DS playing 14u NVTBL this fall on a decent AAA team. Over the years we’ve always played teams where there was one or two monster sized kids and we’d joke about how the kid drove himself to the game. This year, we have played a few teams where everyone was huge but interestingly not super skilled—either crazy wild pitching or slow or weak defensively. When those kids connect with the ball they get good distance but doesn’t matter if they are slow or hit it right to an outfielder. I think most of the strong and physically mature players have moved up to the higher division at this age. We aren’t seeing as many of those guys this fall.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar situation with the two teams at 13u. The newly formed team is the B team and established group the A. There are some strong players on the B team but they generally dont have the same baseball IQ as the more established team and that’s been pretty noticeable when they’ve subbed in with us. Subbing between teams is pretty rare and it’s only happened a couple times. I think the plan is to reshuffle teams for fall 14u. Will be curious to see if that is determined along lines suggested by PP with the physically more mature vs less physically mature lines. Honestly hope not.

How long are folks expecting things to continue in a way that they want? I feel like having been through all this, you are just delaying the inevitable so you might want to get used to things sooner than later.

If you just want things to be good through 14u, that's one thing. But once kids are in HS and college recruiting factors into things, the teams will likely change significantly and folks may very well leave to other programs, new kids will come into yours, etc.

I don’t get the sense PPs are expecting to see stability in HS. Anyone who has played travel ball knows what’s on the horizon for HS and I think that’s why some are expressing desire to stick with team/not keen on teams changing up every six months or whatever when their kids are playing 14/13/12u. That said, we are constantly reevaluating whether the current team is the right fit for our DS. Obviously skill growth is important for anyone looking to continue playing but putting in the work is a lot easier if you like the kids you are playing with/coach you are playing for.

Yeah I think that is a nice idea but there’s always people jockeying for “better” teams so it is very transient starting at the 13u level when the little league player flood into the travel teams

From what I have seen (have an older DS who plays, and 2nd baseball playing son has now hit this age): the pack starts separating REALLY quickly at 13-14U, and kids quickly migrate into teams at their level (whether that is elite, solid, mediocre, or whatever). Also starting at this age and moving to the big field, physical attributes are so much more focused upon- size, puberty, strength, speed, power, arm strength etc. The physically mature & physically gifted kids congregate on the same teams and are put on a fast track. Things reconfigure a little bit- but not a lot- once they are in high school & once they’ve all gone through puberty. The differences at 13U or so are so incredibly vast, and earlier team placements often tend not to make sense anymore.

Yes I’m the pp and I agree with this. There are legitimate, wide differences at that age, and it is highly dependent on puberty rather than talent or skill. After puberty it is more stable as to the level of team a player should be on (though many hop around from team to team at that level of play for a variety of reasons).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar situation with the two teams at 13u. The newly formed team is the B team and established group the A. There are some strong players on the B team but they generally dont have the same baseball IQ as the more established team and that’s been pretty noticeable when they’ve subbed in with us. Subbing between teams is pretty rare and it’s only happened a couple times. I think the plan is to reshuffle teams for fall 14u. Will be curious to see if that is determined along lines suggested by PP with the physically more mature vs less physically mature lines. Honestly hope not.

How long are folks expecting things to continue in a way that they want? I feel like having been through all this, you are just delaying the inevitable so you might want to get used to things sooner than later.

If you just want things to be good through 14u, that's one thing. But once kids are in HS and college recruiting factors into things, the teams will likely change significantly and folks may very well leave to other programs, new kids will come into yours, etc.

I don’t get the sense PPs are expecting to see stability in HS. Anyone who has played travel ball knows what’s on the horizon for HS and I think that’s why some are expressing desire to stick with team/not keen on teams changing up every six months or whatever when their kids are playing 14/13/12u. That said, we are constantly reevaluating whether the current team is the right fit for our DS. Obviously skill growth is important for anyone looking to continue playing but putting in the work is a lot easier if you like the kids you are playing with/coach you are playing for.

Yeah I think that is a nice idea but there’s always people jockeying for “better” teams so it is very transient starting at the 13u level when the little league player flood into the travel teams

From what I have seen (have an older DS who plays, and 2nd baseball playing son has now hit this age): the pack starts separating REALLY quickly at 13-14U, and kids quickly migrate into teams at their level (whether that is elite, solid, mediocre, or whatever). Also starting at this age and moving to the big field, physical attributes are so much more focused upon- size, puberty, strength, speed, power, arm strength etc. The physically mature & physically gifted kids congregate on the same teams and are put on a fast track. Things reconfigure a little bit- but not a lot- once they are in high school & once they’ve all gone through puberty. The differences at 13U or so are so incredibly vast, and earlier team placements often tend not to make sense anymore.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar situation with the two teams at 13u. The newly formed team is the B team and established group the A. There are some strong players on the B team but they generally dont have the same baseball IQ as the more established team and that’s been pretty noticeable when they’ve subbed in with us. Subbing between teams is pretty rare and it’s only happened a couple times. I think the plan is to reshuffle teams for fall 14u. Will be curious to see if that is determined along lines suggested by PP with the physically more mature vs less physically mature lines. Honestly hope not.

