On the field, meaningful offseason work takes place behind closed doors, confined to the weight rooms, batting cages and indoor facilities where players expend every bit of effort to improve their craft after a long season.

The winter also brings an opportunity to update rankings based on these seasons to determine the best players in each class. But instead of keeping it behind closed doors like most offseason work, we decided parents and players ought to know the process behind the lists.

At Prep Baseball Wisconsin, we updated our rankings for the class of 2025, 2026 and 2027 prior to this spring's showcase season. Wisconsin/Illinois Scouting Supervisor and Wisconsin Scouting Director Vinny Rottino joined forces to detail what goes into rankings updates.

Locascio served as an assistant coach at Purdue and Eastern Illinois, as well as recruiting coordinator at Danville Area CC prior to joining Prep Baseball in 2015.

Rottino served as a pro scout for the Texas Rangers from 2016-20 after playing for four teams across parts of five big league seasons. His 14-year playing career also included stops in Japan and South Korea’s top professional leagues.

Locascio and Rottino, along with Managing Editor of Scouting Andy Sroka and Area Scout Josh Fields rank Wisconsin’s best hardball talent. It’s a mix of art and science, old-school scouting and modern data-driven analysis, from some of the best talent evaluators in the Midwest.

How difficult is it to rank players?

Drew Locascio: The rankings are by far the hardest part of the job. Having to put a number on a player is never easy. These guys are young, always changing, and it's a ton of responsibility. To put a number on a player and peg him as the 87th in the state or first in the state, or not ranked at all - there are a lot of kids that care a lot about that number, so we do not take that lightly.

It is a group effort and it's something that we are diligent about. I'll never sit here and say that we're perfect. We try to get them as good as we can get them.

You see as many players as many times as possible and as many different looks from as many different eyes as we can. We value everybody's opinion on our staff. We’re constantly making comments, moving them within our sheet, adding players to the sheet, putting our grades on them in that sheet.

We have internal grades that we use - anytime that we see a player, it can be used, not just for invite-only events such as the Wisconsin State Games, the Future Games, etc.

What factors go into the rankings?

Locascio: For example, if I really like the arm or the actions a player is showing receiving the baseball, he may get his name into that ranking sheet. But with all of the data and athletic testing that we use now at events, we're really able to gain a more full picture of these players.

We understand these events are not games - they're not facing 85 with a good breaking ball, they're seeing 10 pitches in BP or running a 60, taking groundballs, but we're collecting all of these measurables and starting to paint that picture of a player.

We're looking at the swing - two players may each post a 98 mph exit velocity, but those can vary on how they get to that exit velocity. Is it easy? Is it whippy? Is it using the whole field or is it all turning to the pull side? Is it a swing that doesn't look like it's going to play in a game as well? We are looking at swings, body types, maturity levels and actions.

What we really try to do is take all of the information we're getting at showcases, build our follow list of which guys we need to attack and see play in a game.

What should a player do if he isn’t ranked where he hoped?

Rottino: I played in the big leagues guys and I wasn't on any list, wasn’t even heavily scouted. I was a late bloomer physically.

There were some indicators that I could play at the next level, but again I was one of the most undersized players in the entire state. I wound up going to UW-Lacrosse, a Division III school. I used that as fuel to get myself better at the game of baseball.

I talk to players all the time - focus on getting to your ceiling. That should be your main goal - how can I get better today at the game of baseball? How can I use the fact that I wasn't recruited or on any of these lists to get better at the game of baseball?

If you don't like where you are ranked, use that as fuel to get better every single day at this game. Have that mindset and find a school that's a good fit for you.

There are a number of examples of lower-ranked players who used their rankings as fuel and wound up playing at D-I programs.

Locascio: There are so many players in Illinois, Wisconsin that go unranked, that are good. We have to cut it off at a certain point. Never let the number that we put on you influence how you feel about yourself as a baseball player. All it takes is one guy to like you.

Control what you can control - you can’t control what number we put on. If you look back a few years down the road and can say that you worked your tail off to get better every single day, you can lay your head down at night knowing you gave everything you had.

What can you control and work on?

1. Your character
2. Your passion for the game
3. Live in the weight room - get big and strong
4. Live in the batting cage - work on your craft
5. Consistently throw your weighted balls/long toss
6. Eat well - quality food, protein, lots of food if you want to gain strength
7. Developing instincts - dirt-ball reads, knowing which base to cover, back up, throw to

Be the kind of player your coach has to rein in because of your passion.

What role does the spring season play?

Locascio: The spring is huge for us - seeing these players represent their high school programs, their communities and their schools. We get to see how they handle themselves in the box or on the mound after a bad call or after the guy behind them makes an error.

It all helps paint a picture of who they are.

What is the biggest misconception of rankings?

Locascio: It is not a ranking of who I want to give the ball to right now or who the best players are currently in the state. We’re constantly evaluating the floor and the ceiling to determine who the best prospect is.

