Join this Facebook group and ask. There are a lot of teams out that way.

https://www.facebook.com/share/g/VLfnTmis1CsrFA3V/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Happy to help, we live in Dripping Springs.

For select, I'm sure there is still some teams trying to fill last roster spots. 9U or 10U. AA, AAA?

For rec, id play at Oak Hill rather than Drip.

TarponChaser said:

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docb said:

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It is a product of playing baseball year round and way too many games. I know a lot will disagree because they think their kids have to do this to play in college, etc. But when we were young (40 years ago) almost no one had ever heard of little league elbow. We did it to ourselves.

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That's part of it. But I hew to the Tom House maxim about how kids today pitch too much but don't throw enough. And he always says it's not just throwing a baseball but for kids to go throw a football, throw rocks, throw full-court basketball passes overhand, throw wiffle balls, and so on. The focus solely on baseball pitching prevents the kids from building up all the stabilizing muscles that protect the elbow and shoulder. Plus, with all the instruction kids get today they learn how to max out their velo at a young age way before their bodies are ready to handle the stress.

There's also a general lack of athleticism among a lot of baseball players compared to the past. Too many focus solely on the skill part (ie- hitting, pitching, and fielding lessons) and not the athletic base required to excel.

I don't know how else to describe it, but I think there's an element of what I'd call "unintentional racism." Way too many white and Latino folks see black kids in football and basketball and think they'll struggle to compete in those sports when their kids are in HS or beyond so they focus on a sport where skills are at a premium and they think a lower level of athleticism is less of an impediment to success and getting to the next level. So they've gravitated to baseball and see their kid's success at the youth level where being really skilled can overcome a lack of athleticism (the reverse can be true too) but then those kids who play year-round and do nothing but baseball are the ones who end up with arm problems.

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Does House suggest to take some time off from completely throwing (anything)? My oldest (12u) just played their last tournament of the fall last weekend and won't start up again for 5-6 weeks. Just today I told him I would like him to not throw anything for at least a month.

But, this was after he was out throwing the football with the neighborhood kids today. As he's been doing most of this last week.

Not that I've seen. The maxim of taking time off from throwing is more about pitching. From what I've learned, baseball players don't really take time off from throwing but they dial back the workload and don't step on the mound for a couple months. Pitchers still do long toss and flat ground work.

And no problem throwing a football. It's good to build up the muscles supporting the elbow & shoulder.

That being said, no reason to be playing in December at 12. Boys that age need to spend most of November, December, January, and maybe most of February playing other sports or in a S&C program.

Thank you…and agreed on the playing this late in the year. His normal team played their last tournament the 2nd weekend of November. But, he was asked to pickup on another team with some of his friends for their last tournament (which was last weekend), so I let him play.

So, to be clear, Tom House is one man's opinion. And I like him and respect him and what he says. So does Tarpon.

But both of my son's orthopedic surgeons disagree with that position. And both are sports doctors that played college football and have spent a career treating these types of injuries.

They would tell you that at that age at some point during the year they need to fully rest their arms whether they pitch or not. Overuse in the growth plates is a different beast that while pitchers certainly put more stress on them so does every day throwing. Pitchers 100% need to, but at some point they all do.

They would also tell you not to play fall ball at all if you are a pitcher, or at least do not pitch in the fall if you pitch in the spring. But until their growth plates close they at some point during the year need to fully rest their arms.

Also, by the time they hit puberty they should not be playing more than one sport at a time. We do not play fall ball now that we play tackle football. No chance.

I hope your Spring team carries at least 12 players.

MLB guidelines are what we follow and what everyone in youth baseball should follow. Google MLB youth pitching rules, or safe rules, and it will come up.

Does your son pitch?

DID PG unban the Hype Fire Drop 5 for 13u?



NM. I found my answer. It is not banned for 13u

Yes, this fall they banned all -5 for 12U, but don't have any specific bat restrictions for other age groups. So yes, Hype fire -5 was unbanned for all age groups but 12U.

Makes total sense to have 12u kids swinging -8 bats.
Honestly it's time to go the little league route and get rid of all USSSA bats and go with USA bats or BBCOR bats. We've seen too many kids get drilled in the head by line drives in 12u-14u. It would help the pitchers a ton and no more fly-outs turned homeruns.

