Thread: Offense or defense?

If you had to pick between a weak fielder with a good bat and a good fielder with a weak bat, what would you choose? The rest of the team is pretty balanced.

If she hits it over the light poles...a lot, take her, work on her defense and dp her in the interim. Otherwise I'd take the fielder and teach her to hit. Especially if she's fast. IME, teaching fast kids to hit is high percentage bet.

Defense hands down.

So if she's a Bustos minus the defense you take the defender instead? Call me right after you do with the hitter's contact info will ya'?

I would tend to agree, except that I seem to be better personally at teaching a girl to play defense than I am at teaching a girl to hit consistently with power. Or at least, faster teaching defense....I'm making progress with my own DD and son on the hitting, but it's a slow process, and I can't seem to make a lot of progress with an entire team in a few hours a day a couple days a week.

While multiple errors in a game kill you, it seemed to me last year (my DD was 12U last year), that usually most teams were close in pitching and defense, and the winner was determined more on differences in hitting. Maybe that's just because my DD's team didn't hit well very consistently

Plus...isn't there an old saying that a coach will find a place in the field for a good hitter, or something like that?

(just mainly trying to keep the discussion going here with a different view )

If she's a good hitter, she's probably coordinated and strong, so why isn't she a good fielder? Probably because she's slow. Good luck teaching a slow kid to be fast. Colleges are full of fast kids that could field great but who's hitting wasn't up to par. They take legions of those kids every year and turn them into slapper/draggers,

Now imagine if your a college coach and you decided to take those 12 power hitters that are slow as your recruiting class and you know they don't field well, first game of the season you have to face team jackrabbit with 8 kids that slap/drag and your girls fielding percentage is below 50% on a good day, who do you think wins? There is only room on the team for one slow kid who can hit and that's the DP spot, every other position needs a true fielder.

The OP said the rest of the team was fairly balanced, so 1 bat isn't going to make that big of an impact... now if she can't bend over and catch a routine ground ball...that will make a difference. I'm a believer that defense wins games.

I know she is probably an exception, but I don't think Bustos hurts her team on defense, and she seems "fairly" strong



I wonder which came first for her, hitting or fielding?