How long are folks expecting things to continue in a way that they want? I feel like having been through all this, you are just delaying the inevitable so you might want to get used to things sooner than later.

If you just want things to be good through 14u, that's one thing. But once kids are in HS and college recruiting factors into things, the teams will likely change significantly and folks may very well leave to other programs, new kids will come into yours, etc.

I don’t get the sense PPs are expecting to see stability in HS. Anyone who has played travel ball knows what’s on the horizon for HS and I think that’s why some are expressing desire to stick with team/not keen on teams changing up every six months or whatever when their kids are playing 14/13/12u. That said, we are constantly reevaluating whether the current team is the right fit for our DS. Obviously skill growth is important for anyone looking to continue playing but putting in the work is a lot easier if you like the kids you are playing with/coach you are playing for.

Yeah I think that is a nice idea but there’s always people jockeying for “better” teams so it is very transient starting at the 13u level when the little league player flood into the travel teams

Baseball at age 13-15 is a horses ass.

You have travel teams that charge $900-$1,500 a season and do very little actual coaching. They are more interested in scheduling games so they don't have to put a lot of effort into the kids. They schedule more games than practices.

By the time the kids get to fall high school baseball, they are making mistakes that they should have mastered by the time they were 12. It is painful to watch some of these games.

There is a great void to be filled in actually teaching how to play baseball.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar situation with the two teams at 13u. The newly formed team is the B team and established group the A. There are some strong players on the B team but they generally dont have the same baseball IQ as the more established team and that’s been pretty noticeable when they’ve subbed in with us. Subbing between teams is pretty rare and it’s only happened a couple times. I think the plan is to reshuffle teams for fall 14u. Will be curious to see if that is determined along lines suggested by PP with the physically more mature vs less physically mature lines. Honestly hope not.

How long are folks expecting things to continue in a way that they want? I feel like having been through all this, you are just delaying the inevitable so you might want to get used to things sooner than later.

If you just want things to be good through 14u, that's one thing. But once kids are in HS and college recruiting factors into things, the teams will likely change significantly and folks may very well leave to other programs, new kids will come into yours, etc.

I don’t get the sense PPs are expecting to see stability in HS. Anyone who has played travel ball knows what’s on the horizon for HS and I think that’s why some are expressing desire to stick with team/not keen on teams changing up every six months or whatever when their kids are playing 14/13/12u. That said, we are constantly reevaluating whether the current team is the right fit for our DS. Obviously skill growth is important for anyone looking to continue playing but putting in the work is a lot easier if you like the kids you are playing with/coach you are playing for.

Anonymous wrote:Similar situation with the two teams at 13u. The newly formed team is the B team and established group the A. There are some strong players on the B team but they generally dont have the same baseball IQ as the more established team and that’s been pretty noticeable when they’ve subbed in with us. Subbing between teams is pretty rare and it’s only happened a couple times. I think the plan is to reshuffle teams for fall 14u. Will be curious to see if that is determined along lines suggested by PP with the physically more mature vs less physically mature lines. Honestly hope not.

How long are folks expecting things to continue in a way that they want? I feel like having been through all this, you are just delaying the inevitable so you might want to get used to things sooner than later.

If you just want things to be good through 14u, that's one thing. But once kids are in HS and college recruiting factors into things, the teams will likely change significantly and folks may very well leave to other programs, new kids will come into yours, etc.

Similar situation with the two teams at 13u. The newly formed team is the B team and established group the A. There are some strong players on the B team but they generally dont have the same baseball IQ as the more established team and that’s been pretty noticeable when they’ve subbed in with us. Subbing between teams is pretty rare and it’s only happened a couple times. I think the plan is to reshuffle teams for fall 14u. Will be curious to see if that is determined along lines suggested by PP with the physically more mature vs less physically mature lines. Honestly hope not.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you playing for a baseball club with more than one team per age group, do they reconfigure teams each year or do boys move up each year together?

This is the first year our club has had two teams in our age group. There’s already talk about how the club is going to shuffle boys around after this fall season—and potentially every spring/fall thereafter. While it’s unclear which is the A or B team, we really like our team and coach and that’s a huge reason we stay. We don’t like the idea of switching up the team every six months. So, now we are considering looking elsewhere if the club opts to break apart our team versus filing in positional gaps by bringing in a new kid or two.

