My Experience Coaching a 9-10 Year Old Baseball Team in a Rigged League

[Atocep]

I'll start with a bit of background on what went on behind the scenes before we got to our first practice. This is my first attempt at any sort of dynasty and I'm pulling a lot of this initial info from memory. So you have to bear with me here.

Here's my initial post from last year about the team that was probably made at the peak of my frustration that sheds some light on the situation our team is in heading into this season.

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What to do with This Team

Last season was rough. We had 1 coach with limited baseball knowledge, 1 coach with limited time, and I ended up volunteering to help out a bit and coached 3rd base. It was a completely new group of people for me so I really just kept my mouth shut and followed the script. That script led us to not winning a single game. We had one travel game that was blatantly stolen from us by the ump, but in most of the rest we weren't all that competitive and it was frustrating.

I spent most of the winter trying to decide what to do with my son and this team. I knew the coach with limited time wasn't going to be back and I doubted the coach with limited knowledge (Mark) would be back since his son didn't seem to enjoy baseball all that much. With a few months between the end of the season and when I actually started thinking about what to do with this team I started to convince myself that the talent we have isn't all that bad. We had several 8 year olds, two 9 year olds, and one 10 year old on our team. We did lose 3 to moves, but the outgoing talent wasn't all that great to be perfectly honest. So I decided I was going to coach the team.

Kaden signed up and I started looking through the roster of players that had signed up and noticed that Mark had signed his son up and had volunteered to coach again. This is a huge boost because, although he has limited baseball knowledge, he's great around the kids and does a good job of teaching the things he does know. He's just not as competitive as I am.

I started putting together the framework for our practices and hunting down videos of the things I wanted to do so that anyone that helps out with practice this year will have a visual reference for what these drills are supposed to look like. As I'm spending my evenings doing this I'm informed the other coach from last year wants to move his son to another team. That same week we had a league meeting for the coaches to go over things for the upcoming season, set up our practice schedules, go over rules changes, ect. It's also a chance for me to talk to the division director about the former coach trying to move his son off our team.


The League Meeting, My Motivation, and Filling out the Team

Before that meeting started I got some time with the division director and I was told the rules backed us up on this one as long as Mark or I don't agree to release him. If we don't his options are either sit out or he goes into the draft (at this point I'm thinking, yeah!!!! They're actually having a draft this year!!!) and the only stipulation is we can't pick him. As I'm discussing this with the division director a coach from the stacked team of 11 year olds last year started running his mouth about how it isn't fair to keep him on our team, our team is terrible, and our kids don't have the slightest idea how to play baseball. I was pissed. Regardless of how true that may or may not be it pissed me off an incredible amount to listen to it from a guy that has a team that isn't in our division and doesn't have a damn clue what's really going on. The division director told him there rules that they have to follow and points to me and tells him "this is the guy coaching them this year". His response to me was "Good luck with that". At this point I had all the motivation I needed.

I leave that meeting early to go coach my son's basketball team and I leave signing up for practices and claiming fields to Mark. I found out later that Mark signed us up for 2 practices per week (every other team signed up for 3) on a field that's mostly used by tee ball teams. I love the guy, but his lack of competitiveness shows up in so many areas it can be a little bit frustrating. I ended up sending an email to the league president to get a 3rd practice day on a much, much better field.

One important thing I found out at the meeeting was the league's runner up from last season had more or less broken up. 4 of their players moved up a divison, the rest were left without a coach, and no one was stepping up to take over the team so they disbanded. One of many idiotic rules the league has is these players, since they had played in the division last season and were left without a team, were free to join whichever team they want. 4 flocked to the Tigers; a team that already had a solid foundation of returning players. 1 went to the Blue Raiders; a team coached by the division director. One of the players that went to the Tigers (he was actually the starting pitcher in the championship game the previous season) was on Kaden's basketball team, had been on his team the previous year, and I knew his dad fairly well. I immediately went to work trying to recruit him. I sold his dad on pretty much guaranteed playing time versus going to a team that's absolutely loaded and he could help me out with coaching if he was interested. It turns out he had a full ride to play catcher in college so he'd be a huge boost to our coaching staff. He asked his son what he wanted to do and his response was "I want to play with Kaden". We had landed both a solid pitcher and a guy that can teach both pitching and catching. I was getting excited. That put us at 10 players with one in limbo. That meant I had one slot left and a draft coming up.

I spoke with the player in limbo's dad at every opportunity. Our sons play in the same basektball league and have games on the same day so I could catch him either before or after our games. I spent multple conversations explaining to him why things would be different, what my plans were, that we had added a couple of solid players that would help quite a bit, and that I was 100% convinced that this group of kids can win. A couple of days before the draft assessment was scheduled we exchanged phone numbers. The night before the assessment I called him and asked if they were leaning any particular way because with the draft coming up I'd just like to have an idea of how many players I should be looking for. He gives me the news I had been hoping for. He was going to play for us. At this point I felt like a college recruiter that had landed 5 star player the night before national signing day. Now we only needed 1 more player and we have the draft to fill that need. Or so I thought.

[Atocep]

The "Draft"

I was under the impression we'd have the first pick in the draft. We hadn't won a game the previous year and the two new teams that had joined the league were already at 12 players. Things were looking good. To improve our chances of getting a good player I even took over 1,500 sign up flyers for the league to the schools on Fort Lewis since most people here don't seem to know the league even exists.

The assessment was on a Saturday morning. I was in a good mood. I'm going out to watch some players play baseball and I should have my pick out of all of them to add to what was shaping up to be a pretty decent team. I arrive to find out a team that had backed out of the league a few weeks earlier because of a lack of players had pulled together enough that they were just going to add 3 from the draft and they'd be set. So now there's a bit of uncertainty on where we're picking, but we're still picking no worse than 2nd. Right?

Mark and I start watching these kids go through drills and there were 6 players there. A smaller turnout than expected, but it actually was enough to put every team at 12 players. Player 1 was obviously a good player. I looked at him on the on deck circle while another player was hitting and I told Mark, "that kid is a hitter". Sure enough, he steps up to the plate and rips line drives all over the place. I also told Mark I bet he can't field the ball at all and I turned out to be correct there as well. He ended up nearly falling down trying to backpedal on a pop fly over his head and looked shaky on grounders also. Still, he's clearly the best player there. Player 2 was a solid all around player. No obvious weaknesses. Player 3 was very similar to player 2 except that he hit left handed (threw right) and his dad requested that he play with player 1. Player 4 was an athletic kid with a really quick bat, could field the ball, but was rough in all areas. You could tell there was a lot of potential there, but he hadn't been coached much. Player 5 was a big, strong kid that looked lost in the field and at the plate. Player 6 was a small 9 year who needed a lot of work and his didn't make the best first impression when he barked at him to speak his name more clearly when we were taking names before everyting started.

As we wrapped up the assessment I wanted clarification on why Player 1 and Player 3 were requesting to play together. I basically wanted to make sure it wasn't a transportation issue. I was told it was just a request and that they understood if they ended up on different teams. It's part of baseball.

The following Monday night (the night before the draft) I get call from the division director, who I don't trust to begin with, and he starts things off by telling me that they just had late sign up. It's a 9 year old that requested to play on my team because he goes to school with 3 of my players. He asked if wanted to go ahead and take him and if I did would that mean I still need a player in the draft. It was pretty obvious to me that he was trying to talk me out of the draft to improve his chances at getting a player he wants. I tell that I would prefer to take player that I've seen play before, but if no one else wants to take on another player I'd go ahead and take him and just play with 13. He then tells me that the league hasn't used the draft in a few years so they don't really have any rules on conducting it or setting the draft order. He said that in his opinion the only fair way to do do the order is to draw names out of a hat, but that there's 4 solid players in the draft and 4 teams that have shown interest in adding at least one player so he wants to make sure each team walks away with one of those 4. He specifically says he's not going to force players 1 and 3 together. If they're picked to play on seperate teams they're picked to play on seperate teams. This process doesn't exactly benefit us, but I thought "no big deal, we'll get one of the 4 players that looked pretty good".

