When to start social media stuff as a HS Freshman?

Colleges coaches don’t recruit off statistics. They look at metrics. Then they want to see if the player has the skill set and baseball IQ to back up the metrics.

A player is better off having a coach or instructor promote/presell him to college coaches rather than trying to sell himself hoping to be discovered.

I think it’s when other people are tweeting about you. I’ve never been a fan of posting your own stuff. I ran My sons twitter account because he hates social media. I would only retweet what organizations or his school tweeted. And of course things that were tweeted about his teammates. Most coaches use it now even if it’s just to show you they are interested.

If it’s not varsity it doesn’t matter.  My philosophy.  You send emails but leave social media to mom, dad, coaches and scouts.  

I agree with @PitchingFan, anything sub-varsity is irrelevant. I also agree with @baseballhs that retweets of other people’s posts carry much more weight than your own. Personally I think the whole social media promotion thing is way out of control. I roll my eyes when I see an 8th grader posting video of “getting some work in today.” Literally nobody cares. It just screams, “ I want some attention.” I have quoted this before but I will again because I think it’s one of the more accurate statements I have heard about social media and the youth of today. It was said by the RC of HCU as he was speaking to a Houston area travel ball team about recruiting. He said, “today’s young players care more about getting likes and follows on their social media than they care about what actual decision makers, that can impact the course of their lives, think.” Now you would think a statement like that would have an impact. But it hasn’t seemed to - as I believe he is 100% correct.

Thanks for all the replies.  It was mostly a feeling of  ‘man, do I need to do all of this at this stage!!’   I’m thankful for the wisdom shared.  I think travel teams promote this mentality  - partially for the player to get a feel for doing it but mostly for promotion of the organization itself.  I wasn’t really interested in participating until my kid has something to truly promote.  Otherwise, I feel like it’s similar to publicly posting on Facebook.  No one cares and the ones that do would rather have a personal email or message sent directly to them.  Thanks again!  

If you are playing for an organization that promotes it find a new organization.  That is their job not the players.  

IMHO, KISS Method, focus on training, playing and being part of a team.

Here is a good website to help you plan out your son's and family's journey

https://keepplayingbaseball.org/

Agree with the others.   No reason to post as a freshman in a HS game.....unless maybe you are posting a video of him throwing 85+.  HS stats at any level, other than maybe HR's are meaningless to a college coach, even if it was on the Varsity team.  Coaches want to "see" the kid, which will in all likelihood happen in the summer as colleges are in the middle of their seasons right now.  No college coach has time to scroll thru social media looking for HS stats....especially 2026's that they have never heard of.

One of those - if a tree falls and doesn't make a sound type questions

Even if he posts it - who's watching it?

Saw the greatest example of bad social media this morning.  I normally do not click on twitter posts by HS guys but realized a major college friend had commented so I looked.

Kid posted had a pop time of 1.87 today.  Let's Goooo.

Posted video.

My coach friend replied.  I timed your video and that is more like 2.3.

The kid replied.  Oh that was not the video of the 1.87 but just a casual throw to second.

Bad social media hurts a lot more than good social media.  I'm sure this kid got written off a lot of lists.

Talked to my son for a long time on Sunday. He said "the more I see it the more I think social media comes with far more negatives than positives because people believe too much of what's out there and a lot of it is created to tell a story." His point wasn't necessarily to ignore it but to remember to take a lot of what's out there with a grain of salt.

We did not start using twitter/IG until our kids were really engaged in recruiting. From a sports perspective, our involvement was to like or share content generated by someone else.

All just personal opinion here...as I've only been through this once and with a kid who decided to play college ball really late, but these were pieces of advice I received.

Honestly, I think social media is a great tool... for a good laugh.  I still don't think you can beat a directed email with a 30 second video of your swing, your pitches or your fielding mechanics, sent during non-blackout period, to a specific list of coaches/schools you want to playfor/attend.   That way you can stay in control of what is seen and by whom.  And that target list should include schools at all levels. 

