Pitchers playing down in the fall

In this past weekend's tourney, I noticed that there were several teams, including the finalists on my DD's age group (10U) with pitchers who were eligible in the fall for the age group but will not be eligible in the spring. Some of these girls were developed and approaching my height - 5'7". I consider this "playing down" if you believe the fall is the warm up to the spring season for the team.

Is this common? Is it a trophy hunting mentality by the team and/or parents?

Wouldn't you want the fall for your pitcher to adapt to the bigger ball / longer distance against live batters, even if she's less successful? I would think that would make her better prepared for the spring season.

LostinNJ said:

In this past weekend's tourney, I noticed that there were several teams, including the finalists on my DD's age group (10U) with pitchers who were eligible in the fall for the age group but will not be eligible in the spring. Some of these girls were developed and approaching my height - 5'7". I consider this "playing down" if you believe the fall is the warm up to the spring season for the team.

Is this common? Is it a trophy hunting mentality by the team and/or parents?

Wouldn't you want the fall for your pitcher to adapt to the bigger ball / longer distance against live batters, even if she's less successful? I would think that would make her better prepared for the spring season.

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The quest for the sacred plastic/t-shirt does nothing to make you better. These are they same dolts that post scores for their showcase games and include them in their won loss record.

FWIW - My DD has an official visit with an SEC team this weekend. She has thrown 18U since the Fall of her last year of 14U eligibility. Once you have developed proper mechanics and have a decent level of competency the only way you grow as a pitcher is to throw against the best hitters. I see some pretty good pitchers stagnant in 16U under the false premise that they will get more exposure play 16U than 18U.

I agree that if a girl is aging out of their current age division they should go ahead and make the jump if they can. Last year I had a 12U summer All Star team that didn't want to stop playing and wanted to continue into the fall. We had a mix of ages on the team with 5 of them that would be aging up to 14U in the Spring with 4 of them having November birthdays. None of them wanted to commit to a TB team but we wanted to keep this core group together in order to play together the next spring in Rec and summer All Star. If I had not continued to play, none of the girls would have been able to play and I would not have been able to recruit enough 12U girls in my Rolodex to play and be somewhat competitive.

You never know what is going on and why a girl is "playing down" in the fall or why they are playing on a particular team. And yes it happens. MY DD new team which is primarily 01's played a team this past weekend that is aging up to 16u in the spring. In the words of Domingo Ayala, We losted big tyne! Maybe that prepared US to play better teams.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I had a 5'9" girl on my 12U team. We always had her B.C. on hand.

Fall is just a weird time teams are in transition and there could be lots a factors going on.

As a general rule I always liked playing up especially during the transition year to the new size ball and extended distance.

Although as another poster mentioned I have seen teams stick together that were mixed age groups and they might play either up or down depending on circumstances.

When my town did fall baseball at both the 12U and Babe Ruth levels, we would let outgoing 12-year-olds step up to the big diamond if they wanted, to get a feel for it before tryouts in the Spring. Kids would routinely choose to stay on the smaller diamond.

I know with my dd, she could of played 16u. But, since this is her first year playing travel ball and just started with a pc, she was still learning. We lived in Europe for 4 years and she only played softball against other military posts up until this year. The rules were different and the game was played slower. The coaches were not allow to teach them how to slide and the slapping and bunting game didn't exist. Up until the age of 13, they were not allow to steal bases and it was slow pitch.
Come next month, my dd will be looking to work with a 16u team for winter training. She probably won't play any 16u tournaments for the rest of the year.
My dd learned a lot this year; sliding, bunting and even worked on left handed slap hitting.

Every year is different. I have coached teams that I put up in class, to prepare for a possible run the next summer. I have also coached teams that really struggled in the summer, so we kept them "down" in the fall. They learned how to compete better and actually win a few games. With the additional confidence, we were able to age up in the spring and be competitive. I never gave trophies a thought. It was always about learning and improving in the fall.

Like mentioned above there are many reasons why league's play down. In our area there are smaller league's who stack teams and play down to be more competitive and get a bit of recognition against the larger leagues.

My DD's teams have always played up in the fall, but these teams that choose to stay at their age level are just doing what is allowed. Some want to play one more time at that age, others are brand new teams that would rather see what tournament ball is like without getting crushed every game. This can lead to some big mismatches.

I'm slow to judge those kinds of teams and players. They have their reasons. Sometimes it's a bad reason.

But those who complain about trophy hunters are sometimes those who are afraid that they won't win a trophy as a result. The presence of one great team or player shouldn't ruin anybody's day.