Tuesday I go to the draft and I'm sitting around waiting for things to get started. Mark is out of town so it's just me and a bunch of guys that have been in this league for years. I've got 3 coaches that are board members sitting there and another coach from our division that's been with the league long enough to coach 2 sons. Right as our division director and coach of the Blue Raiders is about to have someone pull names (which oddly enough he sat and put together and kept in his hand) the president tells the divsion director that players 4 and 5 need to play together because of transportation issues. He shakes his head and then says "ok, Players 1 and 3 have to be picked together and players 4 and 5 have to be picked together. He then had someone draw names. The draft order ends up being Blue Raiders 1st, Barristers 2nd (they're the new team that needs 3 players), Tigers 3rd, and my team last. At this point I'm fucking mad. I can do the math. 4 players will be taken with 2 picks, another player will go, and that leaves one player for us with the 4th pick. I nearly walked out right there. It's one thing to end up picking last when you're a team that's lost every game the past 2 seasons. It's another thing entirely to get blatantly fucked by our division director when he backtracked on what he had stated less than 12 hours earlier.

The division director goes to make his pick and starts going into a 2-3 minute talk about how he really only needs one player and he doesn't want to coach 13, but he guesses he will, but he doesn't really want to, but he'll go ahead and take players 1 and 3. Even if it's against his better judgement. The Barristers take players 4 and 5 because he needs bodies more than anything. The Tigers take player 2. That left me sitting there with a small 9 year old with a dad that didn't make a good 1st impression to take. I looked at the director and I asked who the kid was that signed up the night before that requested to be on my team. He tells me his name and I tell him I'll take him. I looked at the Barristers coach and told him to go ahead and take player 6 to fill out his roster. Then I wrote down player's contact info and I walked out.

[Atocep]

So far we've had 6 practices. All have been indoors because it's western Washington and it's been a bit cold here the past few weeks. Things have gone more or less as I've expected. The kids are buying in and realizing I don't put up with goofing off, not paying attention, ect. I've probably had 5-6 parents and two players tell me that things already look way better than last year.

This Saturday will be our first outdoors practice. We should be able to get in 12 more practices before our first game which brings our total practices up to 18 before we play. We had 8 last year.


The Coaching Staff

Myself - I played through High School and was a pretty good player. I coached a pretty good coach pitch team before Kaden moved into this league and I probably spend more time than is healthy for a human being reading about baseball.

Mark - An awesome guy with very limited baseball knowledge that loves working with kids. He's a soccer coach for a couple of the players on my team and he's great with the parents. He's also the organizer of the weekly "Coaches Meetings" at a pub near his house.

Nick - The father of the player I took from the Tigers. His son has played basketball with my son for the past 2 years and he was college baseball catcher. He'll primarily be working with pitchers and catchers.


The Players

Kaden - My son. A pretty good athlete (he's averaging about 15 points per game as a 4th grader in our 4th-5th grade basketball league) that can play anywhere. Last season he played 1st, SS, 3rd, OF, C, and pitched a bit. He'll be our primary catcher this season and will pitch. He can hit the ball really well but he lets frustrations carry over from at bat to at bat which led to a long slump at the start of last season. He ended up making the league's All Star team last season and should be one of the best players in the league.

Chris - This is a player we actually got from the Blue Raiders this season. The Blue Raiders coach claims there was a parental issue over his son playing first and Chris' dad wanting him to play 1st so they agreed to release him. Mark is his soccer coach and assured me there's no issue with the parents and that he's a good kid. So far I agree 100% with Mark. He wants to play first base and that's where I plan on playing him. He's kind of a big kid and he can hit the ball pretty well from what I've seen.

Jacob - Nick's son and a friend of Kaden's from basketball. He's a small kid. He's a bit on the slow side. He's a solid athlete that can put the ball over the plate and fields the ball well. I haven't seen him hit much yet. He'll likely play 2nd base and pitch.

Quentin - The player whose dad tried to move him off of the team. Another all around player and was our best pitcher last season simply because he could get the ball over the plate. He's very good in the field and has a knack for getting a running lead which leads to easy steals if the ball gets by the catcher. He'll play SS, Catch if Kaden pitches, and he'll pitch.

Canaan - One of the most athletic kids in the league. I guarantee no one throws harder. However, he pitched less than 2 innings for us last season because he had no idea where the ball was going when it left his hand. Think Charlie Sheen in major league, but worse. So he's Nick's pitching project and he's a pretty good hitter as well. Could be one of the 2-3 best players in the league if he can put everything together. He'll likely play 3rd base and pitch for us.

Joey - An enigma. He's a big kid for age. He looks like a catcher and last year the coaches had him penciled at catcher thinking he'd be a natural at the position. Just one problem. I've never seen him move with any sense of urgency. He lasted 1 inning at catcher before being put in the OF. He can hit for power when he makes contact, but his approach at the plate is similar to the way he does everything else. Could be a good player if he decides to put forth the effort. He'll play OF for us and get a look at pitching.

Magnus - Another good athlete. He played 1st base for us last year after Kaden moved to catcher and did a good job. He's a solid hitter. I want to put him in center and see how he does along with trying to develop him as a pitcher.

Nolan - Good fielder, above average arm, great kid. His swing last year was all arms and is something that needs work. He was also a kid we wanted pitching last year based on what we saw early on, but he came to practice one day throwing like his arm was a catapult and he told us his dad was working on his throwing. We couldn't get it straightened out and he didn't end up pitching for us at all. He'll play some 3rd Base, some OF, and I'd like to get him straightened out and pitching.

Tyler - Great kid. Was trainwreck at the start of last season and worked as hard as anyone and it showed. He was put out in the OF at the start of the season and was stuck out there until I pushed for him to get some time at 2nd base because I thought he had earned a break from the OF. He's small but has a very quick bat. His throwing needs work (too much elbow). Will play OF for us and he's one I'll keep an eye on to see if I can get him some time on the IF.

Sean - Mark's son. He honestly doesn't seem to have all that much interest in baseball most of the time, but when he does something well he gets as excited as anyone. He's a small kid and not all that athletic. He throws accurately, but not all that hard. I don't think he had a hit last season. Oddly enough, considering his dad, he can be resistant to coaching. He played 2nd for us last year, but he's looked decent in our OF drills so far so I'm going to primarily look at him there while keeping the option of him playing 2nd open for when Jacob pitches.

Brendan - A new kid that I'm not very familiar with. He played with this team 2 years ago and stayed behind in machine pitch last season. I haven't seen him hit at all yet. In the field he does an adequate job. Throws well enough. He'll be put out in the OF to start and I'll be keeping an eye on him to see if he can play somewhere else.

Britt - The late signup I took to give our draft the middle finger. He's a small kid that doesn't have much baseball experience. I've only had him at 2 practices so far and he forgot his glove for the 1st so I have very limited time with him up to now. From what I've seen he has the potential to have a strong arm, but he throws all elbow right now and I've already spent time trying to fix that. He can make contact, but his swing looks kind of weird so we'll be working on that as well. He does bat and throw left handed. He'll also be out in the OF until he develops a bit. I think he'll end up in the IF at some point, but I don't know if it's going to be this year.


That's our team. I'm flexible on where kids will play. No one is guaranteed to play anywhere yet. I want to find 6 pitchers I can rely on to throw 2-3 innings at a time. Then I'd like to have 2-3 more I can rely on for an inning here or there as needed. We definitely have our work cut out for us.

[sterlingice]

Good luck with this team.

Signing up so I remember to watch it here rather than OT

SI

[JonInMiddleGA]

Normal weekly game schedule? (i.e. what days?)
Innings limit? Mandatory participation rules? (how many innings?)

One possible positive to be found in that practice field situation, based on my experiences with a somewhat similarly undermanned team (although yours last year was more like what I had): practicing "off the radar" can be a good thing with kids. Hopefully everybody will kinda just forget you're over on the t-ball field & you can do work without the kids being concerned without having peers watching or anything.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Normal weekly game schedule? (i.e. what days?)
Innings limit? Mandatory participation rules? (how many innings?)

