He didn't get a real first season.

And now he has no idea what his second season will look like, because he has no idea exactly who is going to be on his team.

Florida State coach Mike Martin Jr. is in the same boat as every other college baseball coach in the country right now. He's got 11.7 scholarships for the 2021 season. He's got, for now, 27 spots on the active roster (programs are allowed to have 35 players officially on the team).

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But while most everyone cheered when the NCAA recently agreed to let the 2020 seniors return for another season, Martin Jr. doesn't know how college programs are going to be able to cope with -- or fund -- the biggest one-year logjam of talent in the history of the sport.

"The cost of it, nothing is really adding up," Martin Jr. said. "We're in a real bind here."

Not only are the seniors allowed to return next season because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the Major League Baseball Draft is going to be impacted enormously as well. There have been reports that it might just be five rounds long (as opposed to the normal 40 rounds).

That means hundreds upon hundreds of high school players and college underclassmen -- who would normally have been starting their pro careers -- will now instead be heading to, or heading back to, college.

"The talent level returning to college or coming to college would go through the roof," Martin Jr. said. "And here's the other thing: Are they going to pass the one-time transfer rule (for all sports)? If they do that, then what have you got? So, it's just an absolute mess. And nothing can be done until they decide what's going on with the Major League draft."

For Florida State's purposes, a reduced draft would mean players that Martin Jr. might have expected to be in minor-league baseball next season -- guys like Antonio Velez, Shane Drohan, Elijah Cabell, Nander de Sedas and Reese Albert among many others -- will likely back in garnet and gold.

"We have a bunch of guys that we figured were gone," Martin Jr. said.

In an effort to be proactive, he said the conference coaches have had Zoom meetings in recent weeks, trying to come up with solutions and proposals for the roster crunch to present to the ACC and NCAA. He said the main hope is that there will be more players allowed on teams for the 2021 season.

"None of the other (coaches) can figure how to make the numbers work either," Martin Jr. said.

A vastly altered MLB draft would also mean that most -- if not all -- of the Florida State signees for the 2020 class would end up in Tallahassee as well. Before the shutdown, Martin Jr. said, he thought there were "three to four" recruits he would lose to the draft. Now he thinks that number could be zero.

While that isn't the worst news in the world, it compounds an almost impossible roster/scholarship crunch for Florida State and the rest of the major programs in the country.

"I think all of them are coming," Martin Jr. said of the signees. "And that's the predicament we're in. ... And it could get ugly, too. Because you might have to say to a recruit, 'Sorry, son. You can't come here. I've got to get under the limit put on us.' And I could be wrong. Maybe they say it's unlimited roster spots. But OK, so it's unlimited. How do we pay for this?"

Of all the scenarios Martin Jr. imagined when he dreamed about taking over the program that his father ran for 40 years, managing a roster through a pandemic never made the list.

During the hiatus, Martin Jr. has group-texted his players and encouraged them to keep working out, staying in shape and concentrating on their schoolwork. But he hasn't had any conversations with his draft-eligible players because there's no concrete information about what that process will look like.

Martin Jr. and his staff are still recruiting as much as they can (strictly via phone, most typically with FaceTime), and instead of scouting players in person they're watching videos sent by the prospects or their coaches.

College recruiting in all sports is still going through an indefinite "dead" period, with no in-person contact.

So, for now, Martin Jr. and the rest of the coaches in the country sit and wait to see what Major League Baseball will decide to do. In the meantime, he said, he's been going on walks for the first time in decades. He's also been fishing and golfing occasionally.

Anything to stay as active and sane as possible through an "off-season" that has no definitive end in sight.

"We're all just trying to get through this thing the best we can," Martin Jr. said. "I just don't know. I really don't know what in the world is going to happen."

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