We want to evaluate who’s going to be good once they get into college or pro ball - who's going to continue to ascend?

We may not rank as highly the player who’s 16 years old with a full beard who’s more physical than everybody else. He may throw 88, but it's stiff, can't spin - we don't know if he's going to get any better. On the other side, we may rank highly the pitcher who’s tall, projectable and competes well, but only throws 84. Velocity matters but is only part of the equation.

What’s the prototype of the better prospects?

Locascio: The loose, athletic, high-upside, young-looking athletes often continue to get better. They tend to sit higher on our rankings.

1. We value the up-the-middle athletes over the corner guys. Maybe a player is at third base right now, but defensively at the next level, he’s going to have to go to first base. If he's a first baseman only, there’s a lot more pressure for the bat to come around. For example, Calvin Moreau who plays up-the-middle and is a true two-way guy. We love the athlete, the frame, the make-up. How good might he be when he commits to pitching?
2. Left-handed bats or arms are always going to be valued more highly. They just don’t come around as often, so they’re more sought after.
3. The players with one or two off-the-charts tools that you can’t teach. For example, Dominic Santarelli with all-field, plus-plus (elite) power.

What does it mean if my ranking dropped?

Locascio: Sometimes a player may debut at No. 17 on our rankings and drop to No. 47 or No. 64 by his senior year. We think highly of you as a player, it's just that there are a lot of good players in Wisconsin. There are so many unranked players that play college baseball. We expand the rankings as they get older, so naturally some players may see their ranking drop.

To illustrate, a student may rank as the seventh-best student in his 20-person class with a 3.7 GPA. If he goes to a school with 100 people in the class, his 3.7 GPA may only earn him a No. 18 ranking, but it doesn’t mean he dropped in talent. It’s the same with our rankings as they expand through a class’s high school years.

As players become juniors and seniors, they receive more opportunities and subsequently improve. It’s a lot more competitive at those older levels.

Rottino: When a player maintains his ability level but four other guys take a huge jump, we still like that other player despite his ranking drop.

It looks like that player is dropping in the rankings, when in fact he's really not. These four other guys just took a massive step forward. Often, that player is a better prospect than he was with his previous, better ranking.

Will I get a better ranking if I go to more events?

Locascio: We get varied looks at players, but the more looks we get at a player, the higher chance we get a good one. We may get one look at a guy and he may play like a Big Ten commit, or we may get a bad look at him. Maybe a player didn't have feel for the breaking ball one day or was playing through injury, and we didn’t know.

There are so many factors that go into this - we understand that we sign up for doing this. The more times we see a player, the more confident we are in ranking him better. However, merely showing up to more events does not equate to a higher ranking.

What else do you want parents and players to know?

Locascio: If you can, get to an event to ensure we see a player. Maybe we’ve seen the way he competes in-game, and now we can see the tools and how he grades out metrically. It paints a more complete picture - we can marry the looks together and get a much better opinion. There are so many players around these states that we can’t see every player during the high school season or at outside summer tournaments.

It also affects our confidence level. When we go into rankings, it matters how confident we are in our looks of players. Sometimes a player flashes a good swing but we don’t know how he fares against a breaking ball. Maybe we’ve seen explosive stuff from a pitcher, but we don’t know how his command plays in-game.

We ask ourselves who we’ve seen consistently perform - it matters. It’s why we're diligent about getting out in the spring and running tournaments. Sometimes, we go to events we don’t even run to learn and know every player in the state. We're not going to know every player in Wisconsin, but we're darn well going to try.

Whether they’re in the top 1% or the future D-III player fighting for the top-200 ranking, we want to know who they are. We’re not there so much to help the top 1% who will be discovered either way, we’re there for that future D-III player fighting to make it to the next level.

We try to gain as full of a picture as possible and help coaches recruit. If I see you dog it down the line to first base and a coach asks me about you, I’m going to tell him what I saw. I’ll also tell him if you busted your tail out of the box on a routine ground ball.

We're not somebody that you guys are paying to get lessons from, or a travel team that you pay for to play in the summer. We are not going to be trusted by anybody at that next level if we're not telling the truth.

Sometimes players sabotage themselves with off-the-field behavior - don’t do that.

Control how you run down the line, react to a bad call, interact with your teammates after you strike out but your teammate hits a home run - are you a team guy or a selfish guy?

Coaches choose who they want in their programs. These college coaches choose their teams - their livelihoods depend on finding the right guys.

Rottino: We don't take this lightly by any stretch of the imagination. You should hear some of these conference calls that we are on about the rankings and agonizing over players and where this kid should slot in.

Locascio: We’re going to miss sometimes, but we hope to hit more than we miss. The main thing is evaluating whether our process is correct when we're going to watch a guy. We want to gain as much information as possible, be correct in our process and rank players to the best of our abilities.

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