One possible positive to be found in that practice field situation, based on my experiences with a somewhat similarly undermanned team (although yours last year was more like what I had): practicing "off the radar" can be a good thing with kids. Hopefully everybody will kinda just forget you're over on the t-ball field & you can do work without the kids being concerned without having peers watching or anything.

There's a 6 inning limit. Our weekly game schedule varies. We'll play double headers almost every Saturday and IIRC games are mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the season (our schedule isn't out yet). However, with it being western Washington there's at least a 50% chance for a rainout the first month of the season so games end up being squeezed in wherever they can fit them.

There's a 1 inning/1 At Bat rule IIRC. Participation is something I still need to read over in the rule book since it isn't something I had to deal with last season. Mark is pretty good about getting the kids their playing time and my parents are actually fantastic. We had zero complaints about playing time despite our games rarely making it the full 6 innings.

We'll travel for some of our games and play under different rules every now and then. Last season we played someplace where they were allowed to lead off and steal. Our league has the rule where there's no leading off and the runner can't go until the ball is past the batter. It was a huge distraction for our players and is also the place where we had a game taken from us. In that game a batter for the other team was given 4 strikes and they had a clear batter's interference on a steal attempt at the plate that wasn't called. Instead of being the 3rd out of the 5th inning where we held them to one run they ended up scoring 5 on us to tie the game. We lost by 1.

The biggest oddity at this age, at least as far as I've seen in other leagues, is the dropped ball 3rd strike rule is in effect for our games. Which is incredibly weird considering this is the first age group here that really uses a catcher. I can't stand it. IMO, it puts too much importance on a position that's hard to learn as it is and develops poor hitting habits as well.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Thanks, just figured I might as well ask about those things since they're almost certain to come up at some point.

Originally Posted by Atocep

The biggest oddity at this age, at least as far as I've seen in other leagues, is the dropped ball 3rd strike rule is in effect for our games.

The one thing I've come to rely on is that rules can,and often will, vary wildly not only from what I was accustomed to as a kid 35 yrs ago but also from one modern league to the next. We had the dropped 3rd strike rule in effect when I was 6 or 7, not my favorite thing at the time since I pitched more often than not

On the bright side, most kids at this age aren't as conscious of it as the might be (make darned sure yours are, especially those that don't hit well) so your catcher sometimes gets a little extra time to recover & make the play since the batter is trying to figure out why everyone in his dugout is screaming at him.

And yeah, I know you coached these kids last year & know all that crap, I'm just getting into the spirit of things

[BYU 14]

This will be interesting to follow, definitely respect you for doing things the right way and standing up to the good ol boy contingent that so often populates youth sports leagues.

I will be doing a return to coaching dynasty when football season starts, resuming my duties as head freshman coach at WV. I mention this because I have already fielded an email about an incoming kid who is a QB and is dad is wanting to know how much we throw. Another QB I knew we would be getting has been going to camps non-stop and his dad reminded me that he is looking forward to leading the team. It will be an interesting dynamic with the parent whose kid does not win the starting job

I also have received a "recruiting" tape from a youth coach spotlighting players incoming players. I think the expectation here is that I reach out to the players to sell our program, as apparently a couple of other schools are (which is against the rules)

I watched it and let him know they can call me with questions, but made it very clear we do not recruit or promise anything. We want kids that want to come play for us that will buy into the way we run our program and be prepared to earn their spots, as well as be good students and citizens.

And it is still only March, going to be an interesting season

[Atocep]

I won't detail every practice we do, but this was our first outdoor practice so I'll give everyone an idea of where we're starting.

IMO our biggest problem last year was simple throw and catch issues (I should be clear that that wasn't our only major issue). Our practices indoors had focused on fundamentals like fielding a ground ball properly, the correct footwork on going back on a pop fly, how to crow hop, and footwork around bases when we're out in the field (where your feet should be when you're receiving a throw in different situations). We also hit into a net each practice and went over some basics for pitching, but fielding was far and away where most of our focus was.

The weather today was nice enough to allow us to practice outdoors for the first time this season. Practice has had a different pace and tone than at any point last year and I warned the players that it goes to another level when we get outside. I think they quickly learned that I wasn't kidding.

Today almost all of our attention was on catching and throwing and I think the message went out to everyone that it's vital that we can catch and throw (I know that seems obvious). My goal is to have everyone throwing accurately and catching the ball up to 70 feet (bases are 60 feet so my thinking us 70 feet should cover almost all throws). We started at 40 for today's practice just to get them familiar with baseballs again after only using tennis balls while indoors. I broke kids broken up into 3 groups of 4 in boxes with the cones spaced 40 feet apart. They simply threw the ball around the square focusing on speed and accuracy. After giving them a minute or two to get used to the drill if the ball hit the ground either the person that made a bad throw or the person that dropped it did 5 pushups. After a couple of minutes the coaches didn't even have to say anything they just did the pushups and the drill didn't stop.

From there we broke down into three stations: one station to handle grounders, one station to work on pop flies, and one station to work on a simple relay drill I came up with. 4 cones in a line with 60 feet between the first and 2nd cone and then 40 between each of the other cones. A coach would feed a ground ball to the 1st player who would charge the ball, crow hop, and throw to the 2nd person in the relay, who would then fire it to the 3rd, and then down to the 4th would who then make a tag on an imaginary runner. They had quite a bit of fun with it and when we started wagering pushups between the players and coaches they started getting serious and their competitiveness went up a notch.

I ended practice with a competition using that same relay drill. 3 teams of 4 competing to be the first to get to the end of the line. Each player has to make a throw in the line so if there's an overthrow the person that was supposed to make the throw still has to chase the ball and make the throw. First team to 3 points won while the losers gave me a lap. I knew anything that added competition to what the kids are going would be popular, but they really enjoyed this and got into it. After the last round with only some minor encouragement the winners joined the rest of their teammates on their lap. This drill will get more difficult as we progress. I was easy on them with this today, but eventually we'll be doing 70 or 80 feet on the first throw and then 60 on the next two. Then to score a point it can't hit the ground at any point along the way.

The players seemed to have a great time even though it was probably the hardest practice a lot of them had ever experienced. Chris even mentioned it was way better than being a Blue Raider.

All in all I thought it was a solid practice. We're still right about where I expected us to be so we're progressing nicely. We have tons of work to do and 13 practices left before our first game (I can't believe we only had 8 before our first game last year), but I even have parents and Mark talking about winning games this year. After two years of losing every game I'm not too worried about expectations getting out of control. I think everyone is getting a bit excited about the improvements they've seen in the players from last year.

Monday I'm rewarding them for the good practice with a chance to hit and pitch a bit, but the fundamentals of fielding will still be the primary focus and will be for the next couple of weeks.

[Atocep]

The biggest surprise thus far is the rapid development of Britt. This is a kid that showed up sight unseen, is fairly small, forgot his glove for his first practice, and was throwing all elbow. I've got this throwing motion looking much better and he's showing the potential to have a strong arm. He's also catching the ball well for a kid that's played 1 season of coach pitch before joining us. He also has a fantastic attitude. I show him something and he'll repeat the motion of what I told him to do over and over again while in line for a drill. I still need to get a good look at his bat. We won't be picking them up until next Monday, but he's gone from a kid I assumed would be used to meet the participation requirements to a player we can use. I still don't know how much just yet, but definitely more than I originally thought.

One rule I forgot to mention earlier is there's a 5 run limit per inning. At 5 runs the inning ends unless the ball being in play leads to more than 5 runs scoring. So if a player singles home the 5th run of an inning the innings immediately ends as soon as the ball is ruled dead. However, if a team has 4 runs and someone hits a double that scores 3 with the bases loaded they'll get credit for 7 runs that inning.

