Lonestar_Ag09 said:

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I will say it all is now completely crystal clear knowing that you run a select baseball program.

And while you might have a small leg to stand on in terms of not "starting it" f to he way you reply and at times the condescending nature of the replies is appalling. For instance there was a post earlier in the thread where a dad was just discussing his kids weekend and multiple people had already relied positively and your response was "yea that's pretty decent but…."

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I never said anything close to that to anyone. Quote it. I have been nothing but positive.

Changing the subject...

How do you all feel about pick up players? I'm seeing it more and more. I understand if you have an injury or last minute change in plans for a player and have to pick someone up, although we don't do it, never have, never will. We drop out in those situations and reschedule for the next open weekend. Some do though, and that is fine. But I don't agree when teams pick up the best players from other teams, throw them a ton of pitches, bat them cleanup, etc. even with subs on the bench. I saw it with two different teams this weekend. Two kids I'm familiar with picked up on two separate teams in our bracket this weekend. I saw both kids pitch in 3 separate games, multiple innings at least 2 of the 3 games. It didn't impact our games with them, but it did impact some of their other games. Even if you win like that, seems like it would cheapen an success as a team.

Im not familiar, so you mean that kid played for two teams in the same tournament?

If we need to have a sub, he always bats last and will sit the first inning and usually play left or right field. He would only pitch unless absolutely needed.

I think this is both fair for current team and for teams we are playing.

We usually use subs to evaluate talent to see if we want to ick them up for future. I know it sounds brutal, but that's the best way we know how to do it. If he's good, it also signals to other kids/parents, you need to step up if you don't want to get passed up.

Lonestar_Ag09 said:

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Im not familiar, so you mean that kid played for two teams in the same tournament?

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No- he's saying that two kids he knows played on different teams from their normal teams over the weekend.

Basically, teams will bring in a ringer from another team for a weekend when that kid's regular team isn't playing. Generally it's a stud pitcher or a kid who hits a ton.

Some organizations/teams are notorious for doing it. Especially in big tournaments. Like, I've seen an org based here in Houston bring in 5 pick-up players for an NIT and every single one of them was from out of state- like this team brought in 3 kids from Cali, one from Florida, and one from New Jersey. And not because of injuries either.

My oldest son's organization has 2 12U teams- major & AAA. They ordinarily play alternate weekends and the organization has a rule where we don't pick up to play for another organization during the spring. In the event of illness or injury they will shuffle kids between the 2 squads but it's rare.

Bassmaster said:

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Changing the subject...

How do you all feel about pick up players? I'm seeing it more and more. I understand if you have an injury or last minute change in plans for a player and have to pick someone up, although we don't do it, never have, never will. We drop out in those situations and reschedule for the next open weekend. Some do though, and that is fine. But I don't agree when teams pick up the best players from other teams, throw them a ton of pitches, bat them cleanup, etc. even with subs on the bench. I saw it with two different teams this weekend. Two kids I'm familiar with picked up on two separate teams in our bracket this weekend. I saw both kids pitch in 3 separate games, multiple innings at least 2 of the 3 games. It didn't impact our games with them, but it did impact some of their other games. Even if you win like that, seems like it would cheapen an success as a team.

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Just about every team uses pick-up players in certain situations. In my organization, we know ahead of time of scheduling conflicts with our players and have pick-up kids ready to go. We will also use them if someone is sick as well. We have a list of players in our network and most of them are already added to our active rosters. When we are short a player, we will see which one of those players isn't playing that weekend and make the best needs based determination on who can fill-in for us and then we just moved them from active to our tournament roster for that event. There is nothing wrong with this and PG even has a pick-up message board for occasions like this. Also, your tournament roster is supposed to be locked in twenty-four hours before the event, so if you get true last minute illness, you are just missing a player for that tournament.

