Should You Play Travel Ball? (Why You Shouldn't)

As a college baseball recruiting advisor, I get this question all the time. Should I be playing travel ball? Do I need to play travel ball to play at the next level, to play in college? Or is there a better way to go about this process? Now there's going to be a little bit of nuance there depending on your situation. And we're going to go over some pros and cons of travel ball and some questions that you need to ask yourself and ask about your organization because I'm sure tryouts are happening at some point. If you're watching this, you might be interested in asking yourself the question or a coach is asking you to play, going through this because this is a big decision. There's an investment standpoint, not only from a financial standpoint, but from time and energy and obviously travel and all this going on. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm A former Division 1 college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help high school baseball players and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. And if you get anything from this video, would love to smash that like button that thumbs up right down here. If you are on YouTube and if you are on the podcast, please put a review. I would really, really appreciate that. Now, caveat to all of this, not all travel ball organizations are bad because I'm going to start with the cons and some questions and I been known to criticize a lot of travel ball just, just from a recruiting perspective. And think of this, this is a big lens from a recruiting standpoint and that's how we're going to be approaching it. Are there great travel ball organizations out there? Absolutely. Are there not? Absolutely. All right. Some of it could be a waste of time, money and energy and a lot of over promises of helping recruiting perspective, but there can be some great ones out there as well. And this is going to be some questions that you're going to need to ask yourself and ask toward organization. But we're going to start with the cons and that is a limited amount of exposure that you will actually get. The one thing with travel ball, there's so many of them now, it's completely watered down everything and there's all these tournaments. There was a recent perfect game tournament that had like 450 teams. You are so limited on an exposure of actually a college coach. Band will see you if you're playing on a random Field somewhere, maybe in. In Georgia or whatever state it might be. And especially if you're through a little bit of high school, you know? Right. Have college coaches been there? Especially if you've been through this travel ball and you're asking questions, does this make sense? Does this make good investment or should I be doing something else? Maybe targeting certain showcases or camps that I should be going to rather than these tournaments where I'm not really seeing any college coaches and you're just watching winging it. So that's a big con, right? There's a limited amount of exposure, and that depends on your team. Right. If you are on the A team and the organization is pretty well known, then it might make sense. At the same time, you don't know who's coming to see you. Right. You are completely just winging in. These college coaches, who I talk to on a weekly basis have a really hard time of scheduling out because they get their schedule a couple days in advance as far as where teams are going to be. And they could go over here, maybe see an inning or see an at bat, and you don't know exactly who's going to be there, which is a big problem. So exposure standpoint, and then if you're on the B team, C team and D team and all these teams that these organizations have, all right, very likely you're not getting any exposure going through this. So that is a big con there. The next con is the time, the cost. Is this investment actually helping you? Especially if we're going from a recruiting standpoint, is it helping you get exposure to these college coaches and you go back to number one? Probably not. All right. It's probably not. Okay. So that is the next con. Number three is playing time. Are you playing and are you playing enough innings in front of college coaches? Because sometimes these travel organizations can have a lot of players. And this is a question that you need to ask if you were considering it. Great. All right. You just need to ask some questions like, hey, how do you go about playing time? How many number of guys do you have on the teams and how many guys are at your position on. On that team? Because if you're only playing half the game or a limited amount and you're traveling all over the place, does that make a lot of sense for you? Number four? And these last couple have been questions because some of the organizations can do. But the next one con, and what I'm seeing a lot more of. And again, this could be not necessarily a con, but a question is player development. Are the coaches actually developing you a lot of cases that I've seen, it's more just, hey, we're just throwing them out there. Good luck. Let's try to win a championship and that's it. We're here in high school that we need to be developing our skills. That's like the foundation of the recruiting process. So ask yourself, hey, is this organization helping me develop? Is this coach on the team helping me get better? As we go through this, another thing that you can think about in a question that you'll want to answer is, can I get enough playing time locally where I don't have to travel around the region or man the country, if you will, and spend all that time, money and energy? Can I play locally? Are there options available from a local team or maybe even a facility where I can develop my skills? That is a question that you are going to ask yourself to see if that makes sense. And then you travel to either camps or showcases because showcases can be really good. Especially the good ones are not. Not all of them are good by any means. But the ones that we can guarantee that we're getting in front of certain schools and certain scouts that are decision makers, those are certainly good. Now let's talk about pros and pros. For a travel ball organization is actually playing time. Typically, hopefully you're playing a lot and hopefully you are getting better and hopefully you are getting good coaching and helping your baseball iq. So the playing time is big. Usually travel ball organizations, you're playing a lot. All right. And that's a whole other thing as from just injury prevention, taking care of your arm, especially the pitchers. But it is super helpful from a positional standpoint. You are playing a lot of getting a lot of ABs there. The next pro is usually it's pretty competitive. All right. This is also could be considered a question, are you playing against good competition? What team are you on and who are you facing as we go through this? Because if you're not facing very good competition, you need to reconsider. As we go through this, the next pro is skill development, hopefully. And this could be another thing from just a question standpoint is you are developing your skills. Are the coaches helping you get better at your position, working on your skillset and things like that? Because just playing games doesn't necessarily mean that you are getting better. You need to make sure that you are working on your skills and that you are focused on what you need to be focused on at your position to help you with this. Whether it's primary position to A secondary position last pro is hopefully your organization or your coach has some connections. Alright? The problem is there are usually so many guys on the team or in the organization that the connections or the coaches kind of get watered down or overwhelmed from just the number of guys that they have. So it's just very important that you're proactive in this recruiting process and you are doing certain things in your recruiting process as far as making a highlight video, putting together a good school list, reaching out to schools, considering camps and showcases where you're directly getting in front of college coaches. Now that said, some of these organizations do do a good job of helping their guys with recruiting. You just need to make sure that you're asking these questions. If you're about to join and you're a part of an organization, well, are they helping you? Because you're going to know that, right? You're going to know if actually they're helping you go through this. Hopefully this helped you. And travel ball is certainly not for everybody. And going through this, pros and cons and the questions that you can ask yourself and maybe even the organization will help you decide whether you should do travel ball or you shouldn't do travel ball. And just know this, you don't have to play travel ball to play at the next level. Now, if it makes sense that you love your coach, the team is great, you're playing well, they're developing you, man, that makes a lot of sense. But on the other hand, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And there's definitely a better way to go through this college recruiting process from an exposure standpoint because remember, we're looking at from a lens from recruiting exposure, getting on the radar, getting noticed and seen by these college coaches. And there's definitely a better way. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll see you in the next video.