[Atocep]

The kids saw their first live batting practice today. Up until now we had done work hitting into a net and with the Hit-Away. I don't think I could possibly put into words how much better we look right now with the bats than at any point last season.

It was soft toss just to get them familiar with seeing real pitching, but they were making consistent contact. I had a bucket of 27 balls and I'd go through a bucket with each player. Once the bucket was empty I'd take 3 more balls and then when they got to the last they could keep hitting as long as they were putting it in play. So each player was guaranteed 30 pitches. Last year for BP players were lucky to see 10-15 pitches.

Kaden is our strongest hitter. Of the pitches he saw he probably put 80% in play and of those close to have were put into the outfield. Joey was the big surprise as the 2nd best hitter today. However, he started off slow and got he got into his typical mindset before he picked it up at the end put several line drives into the OF. Quinten was the other standout today. Consistent, solid contact plus his speed should give us a reliable leadoff hitter.

Overall no one struggled with contact, which is such a huge difference from what I've previously seen from several of these kids. I'd estimate that every player was able to put at least half the pitches they saw in play. BP last year was a lot of standing around and a lot of swing and miss. This year to limit the standing around I took 5 for BP/Infield practice and the rest worked on outfield drills on the other side of the field. Then after they hit I'd swap the kids out with the players doing the OF drills.

We also spend about 15 minutes taking infield before BP started and we have a lot of work to do. Our 2b/SS had no idea who covers 2nd on balls in play, no communication on popups, 3rd base/SS almost running into each other going for grounders. Obvious stuff that needs to be straightened out before we play. Luckily, we still have at least 9 practices before we play.

The one thing I'm finding difficult is getting some perspective on where we're at. I have parents and assistants telling me how much better across the board things look compared to last year when outside of the obvious areas I tend to see nothing but things we need work on.

[Atocep]

I'm in the process of trying to find a team to scrimmage before our season starts. I'd like to see what areas we really need to focus on before the season starts and try to work out the first game jitters. Finding a team, though, is proving to be much harder than I expected. The on-post league on Fort Lewis doesn't even start practices until April 19th and the next closest league to us starts their games 2 weeks before ours.

I do not want to play one of the teams in our league. As I've mentioned they see our team as the Bad News Bears and I'm hoping to use that to our advantage early in the season. So the less they know about us the better.

[Atocep]

An update on how each player is shaping up along with positions.


Catcher - Kaden; He's still inexperience behind the plate, but he's catching the ball pretty well and he's much better at blocking pitches in the dirt than he was last year. As a hitter he stands out. The ball tends to jump off his bat better than anyone else on the team. A lot of line drives, sharp grounders, and balls in the outfield during BP. It looks like he'll also be our #3 starter. He's also one of our utility players and one of the few that enjoys playing the outfield. I wouldn't be surprised if he played every position for us at some point this season.

1st Base - Chris; Looks solid at first so far. He has some areas there to straighten out, but he's looking good. He's a big kid that's a better athlete than he appears to be by looking at him so he does move well for his size. He can hit with power and seems to make consistent contact. I still need to see more of him as a hitter and as a pitcher.

2nd Base - Sean; He's sure-handed and accurate with his throws. He doesn't have a lot of range, but he isn't going to let many grounders get past him. At the plate he's looked way better than last season. Not a single hit in a game last year and BP wasn't much better. During BP on Saturday he probably put 40-50% of the pitches I gave him in play. He'll see some time in the outfield as well.

Shortstop - Quinten; Very solid glove and a strong arm. He doesn't make many mistakes in the field and has good range so he's a lock to play short for us. At the plate he's short and uses it to his advantage. He doesn't swing at many bad pitches and is perfectly fine with taking a walk. When he does make contact he tends to spray linedrives around the infield. He'll also be our #1 starter and one of our backup catchers.

3rd Base - Jacob; Another sure-handed player that I want in the infield. Of the players that I've considered for 3rd he has the best combination of arm strength and accuracy. He doesn't have a cannon by any means, but he won't make many bad throws. At the plate he puts the bat on the ball, but doesn't show much power. He'll be our #2 starter and also play both 2nd and Short at times.

Left Field - Canaan; A cannon for an arm, but he's still not accurate enough yet. He has improved immensely in that area though. He can catch the ball and his arm strength should be a plus in left. At the plate he swings at everything, but also puts the bat on the ball pretty well. If I can get him to be more patient I believe he could show off quite a bit more power. He settles on weak contact on bad pitches too often right now. I hope to get him to where I can put him in the infield. As a pitcher he's our big question mark. He could be the best pitcher in the league if we can get him settled down and putting the ball over the plate. He's so hyper and gets excited when he throws that all fundamentals go out the window sometimes.

Center Field - Magnus; A good glove. Has a good arm, but doesn't use it until I get him a bit for lobbing the ball to his target. Good athlete with good speed. Just a solid all-around player. At the plate he needs more time in BP. He should be hitting the ball more solidly than he does at this point. He's making contact, but his contact tends to be weak grounders and it doesn't make sense when you look at him and watch him swing. He can play 1st base and probably will at some point. I also gave him a look at 3rd where he did ok once I got him to actually throw the ball.

Right Field - Joey; One of our more pleasant surprises thus far. He's putting more effort in this year and it's showing. He's showing off a very strong and accurate arm along with the ability to catch some fly balls. At the plate he looks like a different player this year. He's stepping into his swing and driving the ball. Something he wasn't doing last season. If he can show me that the effort is real and it's going to stick I'd love to have him at 3rd base. He has the arm for it. Until then I have him in Right Field and likely hitting 4th for us. I think he'll pitch for us too. I'm not 100% certain on that though.


Nolan - He'll start for us somewhere depending on who's pitching. He has a very reliable glove and an accurate arm plus he can catch flyballs. Outfield is a likely destination, but he could play 3rd as well (if you haven't noticed I'm not settled on our 3rd baseman). At the plate he still needs some work. He plays golf quite a bit with his dad and it shows in his swing. It tends to be all arms and no step. He is patient at the plate and will get on base. I want to to see him make more consistent contact.

Britt - Our most pleasant surprise will play outfield for now. He's coming along much faster than I expected and the only glaring issue I see now is he's not turning his glove correctly to catch the ball which leads to some inconsistency with the glove. His arm is above average and he has surprising power for his size. And he's a lefty. He's going to play quite a bit. I just have to find a spot for him. It will likely be Right Field to start the year but I want to test him as we get further into the season.

Brendan - A kid I've given quite a bit of one on one time to. He throws the ball ok, but he kind of shifts onto his front foot and does a hop off of it to throw. I've been trying to get it fixed and asked his dad to work on it with him as well (his dad is an assistant coach in next higher division). He was making contact in BP, but I'm not sure how well it will carry over to real pitching because he leans forward in his swing and steps toward 3rd base. It's another thing I asked his dad to work on with him if he gets a chance. Great attitude. He wants to do well, but you can tell he hasn't had much coaching up to this point. He'll play outfield for us.

Tyler - A good kid that listens to coaching, but can rub the other players the wrong way sometimes. His ability to catch consistently isn't developing as fast as the rest of the players so he's going to need some more one on one time and he still throws using too much elbow. So in the field he's a work in progress. At the plate he has a very nice, quick swing. His ability to make contact is inconsistent though. He'll also play outfield to start the season.


That's how things are looking up to this point. We have 9 practices to go or 8 practices and a Scrimmage depending on whether or not I'm able to find someone for us to play. It's hitting the point where I'm going to shift from us working on the fundamentals we've been drilling into these kids to trying to put everything together and make it work out on the field. While doing that we still have to get some focus on baserunning and find the rest of our pitching staff.

[Barkeep49]

Who will be your catcher when Kaden is pitching? What are the leadoff/steal rules for your league?

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

Who will be your catcher when Kaden is pitching? What are the leadoff/steal rules for your league?

Quinten will usually be catching when Kaden pitches. He's a good catcher and has experience catching from last year. We're also working with Jacob in practice to make sure we have a 3rd catcher available.

