College baseball players who have used up their eligibility and do not get drafted may feel their professional hopes have ended before they ever get started. Take heart!

In research for an Independent Baseball Insider column last summer it was determined that the five Independent leagues with rookie requirements needed a minimum of 324 rookies at all times, if they were up to their roster limit. We estimated the actual number of rookies on rosters at any given time probably would be closer to 400, and projected, conservatively, that 500 were likely to get some playing time during the season.

Those numbers obviously will climb as new leagues get started.

Of course, it is important to understand that many players with rookie status already have some professional experience. They may not have had enough at bats or innings pitched to lose that label.

In recent research conducted by plowing through the 10 American Association rosters as they stood just ahead of the league’s launch we wanted to learn more about the players getting their first opportunity in an Independent league after college.

There is no set profile, moms and dads. They certainly do not all come from Division I powerhouses.

Seventeen players—an average of 1.7 per team—came directly from colleges, and Texas Christian was the only school with more than one. Two TCU pitchers were on the Coastal Bend staff. Tennessee, Texas Tech, Mississippi all had one player. Others came from such diverse institutions as Lynn University, Methodist College, Dowling, Pensacola Junior College and Kansas City Community College.

It wasn’t geography or size of school that mattered. It was individual talent, which should make parents understand that their boy Johnny can do it too, if Johnny has the talent and gets out to tryouts or whatever else is necessary to get seen.

Returnees Dominated

Now I must caution that there is something less than total purity to the research of American Association rosters since, for example, some players were in two Independent leagues in 2005. That means results do not add up to exactly 100 per cent. The 226 players on active rosters ended up totaling 254 entries in the research.

Not surprisingly, 168 of the entries (66.1 per cent) were from Independent leagues themselves. Seventy-one players were in the Central League last season, with the five teams that went from the now defunct Central to the American Association signing an average of 12.6 players apiece from the league where they had familiarity. The four teams that left the Northern League accounted for an average of 12.0 players from their old haunts and 57 total entries were from that league.

The third-ranking Independent league in the number of 2005 players going to the American Association was the Golden League. This second year league had 14 players on rosters, one more than the Can-Am League while eight were in the Atlantic League and five in the Frontier League.

Forty players (21.7 per cent) were in major league organizations in 2005, including nine who spent at least part of the year in Triple-A, 12 were out of baseball entirely last season, and two were in foreign leagues. Teams have brought back an average of nearly nine players (8.8%) from their own rosters of one year ago.

(This story was written for ProBaseballTryouts.com by Bob Wirz, who also writes a weekly column entitled Independent Baseball Insider. Subscriptions to the Insider are available at www.WirzandAssociates.com. The author has 16 years of major league baseball PR experience with Kansas City and as chief spokesman for two Commissioners and authored the book The Independent Minor Leagues: ‘2005 Season in Review’.)