Inside Summer Ball’s Fight For Survival In The College Baseball Transfer Portal Era

Image credit: Cape Cod Baseball League (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

The email landed in midwinter, polite and plain. It was the kind of request the summer league official had read a hundred times before.

“Dear [league official],” it began. “My name is [redacted] and I was wondering if you had any spots available for me to pitch this summer. I would love to send you some film for you to watch and put you in touch with my college coach.”

The official replied within minutes. No openings, he explained, but a reserve slot was possible. The player didn’t hesitate to jump at the chance.

“Of course,” he responded.

What followed were the familiar calls, texts and emails that go into summer roster building. Only this time, the league official’s communications went unanswered by the player’s coach, a departure from typical workflow. Weeks passed. Eventually, the official broke the news—he couldn’t sign the player to a summer league contract.

That’s when the player made his next move.

“I’m entering the transfer portal,” he said. “Can I join now?”

With no coach to block his summer plans, the process moved fast. Flights were booked, housing was secured and introductions were made. Hours later, the phone rang again. The player had verbally committed to a new school, and his new coach didn’t want him playing.

In the churn of summer baseball, nothing stays settled for long.

“I said, ‘Listen,’” the summer league director of player personnel told Baseball America, “’I’m just telling you right now, any good baseball person who tells you that not playing baseball is good for you doesn’t have your best interest in mind.’”

Still, no minds were changed. Plans—or the lack thereof—remained firm. The player stayed home that summer, joining a growing list of college players who did the same.

Few college coaches who spoke with Baseball America on the condition of anonymity denied that reality. In a landscape where loyalty to programs can be fickle at best, summer ball has become less an opportunity to improve than it is a showcase for coaches looking to pluck talent from other teams to bolster their own.

“Ever since the transfer portal picked up and became what it is, I think coaches started operating under the belief that home is the safest place for their players to be and train,” the summer league official said. “College coaches want summer ball to exist as a place to find talent, not a place to send talent. To them, sending talent out is a risk.”

This notion is at the core of growing frustration for summer league managers, officials and team personnel, many of whom have served in their respective roles long enough to see the transition firsthand.

Players who once spent full seasons in wood bat leagues now only pass through briefly, if they go at all. It’s a trend that, in the eyes of several league administrators and scouts, has eroded the quality of what was once a fertile proving ground while also putting significant strain on teams scrambling to fill and maintain rosters throughout a season.

The numbers back it up. In some of the country’s most tradition-rich leagues, officials say roster volatility has never been higher. Players sign, report, make a handful of appearances and then vanish back home on the word of a coach, personal trainer or private pitching guru.

One league general manager charted his team’s trend over the last decade and found that rosters that used to turn over nine or 10 players in a summer now routinely shuffle through 20.

“It’s survival mode,” another league official said. “You’re not building a team anymore. You’re patching a boat.”

College coaches insist they still want their players competing in the summer, but few shied away from the fact that they wanted it to be on their terms.

Many request ultra-specific pitch counts or innings limits. A few avoid summer ball entirely for returning pitchers, especially those who could shoulder heavy workloads in the spring. As one SEC assistant put it, “I don’t need my Friday guy trying to prove something in a wood bat league in July.”

At the same time, coaches are watching everyone else’s players closely.

Several summer league administrators told Baseball America they now send weekly stat sheets directly to college coaches, some of whom use the information less to track their own rosters than to identify potential transfer targets.

“It’s kind of the worst-kept secret,” a Power Four recruiting coordinator said. “You go to the Cape now and half the time you’re not watching your own kid. You’re watching someone else’s and (hoping) he jumps in the portal.”

As such, some coaches feel the need to play defense.

“I went out to (watch several of my players) this summer and, as much as I was there to see how they were doing, I was also there to make sure my guys stayed my guys,” one mid-major head coach said.

That protective mindset has produced a squeeze that has been particularly apparent even in the Cape Cod Baseball League, which has long been considered the gold standard of summertime amateur development. In 2018, 53 players logged at least 100 at-bats on the Cape. That number cratered to 25 in 2023 and ticked up only slightly to 29 in 2025. On the mound, the downturn has been even more severe: 58 pitchers reached 20 innings in 2018 while just 25 did the same this summer.

The dip in participation is reflected at the sport’s highest levels, too. Just 60% of Division I first-round picks in 2025 played in a summer league the year before their draft season compared to 77% in 2018, the year the transfer portal was installed.

“We have successfully convinced baseball players that playing baseball is no longer good for them,” one league official said. “Kids come here looking to showcase themselves for the portal. They get the offer, the love, the NIL promise—and they go home.”

Added an official from another league: “The carousel of players is pretty much unprecedented in the last few years. It’s a completely different product than it’s ever been.”

The concern, administrators say, extends far beyond entertainment value—it’s an existential business problem. Summer leagues are built on nightly gates, community sponsors and the promise of stability to host families and local operators. When talent flees early—sometimes in waves—the quality of baseball drops, teams slump toward sub-.500 records with replacement players and crowds thin. One official described July attendance this year as “the quietest I can remember,” attributing it largely to recognizable names disappearing before the stretch run.

“You take away the best players, you take away the draw,” another general manager said. “And once fans stop showing up, everything else starts to wobble—concessions, merchandise, sponsorships, even host family willingness the next summer. It’s not just wins and losses. It’s the whole ecosystem.”

To combat the churn, leagues have begun experimenting with drastic fixes. One director said his schedule has already been slashed from 58 games down to 48—a deliberate psychological ploy.

“My sell to all the coaches and the players is, ‘You’ll be home the very first few days of August,’” he said. “We purposely keep it just June and July so the player doesn’t have to hear the word August.”

Still, coaches are pushing for even shorter summers.

Others have floated the potential for reserving summer roster spots only for hitters while pulling back on pitching altogether, an idea met with skepticism.

“Schools want to send out their hitters—they all want their hitters to get better—but no one wants to send out quality pitching, because they’re afraid the quality pitching won’t come back,” a summer league head coach said. “But you need someone to throw to the hitters.”

At this point, even administrators admit they’re running out of answers.

“They know there is a very real problem, and they are at a loss for what to do,” a league director said. “We want to come fish, but we don’t necessarily want to give you the fish to help everyone else.”

The consequences, officials warn, may arrive sooner than most realize. Smaller wood bat leagues without significant financial backing are already bracing for what comes next.

If college programs continue to “fish” from summer leagues without supplying players of their own and continue to pull talent out midseason or refuse to send it at all, it threatens to destabilize the entire model. The nightly show summer leagues have put on for decades becomes tougher to stage.

As one long-time administrator put it, if coaches keep treating summer ball solely as a place to scout talent rather than develop it, “the pond simply won’t survive.”

“I think you’re going to see some (leagues) say they can’t live like this because they have to put on a show every night,” one official said. “You need the players to put on a show. And if you don’t have the players—you don’t have the quality of players—sooner or later someone is going to ask, ‘What are we doing this for?’”