We have no leadoffs and players can't leave the base until the ball is past the batter. Last season half of our kids wouldn't leave the base at all until there was contact which put us at a huge disadvantage against most teams. Just about every other team we played was aggressive on the bases while we played station to station baseball like we were the Oakland A's.

[Atocep]

I found a team to scrimmage!

We'll be playing a team from Puyallup next Saturday (7th of April) at our practice field. Puyallup teams play standard little league rules so we won't be playing with the dropped ball 3rd strike because it's more difficult for a team to adjust to using it than it is for us to not use it. I'm not too worried about us needing work there. It's one of the few areas we did well on last season as Kaden has the arm to make the throw easily, he's aware of which situations he needs to make the throw on, and we have a 1st baseman that can catch the ball. We can get it down with some time spent working on it in practice.

The Puyallup league is supposedly pretty good and they have a much larger area to pull kids from than we have here so I'm assuming this team is going to be a good one. The coach I spoke to seems like a pretty laid back guy. I told him I wasn't as interested in balls and strikes as I am seeing what areas we need to focus on the last couple of weeks before our season starts. I will be hiring an ump for the game though.

I'm looking forward to seeing how we shape up against an actual team.

[Poli]

Good luck. I find myself wearily interested in learning to coach other sports with my son on the way.

I'm not looking forward to it.

[Atocep]

I was wondering what coaches with experience at this age group do against teams that are aggressive with a runner at 3rd? We played a couple of teams last year that sent the runner from 3rd halfway down the line on every pitch. It was really annoying more than anything else, but I was wanting to know if there were ways to handle this that I hadn't seen yet.

What our coach last year did was have the catcher run the runner back then get the ball back to the pitcher. What makes me a little nervous when doing that is it left home plate uncovered. Since all it was really doing was dragging the game out I suggested just having the pitcher walk down to home plate, have the catcher hand him the ball, and then have the pitcher walk back to the mound.

I could have the pitcher come down and cover home while the catcher runs him back, but I'm willing to bet that as soon as the pitcher gets the ball and has to walk from home to the mound we'll have some asshole that sends the runner back to the halfway point again and it starts all over.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Atocep

I was wondering what coaches with experience at this age group do against teams that are aggressive with a runner at 3rd?

Would seem to me that the surest way to stop it is to pick one of 'em off

(yeah, I realize that the odds of a misthrow vastly outweigh the chances of actually nailing one of them)

[Poli]

Pickoffs are a bit halfhazard at this age.

I'm an advocate for walking to the catcher. If they want to screw with the time limit of the game, I'm more than obliged to drag the game out as well.

I might even play the 3rd baseman way in rather than normal or guarding the bag to catch a kid that far back. Easier throw as well if need be...but I hate throwing the baseball around at that age...it's dangerous.

[Poli]

(I've watched a lot of youth baseball in preparation for football)

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by Poli

Pickoffs are a bit halfhazard at this age.

I'm an advocate for walking to the catcher. If they want to screw with the time limit of the game, I'm more than obliged to drag the game out as well.

I might even play the 3rd baseman way in rather than normal or guarding the bag to catch a kid that far back. Easier throw as well if need be...but I hate throwing the baseball around at that age...it's dangerous.

This was my line of thinking as well. Last year when I suggested just walking the pitcher all the way to home plate to take the ball it was to drag the game out since that was the apparent goal of sending a runner halfway down every pitch. Considering every team we played was better than us last season shorter games worked in our favor anyway.

[Atocep]

Kaden reminded me about this bit of info yesterday because he went to baseball camp with Canaan so I'll mention it here. To give you guys an idea of how hard Canaan throws as a 10 year old, last summer at baseball camp (as a 9 year old) they clocked him at 56mph which was easily the fastest in his age group and a number Nick (our assistant) said he'd never seen a 9 year old reach.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Would seem to me that the surest way to stop it is to pick one of 'em off

(yeah, I realize that the odds of a misthrow vastly outweigh the chances of actually nailing one of them)

Yep, this is why they do it. It's a no win situation for the defense at this age.

[Barkeep49]

On a separate matter I assume that most teams will automatically steal 2nd in a 1st and 3rd less than 2 outs situation. I recommend a play for that situation. Normally I'd have my SS creep in a bit and over to second, and have the catcher throw to him, hoping the guy from 3rd is sent/goes home.

[Ksyrup]

Yes we do the same thing in softball. Sometimes it backfires because teams (especially bad ones) are more than willing to give up a run for an out, so the worse the team, the less we automatically send that runner to 2nd.

On the runner at 3rd baiting a pick-off attempt, we do a couple of things. One is to have 3B play even with the runner (which in softball they often do anyway for bunts and slaps) and have a quick throw to the 3B who can apply the tag. Another is we will run plays where the 3B creeps down the line with the runner, the catcher throws back to the pitcher, and the SS covers 3rd on a quick throw. Also, 1B will sometimes come down to cover home if the catcher runs at the runner.

Now that we're in 12U, this stuff is somewhat under control. At 10U - especially 1st year teams - it's out of control. Half the game is walks, and the other half is steals, passed balls, wild pitches, and cat-and-mouse games between runner and catcher.

[Atocep]

Thanks for the tips. This is something I wanted to introduce at practice today so we can work on it between now and the start of the season. Having multiple options on how we handle this is will be a big help.

I think Canaan is going to be the difference in whether we're good or really good this year. If he can put the ball over the plate taking 15% off of his speed no one will hit him. And I mean no one. We've got him to where he's putting the ball over the plate, but not consistently. He seems to be a bit ADHD and his excitement tends overflow right as he getting ready to throw the ball. So his windup is fine until that arm starts to go back and then his mechanics go to shit.

What we've been doing is trying to get him to relax and take his time between pitches while telling them that we want him to focus on getting the ball over the plate and now on how hard he throws.

I'm still waiting for the schedule to be released. As I've repeated many times, this is a team that hasn't won a game in 2 years and I'm worried that if we get a couple of tough games to start the year they're going to get down on themselves and that could cause issues. Since these kids were so far behind on fundamentals we should improve more than any other team as the year progresses. I don't know how we'll be the first few games out the door, but by the end of the season we should be a really good team. We need to get that 1st win of the season out of the way quickly though.

[Atocep]

A few practices ago Joey asked me if he could catch the pitcher while we were working with him. My first thought was "hell no, don't you remember last year?". After being asked about 25 times over 3-4 practices and him also bugging Nick about it I finally pulled him aside and had a talk with him.

I asked if he was really interested in catching and then asked if he remembered why he only caught 1 inning last year. He said he thought it was because he didn't do very well because he needed more practice. I told him that played a role, but the bigger issue is his effort is inconsistent (usually non-existent) and I made a deal with him that if he comes out to practice ready to work and get better I'll eventually give him another shot at catching. He got excited and I have to say his effort has improved immensely the last 2 practices. He also seems to be getting into baseball more now and he's even asking questions about how to do certain things.

It's only been 2 practices, but this is a side of Joey I've never seen and he could be an outstanding player if he continues to practice like this and carries it over to games.

[Atocep]

Our scrimmage is all set for this upcoming Saturday. We'll be missing Christopher and Quentin has been sick and missed the last 2 practices. I was told he should be at practice tomorrow, but will miss Wednesday because of a trip his family is taking for Spring Break.

What this means is we have to shift some players around to fill the hole at 1st and Quinten is behind on how we're handling a runner on 3rd. The plan was for a practice Monday that focuses on fundamentals (going back to day 1 I told the other coaches) just to make sure they aren't slipping in those areas and then Wednesday focus on game situations. If Quinten is at practice Monday we'll probably have to do game situations then and push back our fundamentals refresher.

I'm still trying to decide how exactly we'll handle Chistopher out of the lineup. Kaden will definitely see some time at 1st base since he played there the first half of last season. Jacob will catch (he's been outstanding there in practice) the first half of the game and then I'm leaning toward putting Kaden behind the plate for the 2nd half of the game and then shifting Magnus to 1st since he played there the 2nd half of last season.