Coaches are busy, don't send them 4 innings of game footage.  30 seconds per skill is more than enough for a coach to determine project-ability, fielding skills, and if you can barrel up a ball, to spark interest and potential visit for an in person look-see.

And like others have said,  nobody, especially coaches, care one iota about High School, travel or any other stats.  Maybe, maybe... a stat line saying you went 3-4 against the #4 pitcher in the country, or shut down a team with x,y and z D1 P5 commits/pro prospects ...but otherwise there is no comparison that would mean anything to a coach like stats mean in MLB.

I had a hitting coach tell my son if someone can't hit .400+ in HS ball (d1 level), they basically can't hit.  So sending hitting stats is probably a "who cares" at best and a "warning sign" at worst.

Advocacy by respected coaches, trainers, etc that can provide insight into your ability, work ethic and personality is much more effective.

My take on when to start, For 90% of people it starts summer after sophomore year of high school.  kids who are getting recruited before that are the 1%'ers.

I built my son's baseball twitter account when he was 13 playing 15U summer tournaments. I did so because all the tournament sites we had to register on were asking for social media account information (PG, PBR, FiveTool). I posted a few things and the tournament organizers linked highlights to his page. Looking back the videos are pretty funny. He was maybe 5ft tall and it seemed like all the other player towered over him. LOL Not much was posted till HS ball started. Have been posting highlights since then, along with retweeting stuff posted by tournament organizers.

Last summer we started following college recruiting coordinators on twitter (for the schools he had interest in) and received a number of follows back.  Shortly after some of the follow backs, his travel coach was contacted from two schools asking questions about son. The calls were followed up with emails to the coaches with additional information and video's.

So, social media can start a conversation in some cases.

My son has a Twitter account and I think the only tweet he ever posted was when he committed. He does retweet others but is super cautious about who he chooses to retweet. He has started to post TikTok videos of bullpens and so forth. He focused on emails to coaches — i've said this before, he but he always rode home with us from games after pitching because he spent the whole trip emailing every coach he had a relationship with (not a group email, but individualized to each coach), telling them about his start, what went well, what went wrong and what he planned to work on after the outing. Coaches soon realized that he was a pitcher who was working just as hard on the mental side of the game as he was on the field.

The danger with social media is someone can get a picture of the player doing something a coach wouldn't like (drinking, smoking a joint) and tag it to their account.

A friend, a lawyer fought the suspension handed down by. a school district on behalf of a committed college athlete. Someone who didn’t like the athlete tagged the athlete’s social media page with a fake picture of the athlete holding a beer. The athlete was at the party. But she wasn’t drinking alcohol.

The issue got back to the future college coach. The athlete had to explain legal proceedings had started to get reinstated. Sometimes, even if the athlete has done nothing wrong, as in this case a coach may not want to be bothered and move on.

By the time it was all over it was front page news and a warning to all prospective college athletes.

@PitchingFan posted:

Saw the greatest example of bad social media this morning.  I normally do not click on twitter posts by HS guys but realized a major college friend had commented so I looked.

Kid posted had a pop time of 1.87 today.  Let's Goooo.

Posted video.

My coach friend replied.  I timed your video and that is more like 2.3.

The kid replied.  Oh that was not the video of the 1.87 but just a casual throw to second.

Bad social media hurts a lot more than good social media.  I'm sure this kid got written off a lot of lists.

Pop time numbers are out of control. Everyone has a 1.9 now....

@BaseballGhostMom posted:

Pop time numbers are out of control. Everyone has a 1.9 now....

Lol....right and their velo is 73mph.  Simple math says that doesn't work

Yup, I think players are better off posting videos of in game CSs. If a coach wants to know the time they will pull out a stopwatch and time it for themselves (not a coach just my opinion).

@Buckeye 2015 posted:

Lol....right and their velo is 73mph.  Simple math says that doesn't work

If you are using the small field