A lot of organizations will run multiple teams in the same age group. At times, you will see they have massive rosters with all the same kids on each roster and they just move these kids back and forth between teams. It's very hard when you play these teams, to keep up with these rosters moves. I have seen a team on Saturday, that has a totally different lineup on Sunday, but they can do that when they are running a 30+ player tournament roster. With that said, it is very shady and I don't know how any of the parents are ok with their kids being treated like that.

Lastly, you will find some kids that play on two teams. These are the kids that want to play every weekend and let the teams know what they are doing up front. Most of the time, these teams will schedule around that player (usually a diamond player) and only have one or two overlapping games. I don't really know how I feel about this situation, but see it a lot as well.

We usually pick up a player for every tournament. We only have ten and one of them is already part time because he is another priority a lot of times.

We never base the pickup on skills. It's usually a friend of the boys who they have played with since tball. Our town only has three real select teams and most of the boys are friends so we just grab one off a team that's not playing and they do the same or get a kid that just plays league.

My son plays both league and select(10u AAA) and is the most used pitcher so I don't let him pickup with other teams. He already plays enough.

Just found out about one of the kids I was posting about earlier. His regular team played a PG tournament this weekend. Their pool games were Friday night, so he played them. He picked up in our tournament (USSSA) Saturday. Apparently played for his regular team Sunday morning, and after they lost, played pickup back in our tournament in the afternoon until his pickup team lost. Those parents are crazy. This is 11u. We beat them, so I'm not worried about it, but I just think that is crazy. I think it is fine within an organization (but not on the same weekend). When the teams are completely unrelated, I think that is different.

Bassmaster said:

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Just found out about one of the kids I was posting about earlier. His regular team played a PG tournament this weekend. Their pool games were Friday night, so he played them. He picked up in our tournament (USSSA) Saturday. Apparently played for his regular team Sunday morning, and after they lost, played pickup back in our tournament in the afternoon until his pickup team lost. Those parents are crazy. This is 11u. We beat them, so I'm not worried about it, but I just think that is crazy. I think it is fine within an organization (but not on the same weekend). When the teams are completely unrelated, I think that is different.

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Edit - I misread and thought he played for two PG teams during the same event. PG to USSSA in the same day is legal, but as you said, crazy. Lots of wear and tear on arms, even if they aren't pitching him.

Quote:

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11. Roster and Roster changes: Teams may change their rosters up until they start their first game. After that time there will be no roster changes. If a player is listed on more than one roster, the player listed will make a decision as to which roster he is legally on. This decision is up to the individual player. No player can appear in a tournament game for more than one team.

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https://www.perfectgame.org/Tournaments/ViewDocument.aspx?id=2613

Bassmaster said:

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Just found out about one of the kids I was posting about earlier. His regular team played a PG tournament this weekend. Their pool games were Friday night, so he played them. He picked up in our tournament (USSSA) Saturday. Apparently played for his regular team Sunday morning, and after they lost, played pickup back in our tournament in the afternoon until his pickup team lost. Those parents are crazy. This is 11u. We beat them, so I'm not worried about it, but I just think that is crazy. I think it is fine within an organization (but not on the same weekend). When the teams are completely unrelated, I think that is different.

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That's pretty crazy. I don't know if he did so, but the kid could conceivably pitch the maximum in both tournaments since they're different sanctioning bodies and wouldn't have record of his pitch counts. So an 11-year old kid could throw 200 pitches in a weekend if the parents and coaches didn't care.

I do know USSSA and PG prevent you from playing with multiple teams in the same weekend but, again, that's within the respective sanctioning bodies- meaning you can't play for 2 PG or 2 USSSA teams in the same weekend.

baseballaficionado said:

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Bassmaster said:

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Just found out about one of the kids I was posting about earlier. His regular team played a PG tournament this weekend. Their pool games were Friday night, so he played them. He picked up in our tournament (USSSA) Saturday. Apparently played for his regular team Sunday morning, and after they lost, played pickup back in our tournament in the afternoon until his pickup team lost. Those parents are crazy. This is 11u. We beat them, so I'm not worried about it, but I just think that is crazy. I think it is fine within an organization (but not on the same weekend). When the teams are completely unrelated, I think that is different.

