Okay, so today I decided to dive into the wild world of the college baseball transfer portal. I’ve been hearing a lot about it, and honestly, it’s a bit confusing. So, I figured, why not try to make a list myself? Here’s how it went down.
My Attempt to Build a List
First, I grabbed my laptop and fired up good ol’ Google. My initial thought was, “There’s gotta be a central database for this, right?” Spoiler alert: not really.
I started by searching for “college baseball transfer portal list”. The results? A bunch of articles about the transfer portal, some news stories about specific players, and links to individual college baseball team pages. Lots of discussion, no actual master list.
The Digging Begins
I realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t going to be a simple copy-and-paste job. It was going to take some serious manual labor. I started clicking through some of the more promising-looking links, mostly articles from sports news sites. These articles often mentioned players entering the portal, but it was scattered all over the place.
- I opened up a new spreadsheet. This was going to be my “master list,” or at least my attempt at one.
- I started pulling names from the articles, jotting down the player’s name, their previous school, and any mention of a new school if they had already committed.
- Many Times,I found player names, but no information on what school.
Getting Lost in the Weeds
After a couple of hours, I had a decent-sized list, but it felt incredibly incomplete. And the more I looked, the more I found, that I didn’t find before. It’s tough work to find every player’s name.
The “Aha!” Moment (Sort Of)
Then I stumbled upon some college baseball team websites and their social media. These were actually pretty helpful. Teams often announce when players enter the portal, and sometimes even when they commit to a new school. So, I started adding another column to my spreadsheet: “Source,” so I could keep track of where I found the information.
The Result (So Far)
Let’s be real, my list is far from perfect. It’s more of a “work in progress.” It’s definitely biased towards the bigger schools and the players who are getting media attention. But, it’s something. It’s a starting point, and it gave me a much better understanding of how the transfer portal works (or doesn’t work, in terms of having a centralized list).
It also gave me lots of respect, to have difficult work it’s.
