Mercy from the coaching position?

[Momo'sDad]

It sounds like you've got a 5 run per inning rule to keep things from getting out of hand. I would not take the foot off the petal until the other team has no chance of winning. You never know when you'll have a bad inning and the other team will take advantage.

The other night our team was losing 18 - 9 after 4 innings with only time for one more inning. Even though we had no chance to win (8 run limit) I'm glad the other coach did not suggest that we quit playing or tell his girls to stop swinging. I challenged our team to finish stong and we held them to one run at their final at bat and we scored 4 at ours.

After that inexplicable failure in our first game, I reset our lineup and now I, too, believe we need to get every run we're entitled to until there's no chance of a comeback, at which point we can try some things. We know that if we score 10 runs a game, we're going to win more than we lose, but if we score 15, we're going to win a lot more.

In the last game, after getting the lead, I decided to give a girl a chance to pitch, because she'd been wanting to since our first practice. She has no speed whatsoever, but struck out the first 2 batters, then walked a batter that our #3 catcher caught stealing for the final out. If we did not have an insurmountable lead, it's unlikely I would've put her or that catcher in, but now, it's safe to say that we've got 3 'batteries' on our team, which is fine because 1 of them doesn't need to wear protective gear in warmups.

 

[Lozza]

It's not just juniors. I had one game this year where everything went wrong. Women who had been playing for 20 years who couldn't stop a ball. We got 15 runs in one inning. They were trying to get out and we couldn't do that! It ended with one girl leaving before I even started the arm circle.

 

[druer]

At that age there is no such thing as parity or fairness. At any age in this sport it always comes down to pitching, but even more so at that age. Nothing you can do to overcome brand new pitchers that don't practice. It's just painful for everyone involved, and you just hope that the snacks are good at the end of the game.

It's a shame when the same team ends up not only with pitchers that don't practice and walk everyone, but 9-12 players who also don't practice hitting. It's understandable that a team would give up 20 runs walking in 4 innings (I've been there done that), but not understandable why they couldn't produce even a single run of their own. However, that doesn't mean the other players who put the time and energy into practicing to become their best shouldn't be able to do what they've practiced.

 

[Momo'sDad]

The solution came to me in practice yesterday during 6-on-6, where each batter got 3 pitches. If the ball wasn't put into play within those 3 pitches, we brought out the tee.

The in-game compromise would be to keep the 5- or maybe 4-run rule in place, but then also limit the number of walks per inning to 3 or 4 as well. Once that limit was reached, at 4 balls, the tee would come out and the defense would actually get the opportunity to play defense, which is far more beneficial to everyone than sitting around waiting for the pitcher to walk in just a few more so the inning can end.

The catcher would be responsible for knocking the tee away from home plate each time.

The team with the 2 best pitchers is still going to strike out a higher percentage of batters than everyone else, but because they do throw strikes, a lot of balls are being put into play. Under the new provision, the teams with 1 pitcher or less would now be able to enjoy fun, competitive games as well. As for the scorekeepers, there should be a small notation on which hits were from the tee.

I don't know what our local provision is for making mid-season changes to rules of game play, but I've invited another team to play a scrimmage with this rule mod next week and if it goes well, I'll present it to the board the following week with the goal of getting us more decent games in the second half of the season.