Overall we're looking good. We have a scrimmage and then a week and a half to two weeks of practice before real games start. That gives us enough time to start working heavily on game situations and baserunning. Those are the two areas we haven't hit all that hard yet. Our hitting is far, far ahead of where I expected it to be. Joey has gone from black hole in the lineup last year to possibly pushing Kaden has best hitter. Nolan is stepping into his swing now. I really like Chris' swing. He swings hard and when the bat hits the ball it's impressive. A bit too much swing a miss right now, but he's probably our 5 hitter.

On one hand I'm getting excited for the season to start, but on the other hand I want to keep practicing because we still have a lot of areas to improve in.

[Atocep]

An interesting thing I found out Thursday; Nick played high school baseball with Marcus Giles.

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by Atocep

An interesting thing I found out Thursday; Nick played high school baseball with Marcus Giles.

Sorry to threadjack, but this made me remember a guy who was on my little league baseball team.

Jeremy Green - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He was not who I thought he was. And thankfully there was no "crowning" involved in those days.

[Atocep]

The coach from Puyallup emailed me on Tuesday letting me know that he had 3 parents tell him at practice Monday that they wouldn't be able to make it to the scrimmage Saturday so he was calling the rest of his parents to make sure he would still have enough. I told him if he's a player short we could probably work something out that would still get both teams some nice work in before the season starts. I haven't heard back from him so I can only assume they'll be there.

Our schedule was released last night and we are the opening game of the season. We'll play Tuesday the 17th against the Rockets followed by a game that Saturday against the Lions. I got the ok from parents/coaches to try to get us 4 extra games (2 travel and 2 local) against teams from neighboring leagues. It was a very late request, but I was told we should be able to get the games. This is a big step for us as there was zero interest in it when it was brought up a month ago. At least we've generated enough interest and excitement that people are wanting to play the extra games.

Assuming we get those 4 games we'll play 20 regular season games. 10 are league games and 10 are against neighboring league teams. Our playoffs are double elimination over 2 weekends.

Our league president was talking to me after our coaches meeting and mentioned that he was hearing good things about our team, which was weird because I'd never had a conversation with the guy before last night. He was telling me that they had considered breaking up the team over the off-season so he was glad to hear things were going well. He said he feels our division is up for grabs. Personally, I believe we'll have a tough time with the Tigers and the Blue Raiders will be solid as well after the draft bullshit that was pulled.

[Atocep]

Well, I got some shitty news today. Due to some serious family issues both Nick and Jacob are moving back to San Diego on Monday. On the baseball side of things this really sucks for us. As a friend of Nick's and as someone that's coached Jacob in both baseball and basketball and had him stay at our house I recognize it's something they need to do and I wish them nothing but the best.

[Atocep]

Quite a bit has happened since the last update and for awhile it felt like anything that could go wrong for us, did go wrong.

It started with Jacob and Nick moving. That hurt us because had settled into Jacob and Kaden splitting time at catcher to keep them fresh. Quentin would be primarily playing shortstop, but would get a bit of time at catcher here and there. Kaden and Jacob were capable of playing short when Quentin pitched. So that gave us a great rotation at Catcher, Pitcher, and Shortshop.

Jacob moving meant that we not only lost pitching depth, but I had to find a 3rd shortstop or a 3rd catcher because Kaden and Quentin are now our primary catchers, shortstops, and pitchers. I settled on Magnus getting time at short, but that was made difficult because Christopher sprained his ankle during spring break and was going to be out 10 days. So that creates a hole at 1st base and Magnus and Kaden are our 2 with 1st base experience. I tried Nolan there, but it didn't go so well so I'm left giving Magnus time at 1st base just so I could make sure Kaden is ready to catch this season and I also needed to get the infield work.

As all of this is going on I get a call from our Division Director telling me that if we're still interested in adding 4 games they're likely going to come from the Barristers. They had requested the 4 games, but he'd been unable to get in touch with anyone involved with the team and he was starting to worry that they were going to drop out of the Mustang Division (9-10 year olds). The good news if that happened is we would be offered a couple of players from their team since the league would have 6 players that signed up through Lakewood Baseball Club that were a part of that team to find a home for.

The very next day I get another call from the Division Director telling me that the Barristers weren't just going to drop our of Mustang, but they wanted to merge their Mustang team with their Bronco team (11-12 year olds) which is not only ridiculous but irresponsible as well IMO. On Saturdays there's a Bronco team that practices before us and after us and I have 1 player that could possibly belong on a bronco team right now and I'm not sure how much he'd play. So now us adding a player or 2 is up in the air because league has to talk to both the Barristers and the parents of the kids they're trying to move up to make sure they know what they're getting into. I asked about this yesterday and was told there wasn't any news yet.

A side effect of the Barristers dropping out of Mustang is the schedule had to be redone. Because of this we went from playing this upcoming Tuesday (the 17th) against the Rockets (a team we would beat easily) to us not playing until the 21st. That Saturday we'll play a double header against the Tigers and Lions. The Tigers are hands-down the favorites to win the league and will have a game under their belts when we play them. The good news is we will have Christopher back for those games.

The 2nd game of our double header is against the Lions and I've been told they're mostly 8 year olds, but I haven't seem them practice or anything yet so I don't know much else. They do play the Rockets to open the season on Tuesday so I'm going to take Kaden out to watch that game to get an idea of what they're like. I know that they're an organization with teams in almost every division of our league so they're organized. If they're really 8 year olds, though, they'll probably have a tough time competing.

I've mentioned have a difficult time having any perspective on just how far we've come compared to last season. That was helped quite a bit this past Saturday when I watched the Rockets practice since I arrived about an hour early and they practice on one of the fields before us. I got a quick reminder on just how bad we were as I watched them. They are us last year. Maybe a bit worse since I watched them go through 5 pitchers and not a single one could come close to putting the ball over the plate. They also don't have a catcher's mit for their catchers so none of the 4 kids I saw try to catch could catch the ball at all. I felt bad for them because I know this league will eat them alive.

All in all it's been an eventful couple of weeks as a 9-10 year old baseball coach. Our season is getting close and I'm excited to actually play. I've gone from thinking we'll be able to beat anyone by the end of the season to a wait and see approach with this group now simply because we lost a key part of our depth with Jacob. I still tell our kids we approach every game expecting to win and they're buying in. Opening with the Tigers is going to be a big challenge for us though.

[Atocep]

Some background on the teams in our division this year


Tigers - The obvious favorite this year. They were a good team last year and did lose their best player, but they added the 2 best returning players from the league runner up last year along with a 3rd from that team. They're deep and talented. They're not a team that blew me away with their coaching last year so much as they just had solid young talent that's now a year older which combined with two players that are locks to be all-stars. I believe their beatable, but it also is enough to make them better than everyone else from a pure talent standpoint.

Blue Raiders - Their coach is the division director and he's a guy I've known since I coached in coach pitch 3 years ago. We both had teams in the parks and rec league that year and talked quite about baseball before and our games that year. This is a team that breezed through the Pinto league 2 years ago without coming close to dropping a game. They thought they'd be in the mix to win the division last year and actually ended up with a losing record. They are a well coached team. They don't have amazing talent outside of a couple of players and they did lose 6 players that they didn't expect to lose from last season's team, but they landed 2 good players in the draft and should be a very good team.

Lions - The team I know the least about. The division director told me they're mostly 8 year olds. That's what I know. I know they didn't win Pinto last year because the team that won Pinto is still in Pinto for another year. I should know a lot more about this team next Tuesday when I watch them play.

Rockets - As I mentioned above. They're us last year except maybe a bit worse since they didn't have anyone that could pitch at all from what I saw. When I watched them practice they were doing a split squad scrimmage with parents filing in positions as needed. They couldn't pitch, couldn't catch, they had kids playing in the dirt in the field, kids sitting on bases, and the coaches didn't seem to have a full grasp of the rules. They're going to have a very long season this year and they're probably going to have to make major changes like we did this year to have any success next year.


