players where we sell 75 tickets a game can get any meaningful cash ( 150 K) unless they are somehow using math gymnastics to count school and living costs... and if they can - awesome for them... but I just think most of these numbers are fantasy... i have no knowledge so glad to be wrong... I dunno

It will certainly take more resources from the athletic department to keep up with the big P4 programs. I hope the new AD is able to help divert some of the recent influx of funds towards the diamond sports.

although, given the focus on "stuff" that it appears MLB teams prioritize with pitching, both Torres and VanDeHatert have competitive pitch arsenals and velocity for lefties so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. The other thing I am curious to see is around the calculus of college NIL vs. professional signing bonuses. As you noted, for players picked in rounds 11+, there is the $150k signing bonus and then you would have $700-$1,000 per week (depending on pro level) plus food and housing in compensation. Doing some quick research, it looks like a solid P4 weekend starter could command $150k-$300k in NIL so you could potentially earn a bit more for a year staying in college while trying to improve your draft stock. That is probably the only scenario that would make sense for a pitcher to stay and I think neither Torres or VanDeHatert were locks for the Sunday starter role so I doubt we were planning to align that much NIL to either of them so I would expect both of them to sign. I am curious about Madden Clement. I know he entered the transfer portal but to my knowledge, didn't commit anywhere. I do expect him to sign, but he is someone I could see our coaching staff being comfortable giving the opportunity as a weekend starter next year and offer him NIL that would be competitive with a 15th round pick and with how little he has pitched to this point, he is someone that could improve his draft profile to inside the top 10 rounds next year. But, given how poorly things went for Aiden Robertson after being drafted in the 13th round last year and electing to come to VT, I could see Clement taking the sure thing with the bonus and trying his hand professionally this year.

I know our good friends at TSL and other VT sports news sites have asked for release of that info only to be shut down. It's tough to know how much we are offering players besides what I've heard for one-two current players and interpolating from there. From what I know, we aren't extremely competitive with NIL for baseball compared to many P4 schools that expect to make the tournament fairly often. Robertson surprised me by coming to campus, so maybe there's reason to believe at least one of these two comes to campus. Clement is a wild card. Not really sure what he'll do because I really do wonder how much his stock would rise if he had one full, healthy year as a starter in college at P4 level.