Quote Originally Posted by The Federalist Engineer View Post
Educate me- do you have to play travel ball to be great at baseball? What's the development path for the Latin America players? Is travel ball a lifestyle? To get noticed? Or to become great?

A Puerto Rican coach told me that USA young players are far more polished than PR youngsters and PR destroys teenager arms as collateral damage to playing lots of games. But, he says PR players get far more Glove time and ABs. He says the Latin players thus have far more Twitch than polished USA players.

My kid is 4
I don't think you HAVE to play travel ball to be great. Hunter Renfroe skipped a year or two of it- and actually didn't make Hillcrest Christian's team as a freshman I believe. And you see where he is now. However, the way baseball is nowadays it's definitely more to your advantage to play travel ball because of the current baseball climate. You need the private training to learn how to take your talent to the next level and apply it. A lot of times (not all) those private teachers have travel ball teams and their players get linked in that way. See Dulin's Dodgers.

Basically what happens is all of these elite travel ball teams go to college showcases like the one at MSU and more importantly at the Perfect Game facilities in Georgia. That's where most of the college recruiters and MLB scouts congregate to evaluate and assess players. It's kind of like a one stop shop for them. So, that's why travel ball is so big now. It's for most people their most likely path to college/pro baseball. And like I said it's not the only path but it's definitely the most likely path. Sometimes the guys that don't go that route end up having to go to JUCO to get noticed but if it gets you to MLB there's nothing wrong with that.

Latin America is apples and oranges. Basically what happens is you have these kids that are playing outside all the time and sometimes they get a handler basically. MLB has totally separate showcases for a lack of better words for those players and those players are not subject to the draft unless they are from Puerto Rico. They sign them at 16 basically as free agents and each team is given an international pool to sign Latin American players. If a team goes beyond the pool they are taxed. Sort of like the draft but it's less organized. Cuba and Puerto Rico are exceptions or at least they are a little bit different. Cuba has a Communist system to develop talent. They develop all of their players locally based on where the player is from and they try to identify players at a really young age and start them playing baseball based on their athletic aptitude. To get to MLB they used to have to defect to Mexico or the Dominican Republic or somewhere like that but the Serie Nacional the Cuban MLB has just agreed to a new system that I think starts next year where I believe players can be posted like they are in Japan so they don't have to defect anymore. Puerto Rico is different because they are subject to the MLB draft. They've never really been known for producing pitching to be honest with you which is probably partially why they abuse any good arm that they actually have. They're known more for producing elite catchers than anything. The coach you spoke to is absolutely correct that American players are more polished- and honestly it's probably in part because of the travel ball system. It's also because the coaches in America are better than they are overseas. College baseball helps a lot with development as well.


Canada has the same system as the US except with a much smaller pool of players.

Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan have their own leagues and drafts. Japan is the best but South Korea is not far behind and actually plays more of an "American" style than Japan. Most Asian players have to be posted to sign with MLB- definitely Japan for sure. The other countries may fall under the International spending rules that MLB has if I'm not mistaken.