My DS plays for an org with 2 teams at his age level. The teams practice together once/wk (with all coaches present) in addition to single team practices. The teams also scrimmage 1-2 times per month outside of team practices (and the team rosters are mixed around a bit for scrimmages). Most of the kids from both teams know each other and have played together at some point or another. Kids also sub for the other team as needed if there are absences.

Teams were configured for fall season and will be reconfigured for spring season- although I do not expect extreme roster changes unless some kids leave the team. However, after 2 tournaments, 2 kids have already been swapped (a kid from A moved down to B, and was replaced by a kid from B moving up to A) based on coach’s discretion.

Our A team is definitely stronger than B, but both teams are competitive. The skill gap between the top few players on A versus the weakest few players on B is very large. The best few kids on A are very elite players. But for the rest of the kids, skill levels are similar- the team confirmations are more related to dividing up pitching/catching and defensive/positional needs.

So far it seems to going well and my DS (who is on B team) is enjoying himself.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you playing for a baseball club with more than one team per age group, do they reconfigure teams each year or do boys move up each year together?

This is the first year our club has had two teams in our age group. There’s already talk about how the club is going to shuffle boys around after this fall season—and potentially every spring/fall thereafter. While it’s unclear which is the A or B team, we really like our team and coach and that’s a huge reason we stay. We don’t like the idea of switching up the team every six months. So, now we are considering looking elsewhere if the club opts to break apart our team versus filing in positional gaps by bringing in a new kid or two.

At the high school level it is going to be shuffling from tournament to tournament, guest players, pitchers in and out….it is very fluid with even different organizations borrowing players who need to go to a certain tournament where a coach will be. I think the fixed team family thing you see at younger ages just isn’t super realistic in all but rare cases as you transition to the older ages.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you playing for a baseball club with more than one team per age group, do they reconfigure teams each year or do boys move up each year together?

This is the first year our club has had two teams in our age group. There’s already talk about how the club is going to shuffle boys around after this fall season—and potentially every spring/fall thereafter. While it’s unclear which is the A or B team, we really like our team and coach and that’s a huge reason we stay. We don’t like the idea of switching up the team every six months. So, now we are considering looking elsewhere if the club opts to break apart our team versus filing in positional gaps by bringing in a new kid or two.

If the team has relatively high-level layers of play and kids that want D1 college recruitment and are legitimate prospects, then this is how teams will work. Richmond Braves is a great example of an organization like this at the 15u+ ages. MVP is also like this, though will never attract the same talent of teams that pull from larger geographic areas.

It's tempting to think "grass is greener" somewhere else...but it usually is not.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you playing for a baseball club with more than one team per age group, do they reconfigure teams each year or do boys move up each year together?

This is the first year our club has had two teams in our age group. There’s already talk about how the club is going to shuffle boys around after this fall season—and potentially every spring/fall thereafter. While it’s unclear which is the A or B team, we really like our team and coach and that’s a huge reason we stay. We don’t like the idea of switching up the team every six months. So, now we are considering looking elsewhere if the club opts to break apart our team versus filing in positional gaps by bringing in a new kid or two.

No longer in the area so might now hold true there, but my kid’s organization regularly borrows players from A and B team and often younger kids will play up for older team when necessary as well. Overall result is that the kids who are on the bubble between teams generally know all the other players and coaches so it wouldn’t be like being put on an entirely “new” team every six months.

For those of you playing for a baseball club with more than one team per age group, do they reconfigure teams each year or do boys move up each year together?

This is the first year our club has had two teams in our age group. There’s already talk about how the club is going to shuffle boys around after this fall season—and potentially every spring/fall thereafter. While it’s unclear which is the A or B team, we really like our team and coach and that’s a huge reason we stay. We don’t like the idea of switching up the team every six months. So, now we are considering looking elsewhere if the club opts to break apart our team versus filing in positional gaps by bringing in a new kid or two.

Anonymous wrote:I also agree that fall of 13u is probably not the best time to evaluate teams given everyone is making the transition to the bigger field and it's ugly all around. Plus, if your team is like ours, you've also got the puberty factor where half the team looks like they are in HS and the other half looks like ES kids in comparison.

+1

A lot of teams reconfigure at 14U IME, and puberty remains a big factor. Our travel org (feeds into our HS and another local HS as well) split the group into an A and B team at 14U- with the A being an elite team of mostly the physical mature kids, B team being mostly those who are physically less mature . Both teams are competitive tournament teams but play different levels of competition.. So far, seems to be going fairly well for fall ball.