Little League Baseball Draft

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

My kids league allows a team to have 3 coaches and those coaches kids are automatically on the team. The rest of the kids go through an evaluation and are drafted in a live draft.

I'm an asst coach on a team and the head coach couldn't make it to 2/3 of the 3 evaluation days so he asked me to go. And, only 6 kids showed up to the day he made it compared to the 60ish kids I'd seen. As such, he asked me to show up to the draft. We got together the day before but we both had both of our kids so...I knew we didn't get nearly enough prep work in. I went ahead and made a spread sheet which was fun as [expletive] to me. Basically used a modified 5 tool chart (# hit/5 pitches, hit power, fielding, arm, catch) and multiplied the # of hits * power then added the other 3 categories. This kind of weighted the kids that could hit and hit it hard to the top. I sent it to the head coach the night before the draft/after we got together and talked about who we wanted to get.

I could tell he was kind of skeptical going into it, but as the draft got going and the kids we talked about were all drafted in the first round or two and all the kids were being taken in a pretty consistent order with the spreadsheet he started to rely on it pretty heavily.

Having never been through a process like this, it was incredibly fun. Anybody else go through something like this?

Ironically enough, despite weighting the hitting skills, we ended up with a lot of really good fielders and not a lot of thump in the lineup. But also a lot of kids that are going to hit the ball consistently. Can't wait to get the kids to practice and start running drills with them.

[mikechamp]

No, I have not been through this process.

How old are the kids?

(Mods, I propose moving this to the Baseball Talk thread.)

[JoeMcKim]

I think this should be for the older kids, the younger kids should be able to just play with their friends.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

7 year olds.

I also thought they should just create teams by schools/friends/etc. but the issue with that apparently was you got super teams created and kids would quit from the lower teams. Then it would get political on which teams got to pick up the good kids from the teams that quit.

Also, I would fully be on board with not keeping score and letting them just have fun. But this league tries to have it both ways where fun is the focus but they also keep score and have an end of year tournament. Which, surprise surprise, gets the parents to be too competitive.

So we focus on fundamentals and what not and have done a good job if I do say so myself. We prioritized keeping our team together. But, yeah, behind the scenes I’m going to do my best to out evaluate and out draft the other coaches.

[mikechamp]

7???? Oh my. That is unfortunate.

Do they utilize a runs-per-inning limit? Do they allow ties?

To me, it sounds like the keeping of score isn't the problem. It's the end-of-year tournament.

I've found that roster continuity is very advantageous from a coaching perspective. That way, you know you're not starting back at square one every season.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

5 runs per inning limit. Ties are allowed. We Had 8 kids return to the league from last year and were able to keep 6. One guy wanted his kid to be in a different team because his buddy was coaching. One kid we tried to get but missed him by about 5 draft picks. So we tried to trade for him but the other coach wouldn’t do it. (He was friends with the kids Dad).

Agree 100% about keeping kids. I think it’s unfair to those that need the most work to let them go from team to team. These teams are supposed to stay together for the next few years so there is that.

[mikechamp]

Trades in little league? Wow. That's... wow.

[cardinalkarp]

Trades in little league? Wow. That's... wow.

Yeah, I'm finding this whole topic a little strange. Little League Draft, trading 7 year olds from team to team?

[JoeMcKim]

Next thing you know you'll sponsor a Tee Ball team as a farm system of sorts for your future stars of the team.

[CardsofSTL]

Trades in little league? Wow. That's... wow.

Yeah, I'm finding this whole topic a little strange. Little League Draft, trading 7 year olds from team to team?

How else do you get rid of the smelly kids?