That's all we have since the Barristers dropped out of Mustang. I get the impression that things weren't going as well as the Barristers expected in practices and as parents/kids lost interest they were having a tough time practicing at all. I do know they were a team that expected to be good and their coach that showed up to the draft assessment and the draft was rather arrogant. Still, it sucks to see them leave as we're down to 5 teams and had to completely redo the schedule with less than a week before the first games are played.

[Atocep]

Because of the lack of foresight by the league when it came to the draft we're in a position now where we may be simply unable to compete. I found out last night by talking to Christopher's parents that it may not be just a sprain, but instead a break in the foot as well. The first doctor they saw said there was no break, but a 2nd doctor said he thought there was a break in the foot. They said they showed the X-Ray to a friend of there's that's a radiologist that said he understands why the doctor thought there was a break but he doesn't feel there is one. So Christopher is off to see an orthopedic surgeon to find out for certain if it's a break or not. At this point I told them as a coach I have to assume the worst until I hear otherwise.

On top of this Britt has been at 1 out of our last 6-7 practices. At first I thought it was because of spring break, but when he failed to show up to two practices this week I asked the players that go to school with him if he's been at school. They say he's been there. A parent that helps with the coaching told me his wife knows the family and he'd see if she could find something out. Today at practice he said his wife told him that without even talking to them she could say to just not count on him being at anything. If he's there it's a bonus. They're not the most reliable people.

So with Jacob gone, Christopher potentially out for a few weeks, and Britt unreliable that puts us at 9 players that we can usually count on. The league president's team practices after ours on Saturday's so today I decided to skip over the division director since it's clear he's not trying to help us at all and I'd go straight to the guy that could potentially help us the most. I will add that the league president (Mike) is an awesome guy that probably doesn't realize a lot of the shit that goes on. He said he'd work to get us a couple of players. He said there are a couple from the Barristers that don't want to move up and the division director was interested in getting a player from the Barristers too (of course he is). However, Mike told me he's busy the rest of this weekend so he sent me to talk to the our division director about getting players. Needless to say I wasn't very happy.

I went out to where the Division Director's team was scrimmaging and told him I needed to talk to him when he's done. That gave me a chance to watch his team (the Blue Raiders) play for an inning or two. I wasn't impressed. They're well coach, but the talent was good, but not great. I can see why he made sure he walked out of the draft with 2 of the top 3 players that were in the draft. With Jacob and the rest of our roster we would have beat these guys. Anyway, I explain to him our issue in a way I knew would get his attention since he handles the scheduling. I slightly exaggerated and told him that if we don't two players we won't be able to make any of our travel dates and the rest of our season will come down to whether or not Britt shows up. In truth, we have 9 without Britt but I knew if I told him that he wouldn't really be willing to help us out much. He promised to call me back tonight with some info so we'll see if it helped.

The sad part is that if the draft was handled even remotely fair and we actually walked out with a player + Britt as I expected then we wouldn't be in this situation and the league wouldn't be scrambling to find us players right now. I'm at the point now where I will be talking to Mike, explaining everything that's happened, and telling him that I will be recommending to my parents that they look for another league for their kids and it's likely my last year having anything to do with this league. I can't with a straight face tell my parents that their kid is being given the same treatment as the other kids in the league. Until then this team has 100% of my effort and attention and our goals haven't changed one bit.

[Atocep]

It seems like the drama continues day after day, but first I'll start with some good news. Christopher's foot wasn't broken and he returned to practice on Wednesday and we did manage to get a new player from the Barristers. His name is Donovan and he's never played organized baseball before. His Dad did tell me that he plays in the backyard with him quite a bit and he does throw properly so I can work with him.

However, the Barristers shit just continues to pile up and cause problems across two divisions now. The story as I understand it is they approached the league this winter about adding a 9-10 year old and an 11-12 year old team to the league. They said their 11-12 year old team was set, but they were doing to need some help filling up a 9-10 year old team. They told the league they'd need 5 players and that they had the rest. Between the draft and late signups the league ended up giving them 6 players. Those 6 players ended up being the only 6 players they had. It seems like their coach, once he realized he wasn't going to be able find 5-6 players on his own and the league couldn't help them anymore, decided to bail and no one with the league has been able to get in touch with him since practices started.

The 6 players that the league gave the team showed up to their first practice to find out they would be practicing with the 11-12 year olds. It turns out the 11-12 year old team was also short a couple of players and just planned on using what they could from the 9 and 10 year olds to fill out their team. The parents of the 9 year olds (3 kids) ended up pulling their kids from practices and asked the Barristers coach to give them a call when things get sorted out. In the meantime the coach told the parents that the Barristers are a Tacoma team with no affiliation with the Lakewood Baseball Club so he couldn't do much to help them.

After pushing the fact that we could use at least 1 player for almost 2 weeks I finally get a call from our league president (Mike) on Sunday. He tells me that he spoke with the Barristers coach and told him that there is at least one team with up to two openings in the 9-10 year division so he needed to get in touch with those parents to see if any were interested. Initially he told Mike that he'd do it later in the week and get back with him. He was told that wasn't good enough and that it needed to be done immediately. Mike said that the Barristers coach called him back saying all he was able to get was voicemails, but he'd let Mike know as soon as he heard something back. It turns out that was lie.

I got a call Wednesday morning from our division director telling me he had finally been given the greenlight by the league to just start contacting the parents directly. The first parent he called said he hadn't heard anything from the Barristers or the league since the first practice and decided to put his kid in a neighboring league instead. The second parent he called was Donovan's Dad who had a similar story, but said he was interested in Donovan playing for our team. He wasn't able to get in touch with the third 9 year old and the 10 year olds have been sold on playing for the 11-12 year old team by the coach despite the parents not being comfortable with it.

So the Barristers played a role in ruining the draft, dropped out of the league a week before games were to start which caused us to completely re-do the schedule, they had a coach bail on his players, and the 11-12 year old coach has lied to his parents and players.

[Atocep]

The bright side from all of this is I did end up having a very constructive conversation with Mike over how the league is run and we discussed what happened with the Barristers, what's broken with the league, what needs some tweaks, and I walked away with a much better understanding of things.

Mike explained that a large part of the issues with the draft were caused by the Barristers, but that there was something that happened that shouldn't have and he accepted responsibility for not paying close enough attention to what was going on with our draft.

The draft rules (which Mike said need an overhaul) are the team that needs the most players pick first and you can't go over 12 players until everyone else in the draft reaches 12. The team that picks last in the first round picks 1st in the 2nd round. That's the extent of the rules. There is nothing that takes previous year's record into account, but they were going to use that as a tiebreaker for this year's draft since my team, the Blue Raiders, and the Tigers all had 11 players going into the draft. Then the Barristers complicated things. The league felt there was something odd about the Barristers from the beginning and weren't comfortable just giving them the first pick in the draft so they just decided to go with a random draft order. Our division director then screwed up by taking 2 players with the first pick since that put him at 13. It shouldn't have happened. He should have either taken 1 player or passed on his pick to take those 2 in the next round.

I was also told that the league is starting to hurt from a numbers standpoint. They have good numbers from 8 and under leagues, but 9 and up they don't have as many players as they should. This comes into play in a couple of areas. First, Mike said that they weren't using the draft in previous years because the retention rate for players was so low from the draft. Second, they found that when coaches fill out their roster on their own they have much higher year to year retention. He did admit they need to do a better job advertising the league and that if they do see an influx of players signing up the draft will need an overhaul (which he plans on doing after this season anyway).

With the driving around from practice to practice to talk to Mike and our division director along with time spent on the phone with both and actually running my team my team has been completely eaten up by this league for the past 2+ weeks. Our season starts off with a double header on Saturday against the Tigers and Lions and at this point I'm just looking forward to playing some games. After our setbacks we're not as prepared as I would like and the Tigers are an incredibly tough game to open with so we'll see how things go. I do know we're a lot better than we were last year and my kids are a lot more confident in what they're doing on the field. It should be an interesting and fun season assuming the drama is behind us now.

