14u Pitchers Not Allowed to Bat?

[aec4444]

One of the biggest problems, especially at the younger age groups, is too many head coaches "play to win" games they should be "playing to get better". We were guilty of the same thing when my DD was younger. When your DD get older and starts attending nationals, you realize that her team could go 10-50 in the regular season and as long as they earn a berth to Nationals and finish in the Top-20, the season was a success. The best teams do not look for tournaments they think they can win, they seek out the best competition.

Again, I agree with what you're saying... but you are misinterpreting "play to win." I don't mean go sign up for events where you'll walk over the competition. I agree with you some games are playing for experience and others are playing to win.... I'm saying when we're playing to win the game at hand, regardless of the tournament (nationals, states, anything), then the best 9 should play.

 

[WARRIORMIKE]

Everybody loves to hit. My philosophy,in tourney situation is you take your 10 best hitters and have them ready in the line up.

If your hitting your in the lineup I dont care if your a pitcher or not. Hits produce runs, runs can potentially make wins!

 

[Rocketech1]

What was the strategy behind the head coaching choosing to have a 16-player roster? Was his hope that the best 12-13 would emerge and the others would leave? If so, that's exploiting kids and families. I would like to see the gameplan for how he expected to provide a good experience for 16 players and families.

I agree, the head coach is walking a tight rope. The roster is actually 18 players (but he knew 2 players are injured and won't be playing for two or three months and at least 1 player (2001) will go dark in spring during high school play). A possible other reason for the large roster is that the HC is also the middle school coach and 3 players on this TB team will play for him in the spring. Another reason for the large roster might be that this is a paid coach (with no kid on the team) and the larger roster pays his salary and I'm sure some back to the organization.

The one thing about this medium sized TB organization (SoCal) is that players will get the option to play in certain showcases or not throughout the year. For example, we have 4, 14u teams and they are forming 1 team for a one off showcase in Florida this month. It's open to any player but only a couple of players from DDs team have chosen to attend since they are mostly 1st years.

 

[Rocketech1]

UPDATE: so last night the team had batting practice and unsolicited, the head coach says to DD that the primary reason he didn't have the 2 healthy pitchers bat last tournament is that he is concerned one might get hurt and we would be down to only 1 pitcher. He said that when the #3 pitcher is available next month (recovering from a stress fracture) that my DD will get to bat in the regular line-up and he will rotate her in to her secondary position, CF, when not pitching.

Like I said before, it's a new season and I'm going to take him at his word for now and not jump to conclusions just yet.