Trap of Travel Baseball

     Baseball has fallen into the trap of having way too many teams and not enough talented players. Parents are lied to or believe that if their sons play for certain teams they are guaranteed to play college baseball. This couldn't be further from the truth as you need to wow coaches with a distinguishable skill to be looked at to play college baseball. The main way to acquire that skill is not by just playing meaningless games but by being consistent with a strength and conditioning plan and eating enough calories to maintain a healthy weight. In some of the games I've gone to especially late in the fall kid's velocities on the mound are down because they are overused throughout the travel season and don't have a strategy to stay healthy. The coaches also have no clue that they are overusing pitchers throughout the fall and just think players are improving after throwing inning after inning in the fall. There is a purpose and a time for playing games but travel baseball overuses kids and especially as you get late in the fall there are so many other things you could be doing to make yourself a better baseball player.

     The way to get the truth about how good of a baseball player you can actually be is to hire someone that can create a routine or plan to follow for skill development, strength, and nutrition. If you have a specific plan with these three things you can find out what your ceiling is as a baseball player all without paying a lot of money just to play travel baseball. Games should be played in the spring and summer because that is the whole point of competing but no colleges will care if you keep playing in the fall if you aren't strong, and have no distinguishable skills (throwing velocity, bat speed, running speed). 

    Overall I think the whole travel baseball scene is watered down with too many teams and skill development needs to be emphasized for the game to ultimately get better. Kids get lied to every day instead of hearing the truth which is at the next level they need to throw the ball hard and hit the ball hard. The only way to improve these two skills is to get bigger which comes from eating a calorie surplus and following a strength plan where movement quality and progressive overload are the focus. This change in mindset from the trap of endless travel ball games I think will help the quality of play throughout baseball.