re: 57% of Tommy John surgeries in USA performed on 15-19 year olds .

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Parents are mostly stupid.

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The system puts parents in a tough spot if they think it would be valuable (from a personal development perspective) for their son to be on the high school baseball team.

Yes, there are still high schools where any decent ball player can make the team, but there are also plenty who are cutting kids every year. I’m not talking about cutting kids who barely played rec and are just trying to have an activity. I’m talking about rec all-stars and AA level “travel ball” kids. Not saying those are elite players, but I am saying they know how to play the game and are serious about baseball.

So parents at those schools either have to see early on that their kid doesn’t have the athletic ability to make that high school team (and who wants to make that judgment when their kid hasn’t even hit puberty yet) and get them into other sports more seriously, or they have to roll the dice and invest in travel ball, private coaching, etc just to try to keep up.

The real damned thing about it is that late bloomers are often screwed by this, whereas in different times if a kid was really into baseball but grew and got stronger a couple years late, he was on the team and could flourish at the right time.