LL Draft question

[Coach JV]

This is rec ball. If you have 12 on a roster,
normally 6-7 are decent players and the rest
are and always will be rec-type players. It is the
bottom 5-6 players that need to be 'coached up'
as you cannot hide 5 outs in a lineup. Your rec team
is only as good as the bottom of the order.

This being said, we weigh our drafts like SOCALSoftballdad.
If you get 2 picks in round one, the points will even out and
you will pick last in round 2 and maybe round 3. Rec leagues
need even competition, it is no fun for the girls when one team
is stacked with travel players who beat up on everyone. From 12U
and up, we hold separate drafts for pitchers/catchers then position
players. It is, after all a pitcher/catchers' game in the older divisions.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

I have seen the pitchers/catchers draft, in the past. How do you handle the kid that chooses not to try out for those positions, but he/she is a top pitcher.

 

[SoftSocDad]

I have seen the pitchers/catchers draft, in the past. How do you handle the kid that chooses not to try out for those positions, but he/she is a top pitcher.

In our league, from 8u up, a kid has to declare prior to the season whether she would like to try to pitch. If she does not try out as a pitcher, by letter of the law, she's prevented from pitching the entire season. I've never seen this actually enforced, however. But, if a girl is a top-line pitcher, I would expect the 10u-and-up coaches to know it already.

 

[starsnuffer]

I have seen the pitchers/catchers draft, in the past. How do you handle the kid that chooses not to try out for those positions, but he/she is a top pitcher.

We do it this way:

Pitcher draft (so teams have even number as possible)
Travel ball player draft (this is majority TB players for the league team, but other A ball players as well included)
First round (this is weighed so that only new expansion teams and teams that were under .500 the previous season get picks)
General draft (this is where the remainder of players are picked and team numbers are evened out)

In each round, the teams draft to even the numbers, for instance, if there are 6 teams, and only 1 has 2 returning pitchers and 2 teams have 1 returning pitcher, the three teams with no pitcher draft first, and the team with 2 returning pitchers is very unlikely to get a pick.

When we have tryouts, pitcher/catcher tryouts are held separately. All team managers and the division director must approve a player to actually be a pitcher. This is to ensure that they are pitchers and not just kids who throw the ball over the plate, the approved kids are the ones that go into the pitcher draft.

We have strict rules against hiding a kid in the draft, I can't recall them exactly, but the jist is that if a kid does not participate in the pitcher draft but then pitches and a complaint is made that she's a ringer, at the discretion of the division director that kid will be ineligible to pitch any further games.

-W

 

[3'sDad]

I coached LL for 4 years (just hung up the clipboard and whistle as DD is in club ball full-time now). I say "Luck of the draw" if someone gets the twins.

Last season we did our draft. The League Director is very conscious of insuring each team has a minimum of 2 pitchers, in case games are missed by pitcher #1. I had a pitcher and needed another. Come draft night, our team passed on the best pitcher in the draft to insure one of the other teams could be competitive thru the season. What happens - the girl we selected to be pitcher #2 decided not to pitch after 2 outings where she did not meet her self-determined expectations.

What happened to our team when pitcher #1 missed a few games and pitcher #2 would not pitch? We pitched by committee with girls who volunteered to try and pitch in a game. Every girl that volunteered to pitch had the chance to pitch in a game as a result. Was it ugly with some very lopsided games - yes, because most of the girls had attempted to pitch had not practiced since 10U. Did they all have fun giving it a try - yes, even if the results were not a very competitve game.

I did have more than 1 parent thank me at the end of the season, saying "you promised that little Suzy would pitch in a game and you kept your word".

Our team lead our entire LL District in smiles and fun had per per player game by a long margin. We had a roster of 14 or 15 and we batted cinderella style. Tough to get thru a batting order of 14 when some of the girls were younger and just learning how to play, but LL is all about teaching the girls how to play softball.

We had a matrix for fielding position rotation, so every girl would get infield and outfield time every game, including playoff games.

We did reach our local final championship, but were beaten by a more talented team. The girls were disappointed they lost, but the coach (me) took the team to Friendly's for lunch and ice cream afterward - the tears dried pretty quickly.

I hope I had some positive impact on the girls I had the past few years.

 

[jacketsfan]

Our LL was like shock's. You had to use a pick in one of the next two rounds on the sibling.

Funny mentioning spreading talent. One year, we had 18 players in jr/sr (combined in our area). Ages ranged from 13-17. I wanted to take all the younger players (13-14) on my team, and have another team of the older players. The league wouldn't let me, because it wasn't fair to me to have all the younger kids. My DD was in the younger kid group, and all of the other ones were her age and her friends.

So, in the end, we had one team with 18 players. With minmum play rules (no one plays two innings before everyone has played 1), we had to rotate the entire team every inning. It was madness.