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That is illegal and if called out to the director on site -- all teams would be eliminated from the event. You can only play with one team per PG event.

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Kid played in 2 events- one PG and one USSSA

TarponChaser said:

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baseballaficionado said:

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Bassmaster said:

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Just found out about one of the kids I was posting about earlier. His regular team played a PG tournament this weekend. Their pool games were Friday night, so he played them. He picked up in our tournament (USSSA) Saturday. Apparently played for his regular team Sunday morning, and after they lost, played pickup back in our tournament in the afternoon until his pickup team lost. Those parents are crazy. This is 11u. We beat them, so I'm not worried about it, but I just think that is crazy. I think it is fine within an organization (but not on the same weekend). When the teams are completely unrelated, I think that is different.

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That is illegal and if called out to the director on site -- all teams would be eliminated from the event. You can only play with one team per PG event.

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Kid played in 2 events- one PG and one USSSA

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I misread and edited it! My bad.

Tarpon is right. One PG and one USSSA. Yeah, I know it is legal. It is crazy though. That's not good for the kid. I don't care if all he wants to do is play baseball. Sometimes a parent needs to do what is best for the kid regardless of what the kid wants. Sad thing is, it could be the parents pushing it and not the kid. Not saying it is because I don't know the family, but some of these parents are nuts. Those types are the ones who cause people to look so unfavorably at select baseball.

Anyway, lot of baseball in the TC household this weekend. Both boys had tournaments.

7U played Saturday in Magnolia and Sunday at Lindsay Lyons. His team went 2-2. I'm not going to brag about how well he played because even vs. good 7U teams they throw the ball all over the place. He had fun and hit the ball hard every at bat.

12U went 2-1-1 on the weekend. Saturday they tied a team they should have beaten the pants off of but the opposing team ran out a pitcher throwing about 45mph for kids used to 60-65 and couldn't adjust. Ended up tying them 2-2. Then my kid pitched the next game and got the W- went 3.2 with 4Ks, 3 BB, 1H and 0 ER. He was throwing really well sitting in the low- to mid-60's and locating his pitches. His change-up was a big out pitch as he'd drop it in there about 50mph. He's not comfortable throwing a curve yet but he mixes in a 2-seam fastball that has a nice arm-side run. And he's got sneaky velocity because he's really good at using his lower half so he doesn't look like he's trying to throw hard and the ball just jumps out of his hand. Plus, I asked him afterwards how hard he felt like he was throwing and he said he was only pushing about 80%. Coaches pulled him at 60 pitches since he hasn't pitched since he broke his wrist. He could have hit the ball better as he was only like 2-8 with a walk but he didn't strike out and hit the ball hard several times only right at the defense. He's still not quite 100% on strength and timing. They ended up losing in the semi-finals to the eventual winner but they should have won that game. He did start a 9-2 double play throwing out a runner trying to tag & score from 3rd on a fly ball to right. He also started a 9-5-3 double play on another fly ball to right where the runner tried to tag and go from 2nd to 3rd.

I've been picking up 1 player each weekend due to a kid quitting that I posted about a few weeks ago. We only have 9 now, so I need the extra player. My kid had the stomach bug last tourney and couldn't play Sunday, so I'm glad I had the extra kid.

I've went back and forth with myself on playing time. If I sub the extra kid and bat them last, they probably won't pick up with us again. I just treat them like one of my players and make the best lineup for that day. I do move the kids around a lot on defense, so it hasn't really been an issue.

I could post looking for a new player, but at this point in the season wouldn't get much. The only tourney I'm worried about is our WS in Gulf Shores. If anyone has a 9u major player and wants to drop about $5k for a week playing baseball at the beach just let me know. I don't care what position they play, as long as they can hit!

