Confessional: Spring HS season expectations

How far are the fences?  If he is driving them to the fences as a sophomore, that is legit.  Our home field is 325 on the sides and 400 center.

son is a freshman.  I think he has a good shot at making varsity.  He is a great 3b and a good hitter, he needs to get bigger, faster, stronger.  He just got a weight set for his birthday (his wish). So he is working on it.  I’d like to see him work on getting faster.   The coaches seem to like him.  He gets along great with his teammates as well. Will,be interesting to hear how he does in winter training.

Son is a sophomore and is working on strength and speed at the moment.  He felt like he lost some of his speed when he went through a rapid, large growth spurt.  He quickly went from being one of the smallest on his teams to one of the taller players.  Also, although he's played C and MIF previously, he is enjoying OF and even pitching (RHP) at the moment.  He's a switch hitter with potential to hit for power and average.  Last year he hit a homer on the varsity field and I think this year he'd like to hit some more.  He has a strong arm from the outfield (prior C experience probably helped, too), which seems to be why he's being asked to pitch.  I know his goal is to make varsity this year, but he attends a large school in a community with a ton of baseball players.  School has 4 baseball teams.  He made JV as a freshman.  He also loved his summer team and hopes to play with them again.  His travel team was very talented and his summer experience was a good one.

He is diligently working out and practicing - I hope he sees his hard work pay off.

@TexasLefty,

Never underestimate the advice of a total stranger or pitching coach to get the best out of your son's pitches.   A great lesson for high school and even college pitchers is that you aren't going to strike everybody out and there are 7 fielders behind you...strike outs are over rated.   Getting hitters to make bad contact is way under rated.  I had 3 high school pitching sons.   I learned early on that it is ALWAYS better coming from somebody else.   Find that somebody else.   

Best of luck to you and the other HS Baseball Moms & Dads!

My main recollection of when my son started high school is that he was thrilled to have the field actually at the school - he could just walk down there after the school day, not needing to be driven anywhere.  I think the whole 4 years he thought of the school as "that building attached to my baseball field."

Good luck to all the HS players!

Son is a HS freshman. Loving HS so far. Will very likely be on JV. Small program. He has a good bat and is starting to hit for power a bit. He has always been more of a contact hitter. As far as school ball he may not play much as they give preference to the sophomores. There's lots of competition for catcher as well. Trying to convince him to work on his infield a bit as there are more opportunities there but for whatever reason he doesn't love infield as much as OF and catching.

Arm strength is a significant issue which is really frustrating because he has good bat speed, BA and is developing speed despite being a catcher as his primary position.

So he's working on cleaning up his throwing mechanics and accuracy on throwdowns.  All while doing bands and PT specific stretches to keep his shoulder open and mobile. He's suffered from growth plate inflammation last winter so we are watching carefully before getting him into an arm care/ velocity program.

One of the surprises which a coach mentioned in passing at 12U is that he tracks a ball pretty well in the OF and is spending more a lot more time out there as a starter.

He's midway thru puberty and unfortunately it looks like he's trending to shorter side of our family. So he most likely will end up average height or slightly below. But he is fit and has lots of lean muscle mass and starting to love to run.

Mentally sometimes he makes great training decisions and is incredibly mature for his age but then works himself up into a psychological funk about his hitting and struggles needlessly. Disregarding all tips and assistance from everyone. I think he puts way too much pressure on himself because he wants to be good. His emotions are up and down.

I guess it is my hope that as he becomes more muscular and stronger he will continue to progress and perhaps his velo will increase. The determination and work ethic is there. It's just how he uses it.

@Dadof3 posted:

How far are the fences?  If he is driving them to the fences as a sophomore, that is legit.  Our home field is 325 on the sides and 400 center.

Most fields are 375 (sometimes 400) to dead center and 315-330 to the corners.  Yeah, he’s pounding the ball but I can’t help think he’s losing power somewhere.  Good thing is I don’t know anything about baseball except for what I’ve learned from his coaches.  So it’s pretty easy for me to not try to tweak anything.

Son is a junior at a small 2A school in KS, we are looking for a big year, as one of our seniors is a recent D2 commit (pitcher), sits 86, tops at 88, and for 2A, thats just damn near unhittable for the majority of the teams we face.  Son touched 84 last year, but sits 79-82 with solid command and nasty breaking stuff.  Will be interesting, KS just approved expanding the season to 26 games in the regular season, so curious to see if we take on some more games.  Like most small schools, we are short on pitchers.  We have 3 solid dudes, and it drops off really fast after that.  If we can just get one more guy pumping high 70's for strikes, we could make a run.  Just comes down to regional seedings.

We have really enjoyed the high school experience.  When my son came on as a freshman, we had not had a winning season in 11 years.  The upperclassmen told him " we don't win very much, but we have lots of fun chirping at the other team".  That mindset has changed, two winning seasons in a row, biggest teams we have ever fielded, no more chirping, and the focus is on winning games. It has been great to watch, and I hope these last two years go slow. We have seen some amazing moments from this team, and they boys have really developed, guys who havent played since 6th grade coming out and just making huge advances, becoming major contributors.  It has just been a blast.