[Atocep]

I guess this means that this weekend I'll be able to update this with some actual game results instead of explaining the current BS I'm dealing with.

[Atocep]

And I just added our 13th and final player. With Britt 50/50 to show up to anything and the fact that I don't expect to see him at any of our travel games I felt we could take 1 more.

I talked to the kid's dad who said he's a 10 year old that's been in organized baseball since he was 5. He plays 3rd base, outfield, pitches, and also plays football on a select youth team in the area.

His story is he was found by the Barristers coach as they were trying to put the team together, but then was never told about practices or anything. The league found him on their roster and had no info on him at all other than a contact number. So our division director called him and once he explained what had happened he told him he'd find a team for him.

Hopefully they can get him out to practice this evening and we can get him uniformed up for tomorrow's games. He sounds like a kid that can really help us.

[Atocep]

I just got back from our first two games of the season. I'm exhausted right now so my writing will probably be fairly poor.

Our first game was against the Tigers who are favored to win the league this year. I had Magnus as our starting pitcher and he worked his way out of a bases loaded 1 out situation only giving up a run in the first. We went down 1-2-3 pretty quickly in our half of the first. They had what I think will be the best pitcher we'll see all year on the mound and the ump had a pretty big strike zone. Our guys were trying to be selective and it just wasn't working.

Magnus was only able to give us two innings because of pitch count and I brought in Joey who gave us 2 2/3 strong innings. Magnus and Joey only had us down 4-0 with two outs in the 5th but Joey left with the bases loaded. At this point I really didn't have a strong pitcher to go to since I had to save at least 2 for the next game so I put Canaan out there and it didn't go so well. It was a chance to start working him through his nerves out on the mound and I told him he'll get more chances out there.

At that point I brought Nolan in the close out the 6th inning and they put 5 runs on him but he did show some flashes of being able to get the ball over the plate. I don't know what the final score ended up being, but we played them tougher than the score indicated. They were in a situation where they were playing their first game of the season and didn't play again until Thursday. We were also playing our first game, but we had another game after we finished playing them and then we play again on Tuesday so I had to limit our arms and the Tigers coach was able to use whoever he wanted.

All in all it went better than expected. After our game finished I walked over to the other field where the Blue Raiders and the Lions were playing. I caught the very end of it and found out that the Lions are definitely not mostly 8 years old and that they only lost to the Blue Raiders by a run. Final score was 15-14 and the Lions had the bases loaded when the final out was made.

[Atocep]

We were the away team against the Lions and started out with two quick outs at the plate then Kaden doubled, but was left stranded at 2nd to end the inning. We had Kaden starting out on the mound this game. He was throwing darts in the first. Struck out the side quickly and easily. They couldn't touch him. After 1 we were tied 0-0.

In our half of the 2nd we were able to take advantage of a couple hits, an error, and a couple of walks to score two runs and give our kids only their 2nd lead in nearly two years (IIRC). In the bottom of the 2nd Kaden started aiming the ball a bit and not reaching back like he should. He got through the inning without giving up a run, but the ball started coming in high and he had to work to get through the 2nd.

In our half of the 3rd we scored a run. I don't remember how off hand to be perfectly honest. It was a long day. In the bottom of the 3rd they scored on an error and Kaden was starting to labor a bit on the mound. He only gave up the 1 run, but he had to work his way out of a jam to limit them to the 1 run off of an error. At this point he was at 52 pitches and that was it for him on the mound. He gave us 3 strong innings and left with a 3-1 lead.

In the top of the 4th our bats came alive. We put 4 runs on the board with Donovan picking up his first ever base hit in only his 2nd game. Our players started to realize they had to swing the bat and when they did against this team they were putting it in play. In the bottom of the 4th I brought in Quentin to pitch while shifting Kaden back to catcher. He pitched pretty well, but they scored 2 runs after an error on a grounder to 3rd followed up by Kaden making a poor throw on a dropped ball 3rd strike (it was his only bad throw all day at catcher). We exited the 4th up 7-3.

In the 5th we kept on hitting. The highlights were Kaden doubling to deep, deep left center and Sean picking up his first hit since he was in machine pitch with a solid line drive to center to drive in the 5th and final run of the inning. Quentin was all over the place in their half of the 5th, but we were bailed out by 2 nice defensive plays by Quentin at pitcher and then a strikeout to end the inning. The 5th ended with us up 12-3 and our players were starting to get excited as they realized they were one inning away from a win.

They brought in their "closer" (that's what they referred to him as) for the 6th inning. I guess the mistakes major league teams make with closers has trickled down to youth leagues because they could have used him before the game was 12-3. He shut us down pretty easily. He threw hard and the only baserunner he allowed was a walk. Quentin took the mound for the bottom of the 6th and after walking the first batter and an error to allow another runner on he settled down and struck out the side. The last out was a foul tip that Kaden held onto to close things out. My kids get their first win in two years with a final score of 12-3.

I've honestly never seen a group of kids so excited in my life. They played lights out and deserved their win today. I also think beating the Lions like we did got the Blue Raiders attention for our game against them Tuesday. I look for them to bring their best against us now.

[PilotMan]

I've been following along. League politics suck. Good luck, I'm sure your effort will pay off. Even if you don't win this year. The kids will know.


{edit: Congrats on your first win!}

[Atocep]

I think the Highlights for today were:

*Our defense. It was rough around the edges, but we actually looked like a solid team defensively for most of the day. We were where we were supposed to be most of the time and made the plays we needed to make.

*Joey, Kaden, and Quentin on the mound. Magnus was a bit shaky and only got us two innings before hitting 60 pitches. Joey, Kaden, and Quentin all pitched really well. The Lions coach actually commented on how strong out pitching was after the game. He asked if we had any more like the two we had out there for their game.

*Kaden at catcher. He's put in a lot of work and looked like a catcher today. He was framing pitches, blocking balls in the dirt, and not giving up any cheap bases. He threw out a guy trying to steal 3rd and barely missed nailing two guys trying to steal 2nd. He also doubled twice. He was outstanding all around today.

*Sean and Donovan. As I mentioned Sean picked up his first hit since coach pitch and Donovan picked up his first hit in organized baseball which drove in a run.

*Chris at 1st base was fantastic. He did his job. He missed one easy one at first and had another he probably should have made the play on get by him, but that's it. You can't ask for more than that out of 10 year olds. Great game for him.


Overall we looked good today. The players realize that they can win now and I think the parents are excited about the season going forward.

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

I've been following along. League politics suck. Good luck, I'm sure your effort will pay off. Even if you don't win this year. The kids will know.


{edit: Congrats on your first win!}

Thanks. These kids haven't really had anyone fighting the political battles for them before this year. I may not win all of those battles, but I won't let my kids get screwed without letting someone know I'm not happy about it.

The win today was special. The history of this group is posted above and it's a team that was nearly disbanded this offseason because no one thought they'd be able to compete. Even the loss to the Tigers lifted our kids' confidence and ssent the message that we belong on the field with anyone in our league this year.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Atocep

The 5th ended with us up 12-3 and our players were starting to get excited as they realized they were one inning away from a win.

I got to this part & had all sorts of disaster scenarios run through my mind.
Glad they kept it together & finished the deal.

Nice job coach.

[BYU 14]

Was hoping to see this when I got home. Nice job coach, you have already made an impact with these kids and even better with the parents after today. Congrats on the win and kudos for standing up for your kids!!!

[Atocep]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I got to this part & had all sorts of disaster scenarios run through my mind.

You and me both. I was trying to get our kids settled down and focused on the last 3 outs while trying to figure out who our emergency pitcher would be if we needed one. We were completely out of pitchers so if anything happened to Quentin those last 3 innings we were going to be in a lot of trouble.

[lighthousekeeper]

wow. i don't care about anything in life as much as you appear to care about this little league team.

[superbama]

Love this dynasty!

SB
(fofc's greatest lurker)