By: Coach Jonathan Massey
Let me be the first one to say the purpose of this blog is not to demean or say that there is no place for travel/showcase teams. There are many things I like about travel/showcase teams, with my personal favorite being the exposure to a higher level of competition than one would normally see at the high school level.
But what I cannot stand about travel/showcase teams is the false narrative they force feed parents. And with summer right around the corner, I thought I’d take some time to give you the truth.
Fallacy #1 – By playing on the right team or with the right organization, I will get to play in college.
While I’ll be the first one to tell you these organizations have tremendous amounts of connections with college coaches, the truth of the matter is easiest way to move on to pitch at the collegiate level is to:
Have the skill set that is required to pitch at the Collegiate Level.
If your goal is to play Division 1 Baseball, this is the level of velocity that is going to be required:
- Freshman in high school – 80+ mph
- Sophomore in high school – 85+ mph
- Junior in high school – 88+ mph
If your goal is to play Division 1 Baseball, this is the level of command that is going to be required:
- Minimum 60%
- Preferably 66%
- Elite 75%
If you don’t meet the skill set required, all you will accomplish by playing the summer is exposing that you do not have what it takes to play at the next level. And you will have wasted time, money, and energy that you could’ve put towards development.
Fallacy #2 – If I don’t play summer ball, I won’t get the exposure required. And if I don’t get exposure, colleges won’t know who I am.
This goes back to my first point. If you don’t have the skill set or capability to pitch at the next level, exposure ISN’T your issue. In fact, you are being exposed as not being good enough.
Once you have the necessary skill set, there are other ways to get exposure or on college coaches radar’s, other than playing travel/showcase baseball.
- Attend camps – just about every college has skill camp or a showcase camp. Attend one. You’ll be immediately placed on their radar.
- Individual Showcase – if you want exposure to a large number of colleges. Then your best bet is to attend an individual showcase put on by companies like Perfect Game, PBR, etc.
- Junior College – junior college often gets a bad reputation. But junior college baseball is in fact very good baseball. Bryce Harper, Albert Pujols, Roy Oswalt, and Andy Pettitte are just a few of many professional baseball players to come out of the junior college ranks. Especially if you are late developer and aspire to play at a top 25 program, junior college may be the only route to get there.
Fallacy #3 – Our organization is about development because we practice X number of times a week.
This one is my personal favorite because most of these organizations simply don’t understand what true development is.
Simply put, most practices are players getting their ‘reps’ in. Now there are some fantastic coaches out there that run extraordinary practices. But even these practices are geared to developing skills that are required to win today’s game i.e. your ability to keep your weight back on a breaking ball or your ability to throw an off-speed pitch for a strike.
If you want to learn to throw harder, develop a better breaking ball or develop better command, simply getting your ‘reps’ will not be good enough. Let me put it to you this way, if you do what everybody else does… you will get what everybody else gets. Which is average or mediocrity, and the average or mediocre high school baseball player doesn’t move on to play at the Division 1 level.
True development requires reaching beyond your comfort zone, which will often lead to failure. It will be extremely difficult for a player to push himself to the extreme whenever he knows that he will be required to perform at the next tournament or showcase.
Development also requires time. If you’re trying to throw harder, what are the chances your command in the short-term regress? I’ll answer that, the chances are high. It also takes time to ingrain new mechanical changes. Simply put, you are setting a kid up for failure if you ask him to make significant changes to his delivery Monday–Thursday, and then ask him to perform on Saturday night.
I’ll wrap this blog up with a positive, it doesn’t matter where you start, it matters where you finish. If you are not where you need to be, that’s okay. Time is your friend, not your enemy. Spend your summer training and developing, so that when the time is right, you can showcase the skill set necessary to compete at the next level.
——————————-
Do you need helping preparing yourself for game challenges and the next level of play? If so, join us at one of our Elite Pitchers 3-Day Boot Camps or come for an extended stay this summer. Information is available at www.TexasBaseballRanch.com and click on the Events tab.
