Travel Ball - not seeing the value for us

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?

I look back(way back) and getting a couple bucks from my parents for going to a movie was an adventure. I could never imagine asking for money to play baseball. Well you see we did that on our own stickball in the street or if we had a hardball going down and playing on the sandlot. and guess what I went on to play in high school and college and coached high school for 30 years so I dont feel cheated or anything. Ok I am done with my old person back in the day stuff. Lets move forward I definitely know that 30 years ago if my son had to go through what I read today with the "cost" he just would not have been able to do it. He played high school and college . My wife and I were too busy working 2 jobs for the ability to send my kids to college and a couple thousand to play baseball would be way down on the list and to be honest off the list. It is very sad to see what has transpired over the years.  Somehow people equate paying money somehow insures succes. But the real sad part is to play baseball you have to pay and pay a lot.

It is sad, but you also have to face reality.  I know talented kids who tried to do that in the last 5-6 years (just play Little League and then Legion ball) and none of them, literally none of them, made a college team.

In some parts of country Legion Ball is still pretty good.  So it depends.

Seems like a well thought out plan to me. As long as the kid is getting the work in he will be just fine.

I'm taking a similar approach. My kid just finished freshman year on JV at a 7A school in FL with a strong baseball program.

I've seen the type of kids that get offers this early in the game. My son and none of his freshmen teammates are those dudes.

But all of his teammates are spending over $5k hitting the circuit this summer.

I'm putting our $ towards physical training and baseball lessons. When he's got something elite to show we can talk about expensive travel ball.

I get the "oh my god" how can you pay that for baseball, but reality, if I had girls, they'd be probably doing dance or gymnastics, or softball (btw softball programs are way better than baseball here) etc. at same or more cost.  13-15yo babe ruth is non-existent.  There is no such thing as sand lot anymore, we don't even have kids in the neighborhood to go play catch with and his older brother has no desire to play catch with little bro, unless it's to get a bullpen in.  Everyone has abandoned public baseball for travel and to be honest it's crappier than little league was when I played a billion years ago.  Doesn't stop parents from thinking it means something though and little johnny is just the greatest.  Travel isn't what it was 15 years ago, when it was a few regional teams, now it's 3 teams per age group for nearly every program,  that's way too many kids to be exceptional baseball.  And certainly too many to find coaches worth anything, yet they still promote as "professional coaches", yeah I guess if you get paid 15,000 to coach for the program, that's technically professional, I guess.

Talking about getting pitches,  my son''s been walked 3 out of every 4 times he's up.  Other kids seem to get pitches, for some reason he doesn't.  At 5'3" and a 31" bat, he can't afford to go after bad pitches.  I sit behind home and I can tell you he's gotten maybe 6 pitches worth hitting in probably 30 plate appearances.  he catches one game each double header and in the field or EH the other, 4 games per weekend.  Coach bats pitcher and catcher bottom of the order regardless, so gets 2 PA's a game usually, sometimes one depending on mercy rule.  Seems to happen at least once a weekend either them or us.

At different points a prep age ball player needs different things. If you have nothing to showcase, then yes skill development, speed, and strength are things to work on. But learning to compete on the field is huge. I think in the last 5-10 years strength training and skill development started to get a lot of focus especially on the pitching side and it's been great for the game, but just doing live ABs in a cage is not the same as competing on the field for the hitter or pitcher.

Hs dad

do you know the history of Sam Fuld?
Bob

You think sports is expensive, try music.

I agree with everything you say about travel organizations.  My son is at a D3.  The travel at 13U-16U was useless for recruiting.  BUT...  three things did, I think matter.

- First, he was playing with other kids who were focused on baseball, that inspired him and made him push himself.  Wouldn't have happened if all he had was HS ball.

- Second, we knew nothing about baseball, and we learned a lot from coaches (who, admittedly, were not all very good) and especially from other parents. If you are a parent who knows baseball, maybe this doesn't matter.

- Third, the fact that he had played against high-level players (in big tournaments like PG) did seem to matter when he got to college, in the sense that he had that kind of experience and confidence from the start.  Maybe that's just me justifying all the money we spent.

There were no decent options around us other than the big organizations (no legion, just daddy-ball with really bad coaching), so I think if we had to do it again, we would.  We knew families whose kids stayed with daddy-ball until 17U and played in college, but their summer experience was kind of frustrating.

