Yes, and no, and maybe.
it depends. With our son, who is now a freshman baseball player on a D3 team, we saved a lot of money playing travel ball on a team that was less expensive and only traveled within our state until he was 16 and then he started playing on a team that traveled far and wide.
for a position player it is extremely difficult to get enough quality at bats against good pitching, in most of the country, if you’re not playing travel ball. One thing we did with our son is had him play up as much as possible when he was younger. Legion ball, or in our case a low level fall ball league, had extremely miserable pitching, but when you are 14 years old facing 17 year olds that can give you some good experience.
What part of the country are you in?