Is Summer Baseball Worth It?

Hey, team, Alex Swenson here. Hey, thanks for joining me. We're going to be talking about summer baseball and is it worth playing summer baseball? Because there is a lot of time and there is a lot of money that goes into summer baseball and we want to make sure that we're making the best decision for us or for your son on development, skill level and just exposure in the recruiting process. But before we get into that, hey, if you get anything from this video, please select that like and subscribe button here. And hey, if you, if you are looking for any personal help through the recruiting process, you can reach out to me. I actually have an academy on this where I personally help you through the recruiting process. If that is interest you, reach out to me. I'll put my email in the description down below and you can reach out to get more information, see if this is a good fit. But hey, let's hop into it. One of the top five questions I get when working with parents and student athletes through this recruiting process is, is summer ball worth it? Should I be playing summer summer ball to help my recruiting process, to help my development, to help my skills? Well, there's going to be some questions that you're going to need to answer right now. We're going to start with number one. Okay. Are you healthy? And if you answer yes, good. We're going to move on to the next question. But if you answer no, you need to consider doing PT physical therapy and or a strength and conditioning program to help get you healthy. Healthy. Okay. And you're going to need some body awareness with this because soreness is different than pain. Pain is there is something wrong. You are injured and you're going to need to address that and you're going to need a professional to address that to help you get through that. Because in order to play this game, you need to be healthy, right? All right. You need to be healthy. So consider doing pt, diving into that and just getting healthy and going through this. Because hey, with sports, injuries are part of it. Okay? That is just, it comes with the territory. But so when you get injured, you need to be doing the right things to get yourself back to the game so you can play whether it's in summer ball, fall ball or in the spring. So again, if you are not healthy, summer ball is probably not the right choice for you. Question number two, are you going to be able to fully commit to summer baseball? If the answer is yes, then definitely move on to the next question. But if you're in, answer is, well, my parents want me to get a summer job and I'm not going to be able to fully commit to summer baseball, or we're going to be going on vacation a lot, or I want to just spend time with my friends, then hey, you're not going to be able to fully commit to it. All right? So if you have these other things that are higher on the commitment scale than summer baseball, then save your time and money in playing summer baseball. Question number three, what's keeping you from playing at the college level? And think of it this way, maybe it's metrics. So what does metrics means? It means your arm velocity, your exit velocity, your bat speed or your 60 yard dash that you need to improve if, say if you're a middle infielder or outfielder, because that's going to be important. Speed is important at those positions, okay? Or maybe it's your skill, your hand eye coordination, your defensive proficiency, maybe it's hitting a breaking ball better. That's skill, okay? So if it is metric, a metric based thing you need to improve your arm velocity or exit velocity or 60, then summer baseball might not or typically is not the best thing to do to improve those metrics. A training protocol, a training program for the specific thing that you need to get better will be better because you're going to be able to really focus on, hey, a good long toss program. For this example, if you're trying to improve your arm velocity, a good long toss program and you being able to throw in between those long toss programs and take off summer baseball, it's pretty hard for that. Okay? It's pretty hard. Especially if you're like a positional player and even time, sometimes pitcher, because summer ball, you can be starting, you can come in relief, you're not going to exactly know when you're going to be throwing. So long toss can be really tough. But if you are working on improving your skill, then I think baseball, summer baseball is definitely a good decision to play. Okay? So because you're going to in, the reason for that is you're going to be getting a lot more at bat. So say you need to work on hitting a breaking ball better, all right? Making better contact, getting more at bats is going to help you with that. Or hey, you're working on your mechanics for pitching, you're working on your breaking ball. Getting more innings is going to help you with that. And then if the answer is both, I would lean on the side of playing summer baseball. Getting those at bats, getting those innings, the net positive is going to help you. Question number Four, did you play a lot this past season? Okay. And this is going to depend on your position. But if you answer yes and you are a pitcher, summer baseball might not be a good idea for you. Okay? And the reason why is we don't want to overthrow. We don't want to increase our chances of injury by overthrowing. And that is a real thing, especially in high school. Seeing Tommy Johns in high school, it's just, it's never good. It happens, but it shouldn't happen. Okay? We should really be able to manage our throwing and also develop good as a pitcher and develop our metrics and develop our skills. Okay? So if you threw a lot this spring and, and you are thinking about playing summer baseball and you don't want