I get some of you have had bad experiences with injuries, but some of these blanket statements are wild. Every kid is different. Teams don't have to carry a certain number of players. You can take all the precautions in the world, and it may not matter. You can also take no precautions and have no issues. My son plays 13u major and we carry 11. Every kid pitches. The most pitches he has thrown in a weekend is 63 pitches. I don't worry about it. His coach isn't an idiot. He throws when he wants in the off-season and goofs around with his buddies playing football and whatever else they want to do. He plays basketball for his JH and works in baseball whenever he feels like it during the season. Don't overthink it. He nor any kids on his team have had arm issues in the past 2 seasons since he has been on this team.

What is the most any kid has pitched, not just your son? And what positions did they play after? Did they pitch back to back days? Pitch and catch?


I do not believe you can safely play 13u with 11 players, and some young man on that team will regret it. I have no doubt about that. 27ish innings in a weekend with 11 is not doable consistently. A&M sends 30 My local high school which is a State level competitor would have 19-20 at least. 11 is dumb.

Be careful with that.

My son does pitch, but he is predominately an infielder. I have somewhat followed this thread (and last year's), and bc of that, I've made him take a break from doing any kind of throwing for at least a month in between seasons (last Dec-Jan and July-Aug). I'm having him take a break again for the next 4-5+ weeks.

Thankfully, he didn't pitch much this past fall. His team only won one Sunday game all season, so not a lot of opportunities. He had 10 IP and threw ~175 pitches total.

His team in the spring will carry 12 kids, which I'm happy with.

He does play other sports. He's currently playing indoor soccer thru early Feb. He's played basketball and flag football the previous few winters. Kid just loves sports. He's always playing something with the neighborhood kids.

He'll be in 7th grade next year and wants to play tackle football. I'm leaning toward him not playing baseball next fall and just focus on football. I'm mainly worried about overuse arm injury, but I also don't want him to get burned out on baseball.

Man it feels do good to read that our experiences had an influence on you and your son. Thats he best Christmas present I could get today

That's why I have been so straightforward and honest about it all. I get that a lot of people will ignore it but love hearing when people do not. I want to do everything I can do to make sure it doesn't happen to other kids.
Sounds like you all have a great plan.

We played 12u with 12 also and that was fine. 13u changes things. For fall ball we played two tournaments in August then when football started we played the fall ball city league with 17 kids on our roster and generally had 10 or 11 there for then Wednesday night double headers. I coached it and we had a blast. All the kids are playing football and jump on to different baseball rosters and had a lot of fun. Everybody from the majors kids to the rec league kids. We played six weeks of Wednesday night double headers. The only reason it is not a beer league is the kids are 12 amd 13. My son had 8 total at bats but coached first base a lot and called pitches from the bucket for a couple of games. He didnt play in the field. He was playing both ways on the football team and was WAY too sore for baseball but they still had a lot of fun. We quit one game a little early because we ran out of pitchin and one team forfeited twice because of football which was fine. We just adjusted schedules I think we ended the fall 7-5 on Wednesday nights and got knocked out in the semis in both early tournaments. Baseball is a lot of fun in smaller towns.

I would say that fall ball and football only works if fall ball is not taken seriously. We only get away with it because we are in Temple and had 17 kids. No way I'd let him play tournament baseball during football season 0% chance.

Couldn't tell you, it's not my job to monitor other people's kids. That's between the coach and their parents. We have 2 dads who played D1, one who was drafted out of juco, and another whose oldest son is a sophomore pitcher in the SEC. Point is, the adults are not light on experience. I've never heard any of them complain about usage amounts. You have had a bad experience with your son, I get it.

I can also tell you this. My son played on the same team starting at 8 -11. They were an independent team coached by a former high school coach. Started out 9u AA and played 7 seasons together. Ended up 12u major. Same 11 kids from start to finish until we broke up. Never picked up a player and no one ever missed time due to an arm injury. Those kids (minus my son) are all 14u now and none of them have had any arm issues thus far that have required them to miss time.