This is the 5 or 6th video I've seen in the last few weeks of umpires getting assaulted. It's getting worse. There is an umpire shortage which leads to new umpires that aren't the best. A lot of the good ones quit due to idiot parents and coaches. It's not worth $50 a game to get verbally or possibly physically assaulted.

Some states have laws making it a felony to assault officials. I'm not sure what else can be done to stop this madness.


https://www.fox4news.com/news/denton-umpire-pressing-charges-against-baseball-coach-he-says-attacked-him?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Ol_fkN9LsCiTdxtQ2tNQ2zuFVs6acAWDkKlmh17WKdRsz-mVOXgBBUgg#l1wme5ajm8lnddnoju

PhatMack19 said:

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This is the 5 or 6th video I've seen in the last few weeks of umpires getting assaulted. It's getting worse. There is an umpire shortage which leads to new umpires that aren't the best. A lot of the good ones quit due to idiot parents and coaches. It's not worth $50 a game to get verbally or possibly physically assaulted.

Some states have laws making it a felony to assault officials. I'm not sure what else can be done to stop this madness.


https://www.fox4news.com/news/denton-umpire-pressing-charges-against-baseball-coach-he-says-attacked-him?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Ol_fkN9LsCiTdxtQ2tNQ2zuFVs6acAWDkKlmh17WKdRsz-mVOXgBBUgg#l1wme5ajm8lnddnoju

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That is absolutely ridiculous.

I would love to umpire kids games. I love youth baseball so much I volunteer to be head coach of a fall ball tball team and put up the $700 sponsorship. But I would have a hard time handling that.


We had our first really bad umpire situation of the year last weekend. Total homer made horrendously bad calls. Turns out he knew all of the kids on the other team and had called their games since tball. We were from out of town and just had to deal with it. Lost by a run and missed the final. But you know what, none of us, coaches or parents, said a bad word about the umpires to their faces or in front of the boys. It's not that hard.

agsalaska said:

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PhatMack19 said:

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This is the 5 or 6th video I've seen in the last few weeks of umpires getting assaulted. It's getting worse. There is an umpire shortage which leads to new umpires that aren't the best. A lot of the good ones quit due to idiot parents and coaches. It's not worth $50 a game to get verbally or possibly physically assaulted.

Some states have laws making it a felony to assault officials. I'm not sure what else can be done to stop this madness.


https://www.fox4news.com/news/denton-umpire-pressing-charges-against-baseball-coach-he-says-attacked-him?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Ol_fkN9LsCiTdxtQ2tNQ2zuFVs6acAWDkKlmh17WKdRsz-mVOXgBBUgg#l1wme5ajm8lnddnoju

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That is absolutely ridiculous.

I would love to umpire kids games. I love youth baseball so much I volunteer to be head coach of a fall ball tball team and put up the $700 sponsorship. But I would have a hard time handling that.


We had our first really bad umpire situation of the year last weekend. Total homer made horrendously bad calls. Turns out he knew all of the kids on the other team and had called their games since tball. We were from out of town and just had to deal with it. Lost by a run and missed the final. But you know what, none of us, coaches or parents, said a bad word about the umpires to their faces or in front of the boys. It's not that hard.

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In a situation like your team found itself in, you all should have went to the on-site director. He would have come over, watched part of the game and addressed any concerns he saw directly with the ump(s).

baseballaficionado said:

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agsalaska said:

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PhatMack19 said:

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This is the 5 or 6th video I've seen in the last few weeks of umpires getting assaulted. It's getting worse. There is an umpire shortage which leads to new umpires that aren't the best. A lot of the good ones quit due to idiot parents and coaches. It's not worth $50 a game to get verbally or possibly physically assaulted.

Some states have laws making it a felony to assault officials. I'm not sure what else can be done to stop this madness.


https://www.fox4news.com/news/denton-umpire-pressing-charges-against-baseball-coach-he-says-attacked-him?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3Ol_fkN9LsCiTdxtQ2tNQ2zuFVs6acAWDkKlmh17WKdRsz-mVOXgBBUgg#l1wme5ajm8lnddnoju

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That is absolutely ridiculous.

