What are the chances of it? I’m in highschool, freshamn year, I’m definetely joining the baseball team, and I’m pretty sure I can make varsity. Anyway, what are my odds, should I just give up and stop with my disgustingly unrealstic goals?
If you’re any good, your chances are as good as about anyone else’s. If it’s what you really want to do, all you can do is give it your all and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work out, at least you can’t say you didn’t try your best.
Of course, “professional ball” includes minor leagues. May not pay as well as the big leauges, and being a career minor leaguer is still a lot better than being a career assistant manager at the local fast food place, at least in my opinion.
If you’re any good, your chances are as good as about anyone else’s. If it’s what you really want to do, all you can do is give it your all and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work out, at least you can’t say you didn’t try your best.
Of course, “professional ball” includes minor leagues. May not pay as well as the big leauges,
but being a career minor leaguer is still a lot better than being a career assistant manager at the local fast food place, at least in my opinion.
This really isn’t a factual question because we don’t know the facts.
However, the question is “should I try?” by all means give it a shot. Even if you don’t make it, you’ll feel better having made the attempt.
It depends on how much you’re willing to suffer through. How much does it mean to you? You might not know right now, of course, but there may come a point during your senior year when you just don’t think the odds are good enough that you can succeed at it in the long run. You might also come to the point where you think you have a good chance - meaning that it will all be clearer one way or another in a couple of years or so.
How big is your drive to succeed? If you have an 0-4 night with three strikeouts, will you want to come back the next day? Or will you give up? How easily will you surrender your dream?
The pay isn’t immaterial, either. Minor leaguers get paid little and have to ride smelly old buses everywhere they go. It’s not a glamorous position, but there’s the hope that you’ll be selected to play in the big leagues - where you do get paid well and get to ride nice shiny charter planes.
Are you willing to learn the fundamentals of the game? Can you bunt? Can you go from first to third on a ball hit to right field? Can you hit the cutoff man if you’re an outfielder? Do you know what to do as an infielder on a bunt play?
Good luck!
A frustrated major leaguer myself-aren’t most male adults?- if you have to ask when going into high school, I’m afraid it’s already too late. Major leaguers are the best players on every team they ever play on. They know & everyone knows it. The guy who makes it &" was cut from his HS team " is ridiculously rare.
doctordoowop is probably right. If you are a future major leaguer you should probably be assuming that it’s your God given destiny to play MLB barring accidents.
I played various representative sports when I was a teenager and came up against future pros. It didn’t take long to figure out my place in the scheme of things. I played schoolboy rugby against someone who played for Australia about a year later. It was like an adult playing with kids, he just toyed with us.
Actually, I think with baseball it’s much less likely that the player was numero uno in high school; there are plenty who did okay in high school and college but really blossomed in the minors, or some who aren’t great in the majors but are good role players (good speed, good defense, etc.), and being excellent in high school and /or college isn’t necessarily a prerequisite of that.
I’m not saying that everyone who picks up the game at age 20 will be a whiz at it, but you don’t have to have been playing it since age 7 to be successful in the bigs.
But dan, eyedea said he was “pretty sure he could make the varsity.” That doesn’t sound like a guy with a lot of experience,&/or knows how he compares w/ the competition. I KNEW I’d make the varsity-the coaches know you & invite you. When I couldn’t see,much less get my bat on a 90+ mph fastball from a future “bonus baby”- I got serious about college applications.
Isn’t it amazing how quickly it becomes obvious that you’re out of your class. I played baseball in American Legion junior baseball and was good enough to make the town team. Then, when I was in the Replacement Depot at Stone, England in WWII I had the occasion to play catch with a guy who had been good enough to have a tryout with the Chicago Cups before he went into the Army.
After a very short time I told him that I couldn’t play any more because I was in serious danger of getting hurt. That ball came at me so fast that I could barely get my glove there and he did it so effortlessly, seemingly, that I was fooled on every throw.
To make it to the top in anything you have to know you belong. If you know that then go for it and good luck along the way.
I would disagree, strongly, with the notion that someone who hasn’t yet played really serious baseball by age 13-14 is necessarily doomed never to make it. I can think of quite a few successful major league players who did not take baseball seriously until that age. Devon White, who I think we can all agree has had a pretty good career, didn’t play baseball at all until he was 15 or 16.
