Reply to When do you know it's time to switch teams?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Looking for advice about switching teams. DS plays mid-level travel baseball (13u) and we are thinking about moving him. I know that no club is perfect and he likes his team, but he is interested in playing in HS and we are not confident that the current team is the place to help him grow in the areas where he needs work. That said, we also know that there will always be issues with other clubs/teams/coaches and we could end up trading fine for worse. DS wants to stay on good days, wants to move on on bad days.

I am primarily interested in hearing from baseball people about the factors that they weighed before switching and what people feel is most important for HS prep, but also open to hearing from people who have been in a similar situation in another sport. FWIW HS will be in MoCo, but still TBD public vs private.  [/quote]

For baseball, there are two aspects to consider:
1) Skills coaching: How good is the current coach at coaching skills vs. the potential new coach. Improvement in baseball at MS ages is directly tied to your coaches ability to improve the fundamentals and teach advanced skills properly. For example, if you are a hitter -- what part of your swing makes you able to hit a 65 MPH fastball with no problem, but struggle to hit a 85 MPH fastball? Does the coach know how to adjust your swing to make hitting that faster pitch possible? Its never as simple as "swing faster".

2) Playing time: Does the playing time challenge your player to put into practice the skill they work so hard on. Using the hitter example, playing on a team where the competition can't locate pitches effectively/throw hard, etc. will probably not be valuable even if you are in the starting lineup of every game. The opposite is also true -- getting a lot of playing time on a team where pitchers can routinely (8-9/10 times) beat you as a hitter isn't going to help either.

Ask your  player what they think.  Are you learning anything new? Are you learning as fast as you can be? Do you feel challenged in the games? If the answer to these questions is no, its probably time to switch.

Your question about making the HS team is very context dependent.  Some HS teams are good, others aren't.  For private school you may be able to talk to the coach ahead of time and get a good idea of your chances to make a team.  Public HS usually won't do that. If you can't talk to the coach, go to some of the games for the schools you are looking at.  Don't just watch the varsity team, watch the lower levels teams as well.[/quote]

This is good advice, thank you. DS is definitely learning and improving. We are competitive with teams we play so yes to the feeling challenged question. DS also works with an outside trainer for additional throwing/hitting/weights because team coach is focused on situational team skills and not able to instruct on things like swing mechanics etc. DS is at the top of the team in terms of some skills and at the bottom in terms of others so one of the reasons we are considering a move is to find a team where he's more in the middle. Not sure if that makes any sense. [/quote]

Makes a lot of sense. There are some travel coaches that do know how to teach things like swing mechanics, etc. but they are rare and typically in high demand. Supplementing with outside work is a good idea, both for general strength and conditioning and specific mechanics. If your outside coaches are strong then you should probably focus most on the competitive level of the team.

Being the top in some skills and bottom in other skills could be a key decision point. For example, being top in hitting and bottom in fielding is very different than being top in fielding and bottom in hitting. In our experience, if you don't hit the minimum hitting requirement (either power or batting avg.) for a team, you aren't likely to see the starting lineup on good teams very often. If you are average or above, you probably play a lot. But if you are hitting way above your team average or power level you probably need to see better pitching -- so moving to a higher level team might be a good idea.[/quote]

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