Category: Blog

Diamond Kinetics Swingtracker Review

Over the past several years, technology and analytics have changed the way players and prospects are evaluated at the highest levels of baseball. Diamond Kinetics are one of a handful of companies offering to make these enhanced analytic tools available to the masses, and in particular to youth players. We recently purchased the Swingtracker with the hopes of being able to gain insights into several levels of data and analytics about the swing. Here we review the Swingtracker and offer some insights about its utility for youth players. 

Making cuts and the realities of travel sports

It’s never enjoyable. It’s never easy. But it’s one of the realities of playing travel sports. In youth travel baseball, there is a balance between giving opportunities to as many kids as possible and making sure the individual kids get enough repetitions. What this means, then, is when more kids tryout than there are spots available, teams cannot take everyone. This leads to what we have found is the most difficult aspect of youth sports: roster cuts. 

A New Face on the North Carolina Tournament Circuit

For better or for worse, the youth baseball circuit in North Carolina is dominated by three organizations: NC GameOn Sports, Top Gun Sports, and USSSA. These 3 organizations host the largest quantity of tournaments across the state and regularly attract the most amount of teams. Triple Crown Sports also hosts a single event in North Carolina, the annual Border Wars, which takes place in early May. In 2018, a new face, Atlantic Coast Baseball, emerged on the North Carolina scene with their signature event, the Cap Classic, which was held in Rocky Mount the last weekend of June. 

National Programs Descend on North Carolina

A trend is emerging across youth travel baseball in North Carolina. If you haven’t noticed, you may not be paying attention. Gone are the days of travel teams being put together from the all-stars of every town’s recreation leagues. The last few years have ushered in a trend that is sweeping across the travel baseball events of North Carolina: the rise of the national youth programs. Yes, you read that right. National programs targeting youth players.

The best youth tournaments in NC spring/summer 2019

As always, North Carolina will host several huge youth baseball tournaments in the spring and summer of 2019. In order for teams to best prepare for their upcoming seasons, we want to spotlight several of the biggest tournaments in North Carolina this spring as well as a few of the biggest events from surrounding states.

Rankings Rationale 11/8/18

The fall season is starting to wind down, however the 10u and 12u Top Gun Winter World Series results led to some shake ups in those two age groups. In particular, we found the top of the 12u age group to be quite difficult to sort out. Here we’ve provided the rationale for how we ranked teams this week.

Rankings Rationale 11u-13u 10/11/18

Our first rankings of the fall season are out and we’ll be the first to admit, we’ve got some work to do. There were several familiar faces at or near the top, with 2 teams (10u Park Sharon Nationals and 11u SBA Premier) earning #1 spots in their respective age groups after finishing the 2017-2018 season at #1. Here we provide some rationale for how we formulated these rankings as well as where we think we missed.

Rankings Rationale 8u-10u 10/11/18

Our first rankings of the fall season are out and we’ll be the first to admit, we’ve got some work to do. There were several familiar faces at or near the top, with 2 teams (10u Park Sharon Nationals and 11u SBA Premier) earning #1 spots in their respective age groups after finishing the 2017-2018 season at #1. Here we provide some rationale for how we formulated these rankings as well as where we think we missed.