At 14, if he’s not off the charts, I’d agree.  We got more than just baseball out of those summers but they mattered little for recruiting.

You don’t showcase when you have nothing to show. Showcasing is for 16u and 17u players. There are a handful of exceptional players who are already prospects below 16u

But development is important. Playing challenging competition is important. My son played on a very competitive 13u travel team the summer after 7th grade. He played grade appropriate. He was 12u eligible with a May birthday. He was only 5’2”. He was 5’4” in 14u ball the following year. The summer after freshman year he played 16u. It was high school varsity level ball without the handful of 17u studs. He was now 5’11”. His play on the 16u team as a 14u eligible got him invited to play for top 17u teams in the region the following year.

His travel coaches taught him a lot. When he got to varsity I asked about the coaching. He told me the coaches know their stuff. But he had been taught all of it from 13u to 16u (team skipped 15u). His high school coaches and 17u coaches refined what he had learned earlier.

If the AAU ball in NH sucks maybe you need to look at stronger programs in Massachusetts. Playing horrible Babe Ruth and Legion teams in lieu of spending money is not going to prepare him for high school ball.

If you know what your expectations are - D1, D2, D3, Juco, NAIA - then choose what you want to do. There's a few of us on here who had the NH baseball experience. Mine is now 7+ years ago in southern NH - it's all about location as in the Nash/Manch/Conc or Ports/Exeter/Roch areas.. AAU was awful, Legion an acceptable alternative, but in no way comparable to what PG could provide. The closest "good" travel program like that was 1.5 hrs drive without traffic. I knew my boys weren't D1 material, so focus was D3 or perhaps D2. We put our $$'s on education (Bishop Guertin) and that left little to even think about travel baseball. We did pay for some focused training, a couple show cases, trips to specific schools - it "paid" off at an academic D3 for one and a D2 in NC for the other. If 9and7dad is still reading, one of his boys got the SEC experience and he was from a smaller NH town west of Concord. Long story short, very hard to realistically make it out of NH to somewhere or be noticed. It's possible - hit the books, get bigger, faster, stronger. Don't get complacent because puberty will even out things a bit if you're not working hard. Consider your positional competition - there's a lot of P, C, SS who only make it so far because they won't consider anything else. You *have* to be *that* good and do not under estimate the value of good grades.

You don't have to pay $3-4,000 for a travel ball experience.  If you are not college prospect, then play on a local team and get better.  No reason to play on big time team until you and your teammates have something to show.  I've seen too many not big time teams show up at big time events because that is where the scouts are.  They are not watching the teams that are not big time and the big time teams are drubbing the mediocre teams and no one is there to watch.  There are very cheap travel options to just get better and work on skills.

Id say I have similar thoughts to the OP.  Im tens of thousands in the travel rabbit hole w 2 boys.  2023 position player verballed at a upper level academic D2 simply through video and performance at school specific camp.  His grades sealed the deal on the offer.  They knew he d fit through ED admissions.  Nothing the travel program did helped him.  They didnt even talk to his travel coach.  They just asked some local high school coaches they knew. 

2025 is LHP who I believe could easily do the same route but get to a upper level D1. 

But I still pay for travel.  Dont ask me why other than we dont have legion or other options.  That and my goal is to keep them so busy they stay out of trouble.

Check that.  Too simple.  2023 had no other option to see meaningful at bats.  Its a sad thought.  A lot of adults are making livings off youth sports nowadays

@Dadbelly2023 posted:

But I still pay for travel.  Dont ask me why other than we dont have legion or other options.  That and my goal is to keep them so busy they stay out of trouble.

"Don't ask me why other than that we don't have Legion" is the same as video killing the radio star....

@Dadbelly2023 posted:

Id say I have similar thoughts to the OP.  Im tens of thousands in the travel rabbit hole w 2 boys.  2023 position player verballed at a upper level academic D2 simply through video and performance at school specific camp.  His grades sealed the deal on the offer.  They knew he d fit through ED admissions.  Nothing the travel program did helped him.  They didnt even talk to his travel coach.  They just asked some local high school coaches they knew.

2025 is LHP who I believe could easily do the same route but get to a upper level D1.

But I still pay for travel.  Dont ask me why other than we dont have legion or other options.  That and my goal is to keep them so busy they stay out of trouble.

