When do pitchers stop batting? Got an 8 year old with a good arm and loves to bat. Obviously we have no idea if he'll be good much less great at either down the road but he asked me tonight if he could still bat if he pitches. And I don't know the answer past 9&10u.

In my son's experience, we never ran across players being labeled "PO" (Pitcher Only) until high school ball. You would see a few players before that time period on club teams who made it clear they only wanted to pitch, but that's very rare. Team rosters are rarely big enough before that age to allow that degree of specialization.

We're just starting to get serious about baseball. I used to have to drag him out to throw the ball with me but about 6 months ago something clicked and he's asking to pitch to me every day...to the point I have to tell him no so he doesn't hurt his arm. We've been doing lessons for about 3 months now but he's still playing coach pitch. So no real game action.

As we were watching the game tonight he asked why the pitchers weren't batting. After explaining to him how the DH works he asked if he could still bat in the future. I've watched some 9&10u games so I knew he could in that age group but I didn't know how serious some select ball teams take DH'ing and pitching.

Thanks for explaining y'all's experiences.

Personally I don't think you have to worry about anything like that for quite some time

mosdefn14 said:

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Even in high school (what I remember, 2005ish) if the pitcher could hit but a left fielder couldn't, that's who got DHd for.

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As a HS ump, I can tell you that I have only seen one player that was a pitcher only this year and they had him play JV ball as an outfielder to see if he could become a better batter. Most of those athletic enough to be a good pitcher are also good batters at that level.

Questions are never dumb; only the answers