I would love to umpire kids games. I love youth baseball so much I volunteer to be head coach of a fall ball tball team and put up the $700 sponsorship. But I would have a hard time handling that.


We had our first really bad umpire situation of the year last weekend. Total homer made horrendously bad calls. Turns out he knew all of the kids on the other team and had called their games since tball. We were from out of town and just had to deal with it. Lost by a run and missed the final. But you know what, none of us, coaches or parents, said a bad word about the umpires to their faces or in front of the boys. It's not that hard.

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In a situation like your team found itself in, you all should have went to the on-site director. He would have come over, watched part of the game and addressed any concerns he saw directly with the ump(s).

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They had already called out the on site director in the 2nd inning about a balk call and managed to get it reversed. Batter cannot cause a pitcher to balk he said. We didn't argue. Maybe he is right in USSSA.

Nothing we could do about it. And it gave us an opportunity to show the kids they cannot worry about umpires. I do believe that the number one mistake grownups make with youth players is openly complaining about umpires in front of them.

Back to the discussion on age and holding kids back- was talking to one of the dads on our 12U major team yesterday and he was talking about kids in the recent PG 12U Major NIT in Baton Rouge last month and how there were a bunch of kids throwing mid-70s and even upper-70s.

PG doesn't always do it but they have scorekeepers who put guns on kids for velocity and I went through a bunch of the games from that tournament and found something interesting.

Literally every single kid who topped 70 is over 12-years/6-months old and most of them are in 7th grade. There was one kid who was still in 5th grade though and one kid who just turned 13 and is in 7th grade.

If your goal is to get your kid to the next level and ready to play for HS, how does it serve them to play a grade level down? Especially at this point where HS is just a couple years out.

Same thing happened to us Sunday in USSSA and the ump called a balk. Coaches didn't argue the call for whatever reason.

I'm curious when this levels out.

It is blatantly obvious who the kids that were "held back" are. I think it actually stints their development long term.

My boy has Dec 27th birthday and most of his teammates are 7-8 months older and he's as good if not better than all of them…10U. That's like comparing him now to him in Aug…pretty big difference.

You have to think come 15, 16, 17 this absolutely evens out and those playing down aren't as developed.

Quito said:

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I'm curious when this levels out.

It is blatantly obvious who the kids that were "held back" are. I think it actually stints their development long term.

My boy has Dec 27th birthday and most of his teammates are 7-8 months older and he's as good if not better than all of them…10U. That's like comparing him now to him in Aug…pretty big difference.

You have to think come 15, 16, 17 this absolutely evens out and those playing down aren't as developed.

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Yeah, I think it levels out by 15-16 for sure. For some of those kids it probably levels out by 14U when they start playing on the big boy field with 60'6" mound and 90' bases. 13U is 54' mound an 80' bases.

Both of my boys are young for their grades with July & August birthdays. My oldest won't be 12 until July but is in 6th grade and made the jump to skip 11U to play 12U this year since he'll be competing with these kids in 9th grade.

My 7-year old has an August birthday but he's in 2nd grade (he was 4 when he started kindergarten and turned 5 a couple weeks into the school year). He's playing 7U now but if he's still playing when he's older we'll likely do the same and skip 11U to play 12U.

I think that's the perfect time to make the jump because 8U is still coach pitch and jumping over 9U to play 10U is going against kids who already have a year of kid pitch under their belts. 11U and 12U play on the same size fields with a 50' mound and 70' bases.

There have been studies on this. One is mentioned in Malcolm Gladwells book "Outliers". Other studies have found that there is a statistical difference between the number of MLB players born in Aug, Sep, Oct compared to May, Jun, Jul. the idea is that typical age group cutoffs in baseball are Jul 31st. This makes Aug birthdays the oldest in their age group. This is a significant advantage in sports. The advantage is that your more physically developed and get more playing time, at bats, etc.