To answer the OP, it is essentially impossible to tell what your odds are at this point because we don’t have the right info. I’m guessing, as a high school freshman, that you are about 14, in which case a projection at this point is totally impossible. A ballplayer’s true potential is not obvious until they’re at least 17 or 18, the point at which your level of competition reaches the age where everyone is essentially at the same level of physical maturity. Even then, it’s a crapshoot. You don’t really know until they’re 19 or 20. If you think being a high school star means future stardom, go find David Clyde and ask him how that worked out. Or Brien Taylor. Or any one of scores and scores of high school phenoms who hit a wall around AA/AAA.
Play baseball seriously for a few years. If at 16-17 you are clearly one of the best players in your league or school district, you have a chance, but it will be a slim one no matter what. If you are not one of the better players by your senior year, your odds are very poor, though not totally impossible if you can make a college team and you feel you still have untapped potential. If you aren’t a regular player in college, forget it.
Having said all that, no matter how you fare, you need to have certain physical skills. As doctordoowop points out, if you cannot get your bat around on a 90 MPH fastball by the time you’re 18, you simply will never be able to hit professional pitching, because they’ll just blow you away with fastballs. Or if you are a pitcher, if you can’t top 85 MPH, there is just no way you’ll be able to get major leaguers, or high minor leaguers, out.
It’s immaterial if he currently thinks he can make it or not. First, there’s the question of how good the varsity is now, anyway. High school baseball teams vary quite a bit in quality, far more so than college teams (in college, how great a team is is determined in part by the NCAA division in which the school participates). What if his team is made up of players who have no shot at all to make the major leagues? If he were then unsure of even making that team, then it would stand to reason that his chances of making the majors would be slim. However, if the varsity team itself is incredible and he’s not sure if he can make it, that’s not necessarily an indicator of his own future in the least. All he can do is try.
You imply, too, that going to college (getting “serious about college applications” when you couldn’t hit the fastball) is exclusive from playing major league baseball, and that’s not true, either. Are you saying that if he were successful at HS baseball he should not even bother with college? Going to college seems to have worked out for the vast majority of U.S.-born major leaguers, and remember, it’s very, very rare when a player goes right from HS or college to the majors. They have to work on their craft for at least a while in the minors.
At any rate, of course he doesn’t know about the competition! He’s just begun his freshman year in high school! He hasn’t had the chance to even look at other players. And if he’s been playing Little League and knows how well he did there, that’s not necessarily indicative of how well he’ll do in HS.
I have to agree with dantheman here. How many of us adult-types here not only “knew” what they were going to do for a career when they were a freshman in high school, but are actually doing it now?
I had a friend in HS that got drafted and pitched in the minors for a few years…and we didn’t even HAVE a varsity baseball team! He was scouted at Legion ball, throwing in the high 80’s at age 17. shrug So, it happens sometimes I guess.
Try your best, eyedea, but keep your grades up too. After all, even if you don’t get drafted out of HS, a baseball scholarship or half-scholarship is a worthy prize. But, like RickJay says, give it to age 16. If it’s not working, try something else. Good luck.
My comment about college was tongue in cheek. My point is, eyedea I assume played before, maybe only the local park-was he chosen 1st, or batted 9th & told “play right field.” Same w/other sports. Rick -yeah I know Devon was Jamaican-bet he was a hell of a cricket player,tho’. But hey, I didn’t say don’t try. His questions was what were his chances- my point is like David Simmons said- good pros are so good it’s freaky. Christ, LaSorda still strikes me out w/his curve, he’s what ,76 or so? (In games at Vero beach His lifetime record was 0-4)
Well, to be fair, I’m betting that if you’ve been picked last in a pick-up game you’re probably not even considering creating this thread. So I think it’s safe to assume the OP did well at some level.
Hijack I know, but I gotta ask. You play pickup ball with Tommy Lasorda? Tell us about it, doctor!
Sure,Duke (not Snider is it?) Hijack all you want. It is at the adult-over 30 " fantasy’" camps that all teams now have. We play the real retired Dodgers -to finish off the week. Smith, Russell, Garvey, Monday ,Lopes etc. These guys compete. They charge the locals a few bucks to watch. LaSorda often comes down & throws an inning. His curve falls off a table. (Mondesi learned to hit a curve batting off LaSorda.) Baker almost killed me at 3rd base-then apologized after I checked to see if my head was still on. They all try to hit home runs & elevate the ball- they know what they are capable of doing to over 30 amateurs.
Wes Parker is 64 & w/ 30 days work he could play defense-not hit of course. I’m going next month- now I have a project-I’m going to ask them when they knew they were"special." I bet it’s long before age 14-15.