New commitment rule and travel ball

Players should play on a team providing the best instruction and competition until they are ready to show something to college coaches. Once they have the ability to be noticed they should play on the best team that plays in events where they want to be seen combined with coaches with contacts who can presell them.

Is he a pitcher or position player? (oh right, you said both?)  Does he face good pitching/hitting in the HS season? (i.e. was he on varsity?)  Do his HS teammates inspire him to work hard and become better?

Playing on a travel team has many intangibles, beyond just college exposure.  Your son might or might not need those to develop.

I live in one of those baseball hotbeds in the country, so there is no lack of quality baseball.  He played on the sophomore team and saw quality pitching about 50% of the games, but that’s about normal for sub varsity around here.

@anotherparent Good points on intangibles.  The HS season wasn’t exactly inspiring in terms of competition and play from his teammates.  He will play in the field through HS but I’d guess he’d be a pitcher if he continued playing beyond HS  

He will still play travel ball.  My question was worded poorly and I keep answering my own questions when I try to pose a new one, so your reply has been helpful.  I’ll try again and this question isn’t specific to my son.  We already have a plan and we will stick with it as it will provide what we need for development.

Let’s assume you have two equal options in terms of travel ball and both provide quality training and development.  But one team plays some National tournaments and the other plays local in an area where there is no lack of talented teams.  In terms of recruiting and exposure, It has been said that national tournaments like PG and PBR will have much less importance because of recent change.   When would it be a good idea to focus on the national/WS types of tournaments to start getting some exposure?  13U or 14U or HS Freshman?  Or is there no reason to do anything to “showcase” your talent in these bigger tournaments until sophomore summer (because no one will be watching before that?)?  

And after writing all that I am actually wondering how many youth players actually get exposure at these tournaments anyway.  FWIW, my son isn’t a showcase talent (yet 😁) and he will probably never attend a showcase even if he magically develops into a pitching stud tomorrow.  

This summer will be the Wild Wild West.  I don’t think anyone has the answers including coaches.  They are trying to figure out how this affects them also

How many tournaments is his summer team doing? I think there needs to be a balance of training and games. 4 or 5 tournaments would be great. More than that and it makes it hard to have a consistent training routine.

Went through this with softball a few years back -

Expect many less college coaches  - like none - at 16U and below tourneys this summer as the focus shifts from who is in the stands to what is happening on the field.

Expect to attend more camps, both college-specific and third party (Headfirst, Showball), as those become the only vector for direct interaction.

Expect to get “Happy August 1st” calls and emails from the schools that really want you.

With this in mind, decide for yourself if a 2026 who is 16 months away from first contact needs to be traveling around the country to play, or if his parents need to be paying for that, or if perhaps the money might be better spent on a gym membership, skill-specific training, or attending camps at various colleges.  

Any player with a D1 level tool - esp a high D1 level tool - is highly likely to be found and given an opportunity to showcase their talent, no matter what level they start at.

@SpeedDemon posted:

Went through this with softball a few years back -

Expect many less college coaches  - like none - at 16U and below tourneys this summer as the focus shifts from who is in the stands to what is happening on the field.

Expect to attend more camps, both college-specific and third party (Headfirst, Showball), as those become the only vector for direct interaction.

Expect to get “Happy August 1st” calls and emails from the schools that really want you.

With this in mind, decide for yourself if a 2026 who is 16 months away from first contact needs to be traveling around the country to play, or if his parents need to be paying for that, or if perhaps the money might be better spent on a gym membership, skill-specific training, or attending camps at various colleges.  

Any player with a D1 level tool - esp a high D1 level tool - is highly likely to be found and given an opportunity to showcase their talent, no matter what level they start at.

This is a great post and IMO an accurate predictor of what’s to come. To answer some of the questions posed by @TexasLefty I would offer some opinions. The big national tournaments have never been as important for players as parents, players, and travel ball coaches think they are in terms of exposure. With recent rule changes they are even less important - especially for anything under 16U. Also, approximately 90% of HS players that advance to play in college stay in their home state or a bordering state. Regional exposure is more important than national exposure for all but the very elite players - which I say are the top 5% or less. So I would advise Lefty to play regionally. And I would also advise that under 16U training will be more productive than just playing travel ball. A balance of the two would be ideal. But one of the biggest issues with travel ball is the lack of practice time and the lack of teaching how to play the game. Baseball IQ among youth players is at an all time low. They don’t know how to run the bases, they can’t defend a bunt, they can’t bunt, they don’t know what base to throw to, and on and on. A thousand swings in the cage doesn’t help baseball IQ. Overall kids today need more practice, more instruction, and less meaningless games that nobody watches but families.

Adbono and Texas:

The question is "how can the young man prepare for the next step? What are HIS goals? How can he improve his "reaction" times? Who is his favorite player?

Bob

Five Tool used to hold a lot of tournaments at college campuses. I would think k those would be as valuable for a sophomore as the PG tournaments. I just don’t see colleges spending a lot to travel to see guys they can’t talk to, I may be wrong, but I would guess they will watch Juco, summer ball for portal guys and rising juniors that they will be able to talk to in near term.

My son got "seen" by the mid-major college he ended up committing to in a big tournament (PG WWBA championship in Jupiter) the fall of his senior year.  However, having said that, I would have preferred an environment where we would have played competitively but locally.  If my son was a 2026 right now, I would be thrilled that we won't have the pressure of needing to go to those big national events.  Being in Atlanta, we have enough of those big national events locally.  I would not do a showcase until much later (summer before junior year at the earliest).  I would look for a travel team that aims to play round robins in college campuses.

If you think your son is likely to be a D3-type player, then there is no recruiting reason to go to national tournaments, and for that matter, no reason to worry about "exposure" until the summer after junior year.  But, he does have to play in the summers, and play good competition.  If you can get that without travelling, you're in a good spot.

Thanks for such thoughtful replies.  Btw, was this rule change proposed and known or did it just come out and blind side everyone?

Coaches voted on it several weeks but didn’t realize it would be implemented right away.