to overthrow, I would suggest not playing and pitch in the fall. Okay. And it doesn't mean that you're not doing anything this summer. You could get on the long toss program after taking a few weeks off. Okay. And getting on a strength and conditioning program. But you could schedule it like, hey, you pitch a lot in the spring, you just trained in the summer and then you're going to pitch in the fall and then you're going to train in the winter. So you think of it as you're on, off, off, on, off. Okay? And if you are a positional guy, this really comes down to your health. It goes back to question one. Because at bat, as a positional guy, it's always good. I mean, seeing balls from a pitcher is always beneficial. In most cases, unless you're working on a specific metric and you're really developing and focusing on a training schedule, then, hey, play summer baseball. And if the answer is no, you didn't play a lot this past spring, summer baseball is going to be really good for you. Okay? That's kind of a no brainer. Okay, let's move on to the next question. Question number five. What is your mental or psychological state like? All right. And there's three questions or three answers. I should say that you could answer this. Okay. And of course there could be others, but I'm going to go over three. The first one. Good. All right. You are in a good mental state. Great. Let's go on and continue potentially playing summer baseball. Because remember, we have one more question to answer. Okay. But the next one is you are tired, okay? You are super tired. And if you are super tired and you are worn out and you are burning out, it's probably a good time to take a break. Okay. Talk to your parents about this. And it doesn't Mean that you have to cancel your whole summer. Okay, you could take a few weeks off, you could take a month off, depending. Again, of course, with the summer team, you're playing with an organization and how their rules are. But if you're tired, hey, take a little bit of break. If you're tired, it means that you probably played a lot this past spring, which goes back to our last question. So if you're tired, maybe it's time to take a little bit of a break, focus on maybe another sport. Okay? Being a multi sport athlete is a great thing. Okay. And the next one, if you answer stressed, hey, summer baseball, this might surprise you, is a good thing for you because summer baseball should be about experiments and low stress baseball. Hey, nobody cares about your stats in summer baseball and frankly, high school baseball, I know you care about it and I want you to care about it. I want you to be as good as you possibly can. But summer baseball should be played lax and it should help you understand how much better you can play when you are relaxed as most people can play when they are relaxed and loose. Because when you're loose, usually good things happen from a performance perspective. All right, let's get to the last question. Question number six, will your summer coach have your best interest? And if you answer yes, great, okay. Because it's always good to know that hey, this coach is a really good coach, will work on development, you're going to be able to play. Maybe it's your assistant high school coach, you have a good relationship with them, then yes, play summer baseball. But if you answer no or maybe you don't know, but you can read through the lines, meaning the team that you're potentially going to be playing on. The coach is coaching a lot of the kids from his same either high school or whatever you may be team then. And he just, he, you almost know that he's going to play all of those players, which doesn't mean it's totally ill intentions from these coaches. But you know, you're just not going to play that play a lot. You probably should look for a different team or you shouldn't play summer baseball and focus on training and development because development is is the number one thing you need to be focused on for this recruiting process. Okay? So consider that if no, you, he doesn't have your best interest, then that kind of answer answers that for you. So after answering those questions, you should have a better perspective if playing summer baseball is worth it for you. And let's have a little recap on this so you should only be playing summer baseball if one you are healthy, all right two, you can fully commit to summer baseball. Three you want to work on your skills, you want to get more at bats, you want to pitch more innings and four you need to decompress. Okay, you need to decompress. You want to have a stress free baseball experience this summer. Hey play summer baseball and make sure your coach has your best interest. And lastly if you need to seriously address your development and your health then hey playing summer baseball is probably not the right decision for you. If you want to increase again your metrics, you want your arm velocity, your exit velocity, your 60 and just overall development and focus really on a training regimen then hey don't play summer baseball, play baseball in the fall. Hey I hope you got something from this video and if you did please select that like and subscribe button. I put out a weekly video and I will see you in the next one I and lastly if you need to seriously address your development and your health then hey playing summer baseball is probably not the right decision for you. If you want to increase again your metrics, you want your arm velocity, your exit velocity, your 60 and just overall development and focus really on a training regimen then hey don't play summer baseball, play baseball in the fall. Hey I hope you got something from this video and if you did please select that like and subscribe button. I put out out a weekly video and I will see you in the next one.