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Youth Baseball Tryouts and The Draft

Marty Schupak Though he received a Bachelor's degree from Boston University in 1975, and in 1978 received a Masters degree in Physical Education from Arizona State University. he first got involved in youth sports by coaching both of his sons' youth baseball teams.
In addition to coaching baseball he has coached children in basketball and soccer. In the past 14 years Coach Marty has managed or coached over 1,200 kids in youth athletics.
Marty takes a proactive approach to coaching youth sports by observing as many practices as he can on the youth level all the way up to high school kids. He is an active member of the American Baseball Coaches Association and the New York Alliance For Youth Sports. He is of course also the well-known producer of the best selling baseball video 'The 59 Minute Baseball Practice' and is president of the Youth Sports Club. We thank Marty for granting us for permission to reprint a collection of his essays from the Youth Sports Club. (Click to close.)

- by Marty Schupak

Tryouts and the player draft are always one of the most interesting times of the year. Some managers try to gain an advantage during this time. There is always a scramble to secure assistant coaches. Parents who have experienced the process, know that some managers will pick an assistant not according to the assistant's ability to coach, but by the ability of his talented child. Another technique done which is highly unsportsmanlike is for the manager to discretely suggest to a player to 'dog it' during the tryouts so that manager can get a player of first round ability in the later rounds of the draft.

There is very little a league can do about a manager picking an assistant to secure a spot on the team for his child. Drafting the actual teams can be done in a fair manner. A fair process is for the league managers and league director to pick each team with similar ability and throw them into a hat.

For instance, a league will have eight teams consisting of twelve players. Assuming each team has a manager and coach and their two kids, all the managers and coaches will sit in a room and rate the players and assign ten players to teams one through eight. Once it is agreed that the eight teams of ten are pretty much equal, throw the teams into a hat and each manager will pick a team. The league will have more parity with this system and this will limit some of the complaints. One word of advice when using this technique is to make sure enough pitchers are part of the ten players on each team.

The success of a league begins in the autumn. There have been seasons where some teams do not win a single game. The team assignment process can make for a better year for each player individually, as a team and as a league. A league that has parity will make for a better season and in fact will help that league in All Stars with each player experiencing a competitive season with some excellent close games. It is up to the league President and league director to make every effort to make sure each team is fairly equal in ability and take away any advantage that some managers try to gain.

Reader Commentary: 2 responses | WebBall members are invited to comment.

Jon Conner says:
Mar 20, 2007 at 8:58 PM

How does picking teams of 10 that are even then letting manager and coach pick them give you equal team? It seems that assumes that all of the manager/coaches kids are equal ability.

Richard Todd says:
Mar 21, 2007 at 6:58 PM

Like the author, my own experience would seem to indicate that manager/coach kids are general good players - they benefit from added personal instruction. But even if there are some imbalances caused by those 2 last players added, at least the majority of each team is better balanced against the competition. It's never perfect, but then seasons always bring surprises - that's why we play the games.