This will be my son's 3rd season with his current team. It is part of an organization and we have pulled kids up from our other teams if needed and those kids have pitched for us. We went to Cooperstown last summer with our 11 kids. Finished 3rd out of 60 teams, so we played 1 game shy of the max. Our ace pitched 2 innings on day 1 and 4 innings in our final game on day 5. He threw 117 pitches between those 2 days. He's a mid 70's kid. He got invited to the team USA trials in N.C. after Cooperstown. He went and did that. A lot of baseball, right? Came back and got hurt. Didn't get to play baseball at all in the fall and won't be able to in the spring. Guess what happened to him…torn ACL as soon as JH football practice began. Point is kids are going to get hurt. Sure you shouldn't deliberately overuse them. But I also won't micromanage every aspect of what they do.

I don't know where you are playing 27 innings in a weekend. Even if a team wins a tournament, it is typically 5 games in Houston. With the time limits, the vast majority of games are 4 innings. 27 innings is a big overstatement. I don't have the time or inclination to go back and look, but I can say with virtual certainty that my son has never come close to playing 27 innings in a weekend since he started playing baseball. It simply doesn't happen and if it does, it would be an extreme outlier.

Glad to hear that so far there have been no serious injuries that you are aware of. That's great. Hopefully it stays that way. If your team is not following MLB guidelines around youth pitching then you are just getting lucky. Lots of teams and kids get lucky. Unfortunately many do not. But again I'm really happy to hear that for y'all, so far so good. My son has fully recovered from his elbow injury. And to be clear, his initial injury was from baseball but his last injury, the one that put him in a cast and into a rehab program, was from football.

Your first statement about it not being your job…I guess. I mean even if a coach was treating my son right I wouldn't be able to ignore him abusing another kid. Not saying they are or are not. Just that I would consider that also my business if my son was in the same lineup. But hey you are you and I'm me right

Pretty sure we all have kids with dads that played a lot. The dads we have that played after high school are the ones most adamant about carrying enough players and following guidelines. So is our coach.

Fair point about 27 innings. That was a typo. We played 36 games and threw about 175 innings. We actually played 39 and 183 but I took out one rain soaked weekend. Thats just a tick under 5 innings per game. We played 24 plus innings in a weekend four times including three straight tournaments. I'm sorry your kids only get four inning games. Five or six is a heck of a lot more fun. Also as you know going into 13u the games are longer. Our older team averaged more than five a game but I don't have their exact numbers in front of me. The Franklin league 13u teams average 26 a weekend.

Also our kids averaged 17.1 pitches per inning. So in a 25 inning weekend thats 425 pitches. Do your catchers also pitch? They shouldn't but if they do the old MLB safe pitch guidelines counted that throw as half a pitch(now they recommend catchers not pitch). So if they don't pitch a team with ten players so eight pitchers is averaging over 50 pitches a player per weekend while also playing over 90% of the other innings in the field. Again, some kids and teams do get lucky. But people that understand the risks can quickly see why eleven is better than ten and twelve is better than eleven, especially when you know that this pitches aren't distributed evenly and that catcher just might throw a pitch or two.

I guess if you are signing up for tournaments where you only get three or four innings per game and you only play three or four games you don't need as many players. That's true I guess.

Last, the fact that kids didn't get hurt at younger ages….. the real risky years are the puberty years.

Anyway good luck to y'all and hope all of the boys out there have a great year.

Last, and if nobody addresses me directly I will move on from it, my goal is just awareness. I want everyone to e aware of the risks that they are taking. That's all. When we sign our boys up to play football it is fair to say that 99% of us understand the risks. But I don't think that's true with a lot of people when they sign their kids up for baseball.

If you(generic) understand the risks then how far you are willing to push things is at least an educated decision. Some people are going to be just fine letting their kids pitch and catch in the same day. Others look at the endless data and studies and decide Thats not a good idea for their son. And that's all great. I let my son play both ways in football this year. He started the last three games of the year at both MLB and RB. That was certainly a risk a lot of people wouldn't take.

There are endless studies showing the risks involved and for someone with a young kid just getting into baseball I highly suggest you google something about arm injuries in youth baseball, little league elbow, etc and educated yourself so that you can make an educated decision.

This is the MLB pitch smart guidelines. There are others out there that provide more clarity around what to do when not pitching like can a kid play in the field after throwing 60:pitches(the answer is it is certainly in the high end of the risk scale). But at least understand this before letting your kid loose

Thanks and hope everyone has a great season

https://www.mlb.com/pitch-smart/pitching-guidelines/ages-9-12

Bump.

Ordered jerseys today.

Let's go!!!