Edit: this was in reference to your post about the hard throwing 12 u kids that were all 12 yrs 6 months or older

But now data most leagues use May 1st and there's a ton of kids that are held back from starting school with May, June, July and Aug birthdays.

The kids that do start on time are at an even bigger disadvantage.

Of the 12 on my league roster this year, were playing in 8u and the cutoff is May 1 in our league, All but 3 turn 8 during the season...they have actually all already turned 8. However of the 3 that technically are "playing up" 2 of those are some of our best.

Our top 5 players have birthdays of:

5/15/14
7/30/15
2/10/14
8/5/13
1/2/14

School sports goes by grade. Being held back gives you an even greater advantage. I'm sure some parents do this intentionally. If you look at high level youth baseball, playing up may not be an advantage if your hitting in the bottom third of the order consistently. The top third gets many more at bats over the course of a season, over a few years, it's like getting an additional season of at bats.

Lightning Dexter said:

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There have been studies on this. One is mentioned in Malcolm Gladwells book "Outliers". Other studies have found that there is a statistical difference between the number of MLB players born in Aug, Sep, Oct compared to May, Jun, Jul. the idea is that typical age group cutoffs in baseball are Jul 31st. This makes Aug birthdays the oldest in their age group. This is a significant advantage in sports. The advantage is that your more physically developed and get more playing time, at bats, etc.

Edit: this was in reference to your post about the hard throwing 12 u kids that were all 12 yrs 6 months or older

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Sure that all matters but I think they're missing the genetic gifts, regardless of age or whether a kid is playing up or down.

I know 2 of the those badass 12-year old kid's families and both of them had fathers who played in the NFL. One was a WR and the other was a DB. Both boys are already well into puberty and are stud athletes. I'm not sure they'll be prospects as pitchers but they definitely will be there in the field because one is already almost 6'0" at almost 13 and his old man is just 6'0", the other is about 5'5" and his dad is like 5'10". So while they're elite athletes at their age level and will likely continue that way, they probably won't stay there when they play in HS. At least not as pitchers because of their height- for illustration, the average MLB pitcher these days is 6'3" 215 and average MLB fastball is 93mph vs. being about 6'0" 175 and 88mph just a generation ago.

Another example is Mark Appel. He was a bust in the pros but was a stud in HS and college and the Astros made him a millionaire overnight with a $6MM signing bonus as the #1 overall pick in the draft. His arm troubles ended his career early.

Anyway, Appel is a July birthday. I know the guys who coached him at Post Oak LL here in Houston when POLL went to the LLWS. He was one of the youngest kids on the team and graduated HS when he was still 17. He was also a stud pitcher for that POLL team but wasn't their best one. The guys who coached him played collegiate and MiLB and tell me that they knew Appel would end up being the better pitcher because their other stud was already like 5'10" at 12 but his parents were fairly average at around 6'0" for the dad and 5'5" for the mom. Appel was like 5'8" at 12 but was still a baby and his dad is like 6'5" and mom about 5'9". Appel grew to be 6'5".

So if a kid is sort of at the margins I think that holding them back can be an advantage because they're more advanced and get more reps but none of that will matter at all when these kids who are badass at 12U because they're almost 13 don't get much taller and other kids catch up.

I'm not excusing the actions of the coach in that video, as that should never happen in between the lines, especially in front of kids

But

The moment an official/umpire engages (negatively) with a coach, player or even parent, they have crossed a line and are no longer protected by their title as official, IMO. Officials/umpires have a duty, responsibility to remain professional, have thick skin, whatever you want to call it.

From some accounts, the ump in the video was anything but professional for several games. Again, he doesn't deserve to be pushed down, and I hate that kids had to see and experience a grown man acting like that, but if a person is going to run their mouth, then they have to live with the consequences that come with that.