas, graduated in a class of 50, and worked his way through multiple small college stops before joining Weatherford this year. We dig into:

• How he structures batting practice to challenge hitters
• What he's looking for when he shows up to watch a high school player
• How fine the line really is between a junior college freshman and a Division I freshman.
• The sliding scale for pitching recruits
• Why making a JUCO roster isn't the same as playing
• What usually separates guys who succeed after transferring to a D1 from guys who struggle

We wrap up with the most important advice he'd give any high school player going through the recruiting process right now: Love the game.

Follow Jonathan Estes and Weatherford baseball on X:

Jonathan Estes: @estesthethird

Weatherford baseball: @WCoyoteBaseball

Connect with Patrick Jones Baseball:

On X: @pjonesbaseball

📬 Sign up for the Recruiting Times, my weekly baseball recruiting newsletter – Get insights on college recruiting, player spotlights, and advice for parents and coaches.

https://www.patrickjonesbaseball.com/blog

⚾ Need help with college recruiting? – We help serious baseball players get recruited. Book a 1-on-1 consult.

https://www.patrickjonesbaseball.com/recruiting

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's podcast, I sit down again with Dr. Adam Maloof, Princeton professor of Geosciences and athletics fellow for the baseball team.

This time he’s tackling one of the most overlooked problems in baseball analytics: pitch classification.

If you’ve ever looked at a scouting report and thought, “This guy doesn’t throw seven pitches,” you’re not alone. Dr. Maloof explains why existing pitch tagging data from popular systems (TrackMan, Synergy, and MLB’s StatCast) are often inconsistent, inaccurate, and difficult to use for data analysis.

Together, we discuss:

• Why MLB’s pitch classifier is trained on what pitchers call their own pitches (and why that’s a problem for hitters and analysts)
• How Dr. Maloof analyzed nearly 5 million college pitches using a “blank slate” approach inspired by geology
• The “color wheel” analogy: why pitches within a category (fastballs, breaking balls, changeups) exist on a continuous spectrum with no natural boundaries
• How Princeton’s staff uses reclassified data for scouting, pitch design, and pitching machine programming
• Pitch tunneling: what it is, how they measure it, and how they’re teaching it to pitchers
• The role of arm slot, biometrics, and what’s next for this research

Read Dr. Maloof's article on pitch tagging: How to Classify a Pitch

https://medium.com/sabr-tooth-tigers/how-to-classify-a-pitch-a4805ce35082

Connect with Patrick Jones Baseball:

On X: @pjonesbaseball

📬 Sign up for the Recruiting Times, my weekly baseball recruiting newsletter – Get insights on college recruiting, player spotlights, and advice for parents and coaches.

https://www.patrickjonesbaseball.com/blog

⚾ Need help with college recruiting? – We help serious baseball players get recruited. Book a 1-on-1 consult.

https://www.patrickjonesbaseball.com/recruiting

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this conversation, Nathan Collier and I sit down to talk about travel ball and high school baseball, and how both play a role in getting players recruited. We dig into what makes each one valuable — like how high school coaches can really vouch for a player's character and how competitive they are, while travel ball helps kids get seen by more coaches. We also talk about how youth baseball is changing, what college coaches are actually looking for, and why picking the right team can make a big difference in how a player grows and develops.

Connect with Patrick Jones Baseball:

On X: @pjonesbaseball

📬 Sign up for the Recruiting Times, my weekly baseball recruiting newsletter – Get insights on college recruiting, player spotlights, and advice for parents and coaches.

https://www.patrickjonesbaseball.com/blog

⚾ Need help with college recruiting? – We help serious baseball players get recruited. Book a 1-on-1 consult.

https://www.patrickjonesbaseball.com/recruiting

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.