u/Effective_Exchange18

Moved to west Texas over the summer and learned that the schools in the area do middle school baseball and softball (something foreign to me growing up in Michigan and moving from east Texas). The school my 7th grade son goes to has a baseball field that both the softball and baseball team uses and they use it at the same time so I watch both teams practice.

The level of ability and knowledge I’ve seen from both teams is almost beginner level, T-Ball/Coach pitch level. Like many of the players seen like they are playing for the first time, or haven’t played in a while, yet they made the team, because there are few quality players.

We came from CenTex, where even rec teams were pretty competitive and it was hard to find a player that didn’t either have talent, or IQ, or both.

So are all the good players not even doing school ball and just doing travel/select ball?

For context as well, we haven’t started that yet because I don’t want the politics of travel/select to poison my son’s love for the game. But I understand it’s something to probably start soon because of the quality of play is better and it exposes them more for the higher level.

Edit for context: The local schools moved their baseball season to the fall (Aug-Sep) instead of spring to allow football to be in the cooler months.

Assistant coach here

In our rec league we do a returning players deal, where you stay on the same team for the entire time your in 12U. We returned 5 players from last year and was able to protect 1 player moving up from 10U last year. The other 6 players were drafted. We saw 5 of the 6 drafted in the leagues “play day”. And had to ghost draft the last player to make 12 players in the team.

Well, the last player decided they signed up for the wrong league and just dropped out before starting. Not an issue. More playing time for the rest of the team. Then two games in the season a decent fielding kid that did play CF mostly decided to drop as well, bringing us to 10 for 7 more games.

So our team is comprised of 3 really solid defensive players. 1 is mostly a catcher and a little 3B, 1 is 1B and the other is the SS/P.

We then have 3 semi decent players defensively where 1 is 3B, 1 is 2B, and the other is the SS/P/C (not my idea to pitch and catch a player, and has done it in the same game too🤷‍♂️).

1 player is not as good as the second tier players, but not as bad as the last tier players, and is frustrating because he has moments where he COULD be as good as second tier, but often shows signs he belongs in the last tier. Nevertheless…

The 3 bottom players are TERRIBLE at fielding. Can’t track a ball to save their lives. Often distracted in the OF, routine singles become triples if it’s hit to them. Pop ups are never caught in game.

All that to say this: The last 4 players mentioned is always our OF. And I feel like we would give up less runs if we put one of the IF players, maybe 2B, to CF, and one of the bottom 3 to 2B. Yeah we would lose a cut off to right, but most of the hits to the RF don’t require a cut off if it’s fielded anyways. Yeah we lose a little level of defense on a steal or a pickoff to second, but our catcher can’t really throw anyone out at second anyway.

So the question. How would you handle the positioning if you were a coach of this team? Keep playing 3 bad players in the OF on a rotational basis, keeping the tier 3 player in CF? Or swap two of the low tier in RF, put one at 2B and put a tier 1 or 2 in CF and the tier 3 in LF?