Reply to "2019 HS Baseball Season"

Coach_TV posted:

Would be interested to hear anyone else's story about their son struggling at the HS level.

My son's story... he was the leading hitter on his travel ball team from 8U -13U, always lead the team in all areas; Hits, AVG, OPS, SLG.  Then he goes to HS and played JV last year as a freshman and struggles..big time, 5 hits over the season for a .179 AVG.

Now I know some of that is the change to the BBCOR -3 bat, he used a -5 and -3 his last year of travel ball.  Summer Legion ball was better with 19 hits and a .306 AVG.

But now he's a Sophomore backup catcher on Varsity and struggling again, 3 hits in 17 PA. 231 AVG.

So I don't know if it's a mental thing in getting overwhelmed at the plate or something else.

Anyone else seen their son struggle in HS?

I don't know if my son's story will be helpful (for sure it won't be encouraging), but: 

Chico Jr. was a good hitter from machine pitch through age 14--always hit for average and for power.  As an 8th grader he batted clean-up for his middle school team (they won their conference title), then hit in the middle of the lineup during travel ball that summer.  This was his second year with a BBCOR bat, and he faced many of the same pitchers he would see the following spring in JV ball.

In JV (third year using BBCOR), the boy just stopped hitting.  That carried over to travel ball after 9th grade, where he had a miserable summer at the plate.  To my eye, the pitching didn't change much from 8th grade to 9th--a few more curve balls, not much velo change.  He spent a lot of time in the cage and working with a hitting coach.  We got his eyes checked.  He was mashing the ball in the cage... then hitting weak grounders or pop-ups in games.

My son is a pitcher, and after a year of not hitting much at all he opted to become a PO.  He's very happy with that choice--says he was getting burned-out trying to be a 2-way player.  He made varsity last year as a sophomore and insists he has no desire to pick up a bat again.  I can't explain what happened, although it worked out pretty well in the end.