Why We Are Creating a New System to Develop Baseball Players

Player development at the youth level is largely a black box. Certain inputs – players, parents, coaches, travel teams, local leagues, tournaments, private lessons, online resources, and more – are fed into the box. Some outputs are supposed to follow: players are more knowledgeable and competent, perform better in games, families are satisfied, and so on.

But are we getting those outputs? Participation trends in baseball tell us the answer is no – from 2019-2022, the percentage of kids (6-12) and teenagers (13-17) who play baseball on a regular basis decreased respectively by 20% and 16%. No doubt, several factors determine whether kids play baseball. But if they were becoming more competent, performed better in games, and families were satisfied, then we likely would not see a rapid decline in participation.

So what is happening inside the box? And what can be done so that more players and families get the desired outputs?

In the late 1990s, education researchers Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam posed similar questions in the context of schools. Society at that time had coalesced around reforms to classroom sizes, funding, and standards to fix lagging student achievement; society expected that adjusting inputs to the classroom (e.g., smaller classes, more funding, new standards) would lead to better outcomes. Black and William argued that this focus was misplaced: to improve student achievement, reforms needed to center on what was happening inside the classroom. Once there (“inside the black box”), one would find that ineffective expectation-setting and insufficient clarity about the means for improvement were the real culprits for lagging student achievement. Students had no clear path to an overarching objective and viewed learning as just a series of exercises; this caused them to put in less effort and revise their goals downward.

A similar condition exists in baseball. Consensus is that something is wrong with amateur baseball, be it rising costs, emphasis on travel, the game being slow, “daddy ball,” and so on. Consensus is also that if you fix those inputs kids will have better outcomes in the sport. But that ignores what is happening inside the diamond. Amending inputs will not change the fact that players lack understanding about the means for improvement and are provided no clear path to an overarching objective. Nor will amending inputs cause kids to view practice as anything but a series of drills – or something they must do to win more games – rather than another step toward becoming a better baseball player.

T1 and the system we are creating exist because we are solely focused on what happens inside the diamond – players can be developed in a much better way. Our hypothesis is that if you provide kids with a clear objective, track their learning, and make development an interactive process, then they will have better outcomes.

Are we right? Well, only time will tell (any good experiment takes time). But early results have exceeded expectations, and we still have a lot of improvements to make.