As the son of two coaches, Jayce Tingler had a baseball IQ off the charts. He played hard. He could run. He struck out only three times in high school.
Those were all pluses as Tim Jamieson trailed Tingler during a summer wood-bat league two decades ago in Missouri.
The so-called “but” in the scouting report still left Jamieson, then the University of Missouri’s head baseball coach, a bit apprehensive: Tingler was only 5-foot-8 and 135 pounds.
“I must have saw him play 20 times, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger,” Jamieson admitted. “He was a good player, but you just don’t know if that was going to work at a Division I level.