Photo Credit: jchristophestudio.fr
In this episode, Baseball Jobs Overseas founder David Burns and co-host Jimmy Jensen interview Jacob Biller, a BBJO member who played his first season overseas in France in 2021 where he won a championship and even managed to get on with the French National Team as a coach for the European Championships in Italy.
Jacob is a former NCAA D1 switching hitting shortstop out of Kansas State University who spent the summer at the top of the batting order for the Rouen Huskies, the reigning French champions, joining them at the champions cup in the Czech Republic where Jacob and the Huskies competed again the best teams in Europe, including the top teams from Italy and the Netherlands.
What makes this story even more special, is that Jacob was a bit of a gamble to bring in as an import since he had not competed since graduating in 2018. In order for teams to roll the dice on someone who hasn’t competed in that long and whom they haven’t ever seen play firsthand, they need to have something special within their BBJO profile. So aside from coming from a big D1 school, what was it about Jacob that caught their eye?????
It was his coaching experience.
Ever since graduating he had been coaching at the junior college level and the Huskies were in the market for someone to help coach at their academy.
Bringing over import players who bring a coaching element has always been a theme with clubs in the low to mid leagues in Europe, or the teams at the bottom of say France or Germany, but the trend we are starting to see is that coaching is becoming more and more a part of the profile of many of our members who sign overseas with some of the top clubs or in top leagues.