We review baseball gear the way a coach and a player would: in practice and in games. Much of what we cover is built for young ballplayers, and adult gear is welcome too. This page covers how we work and what to send us.
Ground Up Baseball is a youth baseball site for coaches, parents and players. We build free reference tools and write plain-English guides: glove model codes, bat specs and bat rules, pitch counts and arm care, practice plans, tournaments by state, and gear coverage in between.
We write for the people making the buying decision: a parent buying a first glove, a coach outfitting a team, a player saving up for a bat. All three deserve the same straight answer about what a kid actually needs.
This site is still young, and we would rather grow it slowly than fill it quickly. The person who writes about a glove is the person who handled it.
Broadly, anything a young ballplayer or their coach would actually use:
Adult gear is in scope too. When a product is made for adults, an adult on our side uses it and the review says who did the testing.
A real player or coach uses the product in practices or games, and we keep notes while it is happening. Then we write down what we saw. The product goes into a real bag and a real season, and the review is the report that comes back.
What we report is what worked, what did not, and who it fits: the age range, the skill level, and the kind of player who gets the most out of it. A product can be well made and still be wrong for a nine-year-old, and we will say that.
We do not promise a positive review. If a product does not work for young players, we will say so. If it is not safe or not appropriate for the age group it is aimed at, we may decline to cover it at all.
We would rather publish a few honest reviews than a pile of them that all read the same. That is the reason to send something here. A new site is a good place for a first honest review: no back catalog to match and no house style to fit.
Free product gets you consideration, not a conclusion. We write what we found, and that includes the parts you may not like. A review we had to soften would not be worth reading, and it would not be worth your time either.
If a product was sent to us, loaned to us, or sold to us at a discount, the review says so, in the page, in plain words. Nobody should have to guess how a product got here.
Some links on this site are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission if you buy through one. That is disclosed on the page and in our affiliate disclosure. It does not change a spec, a rating or a recommendation.
No write-up from a spec sheet. No first impressions dressed up as a review. No opinion borrowed from someone else's video. If we have not had the product in our hands long enough to know how it holds up, we wait, or we don't publish.
For bats and helmets, we check the current standard for the player's age and league before we recommend anything. Depending on the league, that usually means checking a bat for a current USA Baseball, USSSA or BBCOR mark, and checking the helmet against the standard the player's league requires.
We do not list rules on this page. They differ by age and organization, and they change. When a review touches a rule, we link the standard we checked and the date we checked it, and we say plainly that a family should confirm it with their own league before they buy.
On arm care, we stay conservative. Anything that adds throwing volume, or asks a young arm for maximum effort, gets a hard look before we would recommend it. Some products we simply will not put in front of kids.
An email with these details is enough to start:
If we can take it on, we will reply with a mailing address and a rough timeline. We like a few weeks with a product before writing about it, and sometimes longer if the timing falls outside the season it was built for. If it is not a fit, we will tell you, and we will tell you quickly, so the product can go where it will get used.
We publish only what we actually tested. If a test does not happen, there is no review, and we would rather say that than fill the space.
Email [email protected] for review requests, sample requests and partnership questions.
One address, and a real person reads it. If you are writing about a product, put the product name in the subject line so it does not get lost.
We do not have a phone line or a contact form. Email is the way in.
Ground Up Baseball is independently owned. No brand, league or retailer owns this site or has a say in what we publish.