I'm not sure you are right on the 2025 LHP.  I don't think video alone will get him to upper level D1 without facing good competition unless he is 92+ with validated velo.  Video may work for D2 HA but not upper level D1, probably not mid-major D1 unless velo is crazy good.  If he is mediocre, they will want to see him pitch against tough competition.  Unless your definition of upper level D1 is different from mine.  I see a lot of 92-94 mph guys get eaten alive in SEC, even LHP's.  You have to pitch to be able to play in upper level D1, P5.

A lot of this could be easily fixed.

For starters I think the baseball specific weight training is wild. Lifting heavy weight at that age is only going to stunt his growth. 5'3 110. Let him hit puberty and then start developing some muscles. For now it should all be body weight stuff, pushups, situps, squats. Getting him on a bench press at 14 is not going to make him a better baseball player. I'd be looking into nutrition and getting him on a caloric surplus before I did anything. Any "trainer" willing to do baseball specific weight training with a middle schooler is a crook and a goon.

From 6th-8th we played only played in tournaments within a 3 hour drive. Some were around the corner, some were a hotel stays a few states away and they were always fun. Competition was good, was not overly expensive. I understand you're in an area which makes this tougher but I would really look for programs where they aren't going crazy with the travel and the fees. Once he gets to HS you can reassess.

HS is where things changed. For the more advanced and developed (college prospects), they went to GA, Ft. Myers, etc. The others did the 3 hour drive thing for another year.

You're going to be hard pressed to find something that won't run you a few thousand each year. Summer should be about $1k-1500 for local tournaments and practices. If he's playing fall another $800-1200.

It's all the extras that are killing you. Axe the private lessons or cut back. None of mine did private lessons until HS and when they did it was only in the offseason once/twice a week ramping up for the HS season with some lessons mixed in during the season to fine tune some things. It was also only because they refused to listen to me after a certain age.

Middle School is really the development stage. He should probably be getting his best coaching now. In HS it's pretty much up to his school to build him up because once travel ball comes around it's about recruiting and reps, not practices and drills.

Lifting weights at any age does not stunt growth. The earlier someone can learn the basic movements like hip hinge, etc, the better.

@PABaseball posted:

A lot of this could be easily fixed.

For starters I think the baseball specific weight training is wild. Lifting heavy weight at that age is only going to stunt his growth. 5'3 110. Let him hit puberty and then start developing some muscles. For now it should all be body weight stuff, pushups, situps, squats. Getting him on a bench press at 14 is not going to make him a better baseball player. I'd be looking into nutrition and getting him on a caloric surplus before I did anything. Any "trainer" willing to do baseball specific weight training with a middle schooler is a crook and a goon.

From 6th-8th we played only played in tournaments within a 3 hour drive. Some were around the corner, some were a hotel stays a few states away and they were always fun. Competition was good, was not overly expensive. I understand you're in an area which makes this tougher but I would really look for programs where they aren't going crazy with the travel and the fees. Once he gets to HS you can reassess.

HS is where things changed. For the more advanced and developed (college prospects), they went to GA, Ft. Myers, etc. The others did the 3 hour drive thing for another year.

You're going to be hard pressed to find something that won't run you a few thousand each year. Summer should be about $1k-1500 for local tournaments and practices. If he's playing fall another $800-1200.

It's all the extras that are killing you. Axe the private lessons or cut back. None of mine did private lessons until HS and when they did it was only in the offseason once/twice a week ramping up for the HS season with some lessons mixed in during the season to fine tune some things. It was also only because they refused to listen to me after a certain age.

Middle School is really the development stage. He should probably be getting his best coaching now. In HS it's pretty much up to his school to build him up because once travel ball comes around it's about recruiting and reps, not practices and drills.

I have to disagree with the bolded section.  I don't recall ever seeing any evidence to support the statement that lifting weights will stunt growth, just assumptions.  I think weight training for middle school athletes (and really middle schoolers in general given the sedentary lifestyle that many of the live) is great, I've seen the transformation in athleticism and body control that it can give young athletes (students of mine that play other sports).   

I don't know that at the middle school age range a baseball specific strength program is necessary but a general strength program done correctly is almost always going to help them become a better baseball player (or athlete, or hopefully help lead them on a path to a healthier lifestyle in the future).