quote:
Major ortho guy down over here at the Andrews Center had a kid that played baseball with us. He refused to let his kid pitch until middle school and very limited then. INB4 LSU777 tells you that kid not matter how talented will never make his high school team and that dr is wrong.

two things. Not playing travel ball does not mean your son can’t be a high level baseball player, especially if he’s been an active kid in life already playing other sports and the most important factor no matter what, how good of genes he has. If he’s a specimen it won’t really matter how much baseball he’s played before.

There was a kid I know that didn’t start playing baseball until his 10th grade year but had been a qb all his life so had been used to throwing a ball and he was 6’5 235 and the only reason he played was because he was goofing around one day in the field house when it was raining and the baseball boys were on there, he picks up a baseball and throws it in the air to the other end of the field house, at least 300 feet in the air. This is in November, HC sees it tells him he can turn him into a PO and next thing you know kid is throwing mid to upper 80s as a senior and ends up playing D2 baseball going farther than he ever would have in football.

The 2nd point though is that 777tiger is right, most kids unles they are a freak athlete like I described above are going to get passed up if they don’t play travel ball because the travel ball kids play more and believe it or not the more you do something matters, and secondly as well as most importantly, that is where the majority of kids who are worth a frick end up playing by the time they are in middle school at least, and it’s been that way for years now. Having said all that I’m sure it’s not healthy for some of these kids arms to play as much as they do and plenty of kids have gotten burn out or arms ruined because of travel ball.

I don’t doubt your ortho friend put the health of his sons arm over his potential pro career, but that doesn’t mean it was the best decision in terms of his boy being a better ball player, it just means he chose what would most likely give his son a better arm long term regardless of the sport of baseball and that was almost certainly the right decision by him because although his kid may not ever be able to start on his high school baseball team odds are no matter what he wasn’t making it to the mlb either

This post was edited on 1/9/24 at 6:50 pm