The question was straight-forward. Also should they stay together even when moving  age bracket to age bracket? Or should each spring season bring a new draft and new teams? And who makes that decision? Most of the votes (over 90%) came from coaches - which explains the bias against players making the decision.

Should teams stay together? Why do you think that way?

We received a lot of good mail on this Nose 2 Nose. Here's just a sampling...

As a coach you are sometimes lucky to have a group of boys that develop into a good team and you would hate to break them up every two years. But sports should teach a young person about fair play, working hard and just having a good attitude towards their own teamates, opponents and their coaches. As a coach, I find it the most challenging to develop players so that by season's end we have a competitive team. A coach will always have a few outstanding players on a team, but it is how he and his coaching staff develop the weakest players on the team to a point where they are contributing to the overall success and their own self worth as a player. - Len Furukawa

Currently our league splits age groups of 9-12 so players are together for no more than 2 years. This I find destructive. I believe that for 4 years teams should stick together. Through attrition and choice, team make-up will change. 2 year stints is counter-productive but with the 4 year spread you need controls to eliminate loading or favoritism. - Patrick Hoag

The priority must always be fairness and the best interest of the players not the coaches. I do not like the concept of expansion teams being formed with all 1st year players. Older players must be allocated to newly formed teams before they are put on existing teams with returning players. We allow players' and parents' requests for teams/coaches in the younger divisions only which are purely instructional and not competitive. - Carl Russo

I have coached in a league that has used both systems, according to how many teams we could field. While there are advantages and disadvantages to each system, I prefer to put all the players in a pool and draft them. In our league we have a "draft advisor". This person spends a lot of time with the kids in our league, not just in baseball but in other sports and activities. When the draft is held, he is there to make sure that the teams are as even as possible. It works well, last year in a four team league, all four teams had around a .500 record, each team beat all the other teams, both early in the season and later in the season. The players loved it because there was no "super" team, and they knew they had a chance to win every game. - John York

Players need to learn the tendencies of their own teammates,so they will know what to expect in any given siuation.A core group would work well,and draft the rest. - Derek Bracken

Given the limited amount of time we have with the kids for practice, etc., it can easily take more than a season for a young player to grasp, accept and perfect the skills we are trying to teach him. We coach our coaches, so that there is SOME continuity in techniques and teaching methods. But that is no substitute for the same coach teaching the same things for several years. - Rick Williams

As a coach I like having a core group of players that I can train and drill and then be able to harvest the fuits of that labor by having them play for me for several years. As a parent, i would rather my son be mixed-and-matched each year in order to meet new players and form the interaction skills that are necessary in life. - Max Ramirez

In our league, we redraft each year and only the coaches' kids are property players. But even with giving up corresponding picks in the draft, coaches with the two best kids usually win the division for a few reasons: Before age 12, two A players make more impact than 4 B players. The coaches, parents of these highly skilled players, are significantly responsible for their own kids' success. They are dedicated to baseball, know more, know the other kids and draft well, picking up sleepers in the late rounds, and develop their mid-range talent to a higher degree than do the other coaches. - Dan Baits