Fall ball?

As with most things in life, fall ball is what you make of it.

If the players receive good coaching, keep their bodies in shape, and have an opportunity to face decent competition, it can only be beneficial.

At the same time, it should certainly be geared towards preparing for the spring - rather than focusing on game results.  It's a good time to work on new positions, or to correct mechanical issues.

It is only one example, but in the first year my son's school ran a fall program, the team picked up 8 more wins over the previous season, and advanced to regions for the first time in a decade.

I would venture to guess that more reps as individuals as well as playing together as a team has its benefits, especially since you will have lost a number of players to graduation so will have new players at some of the positions. It also gives the coaches a chance to see where they are at as a team and what needs work.

Our Travel Ball coach likes throwing in 5 or 6 fall ball tourneys to figure out where kids need to work over winter indoor practices.  For example, if a catchers arm is weak he will be in a strengthening program during winter, if the first basemen is having issues with his range, he will be in speed and agility focused winter training.  Not all of our team undergoes the same training in the winter.  I assume the coach is using fall as a gauge on where the team needs improvement in real live game scenarios.

With all of the summer ball these kids play it seems like fall should be short and sweet.  Giving the kids a rest sometimes is a good option.  However, in order to do baseball your team has to be a part of an outside league.  At least that's how it is where I coach. 

But at the end of the day, does playing 15 fall games and practicing a little help teams get more wins in the spring.  I guess the only way to find out is try it, lol.

When you are talking about HS age kids, playing a lot of baseball matters.  There are usually just one or two standouts/studs on each team.  How your team fares against it's competition will depend largely on how much good baseball the rest of the players can play during and just prior to their HS years.  Yes, of course quality practice and conditioning are a necessity.  And you have to have kids with decent character that want to compete.  But a group of 16-17 y.o. kids who play 50-70 games a year will almost always beat a group who plays 25.  

If MOST of your kids play those game as part of a summer club team, then there is less need for fall ball.  But if only a couple do so, the rest need to play.  We got our program turned around when we were able to get more than just a few kids playing baseball outside of just our spring HS season.  We have a fairly small school where most kids are multi-sport so it was a challenge to establish that culture.  Our "fall ball"  is actually a short summer season immediately following the HS season.

All that said, if you are looking for the real key to competing at the HS level... spend more time developing your pitchers than your competition does.

Passion4baseball,

The question should be, will playing fall ball make the spring team play worse?

I get the feeling that you’re miffed about something.

Around here,  baseball just never stops, for the most part -- though some parents and coaches do seem to be wising up.  But it's not really about HS based "fall ball"  around here.  It's about the ever growing travel industry.    Our now departed former HS coach used to insist, wisely, that all of our pitchers shut it down after November 1st and not pitch for their travel teams.  Several kids and parent learned the hard way that this was good advice. 

But many, many  travel teams here  compete locally right through December. There is big  tournament facility in our neck of the woods that holds  tournaments right through the fall and winter, with hardly a break.  They never go begging for teams to play and, in fact, almost always  sell out their slots and have waiting lists of teams wanting in.    The younger teams  (14U and below) may take a break in mid to late December but then  tey start up again just after the Xmas holidays.  The HS age teams start optional, supposedly,  open fields in November.  That's mostly about conditioning, by section rules,   to be sure,  but some of the kids do their school open fields and continue to play for their travel teams.  

We even have multi-sport  guys on our club team who practice football all week,  play a football game on Friday night, view game film on Saturday, and then come play in a baseball tournament for us on Sunday.  The fear seems to be that if they are serious about baseball (and their other sport or sports)  they gotta keep at the baseball even when they are in their other season.   Crazy stuff.  But not at all unusual in these parts.  These kids seem never ever to take a rest.  Don't know when it got like that.  It's a bit crazy.   All for dedication to craft.  But a body can only take so much. 

Well, you're the coach, so if you don't see a benefit don't do it. 

I'm just a parent, but I see a lot of benefits to our school's program.  In addition to what's already been mentioned.

• The team practices on the field two days per week and plays on Saturdays.  The other three days focus on weights, ladders, yoga, etc, so it's not just about baseball but getting the kids in shape.
• The team has a culture pertaining to being on time, getting to the field, warmups,  field prep, equipment maintenance, etc, and fallball is when the upperclassmen teach the young guys how all that is done.
• The team does fundraising in fall.  They bang on doors and sell Christmas trees in the fall, and raffle tickets in spring. Without fundraising they wouldn't have an all-weather, lighted cage or a scoreboard. (and neither would the softball teams, but that's another thread)
• The team, particularly the new kids, get to see the  kind of pitching they'll see in the spring, and both players and coaches get a read on how ready they may be.
• Due to overlaps, fall is pretty much the only way for coaches to figure out what team, if any, the basketball players and wrestlers will make.
• Around here, fall is a club sport, so the families pay to play.  I'm not sure how much of that goes where, but assuming some money goes to compensate underpaid and unpaid coaches, that's fine by me.

And of course, another benefit is that we parents get to see some ball.

This isn’t at all the norm, but this year it happened. Our very good, long time HVC and the only HC we’ve ever had stepped down in Sept, and a new AD had to hire a new HC for a very very successful program. The guy they hired had been away from coaching HS baseball for about 10 years, but has a good history. Unfortunately, he’s seen none of the players play last season or last summer, so he’s coming into it virtually blind.

Add to that, the V asst coach for the last 8 years has taken the HC job at another school, so that help is gone. Also, the school board reinstituted FR sports this past June, but wants them started for this fall’s football season, so the FR sports programs at 9 HSs have to be started back up after a 4 year hiatus. The old HC has taken over the Fr program so he can coach his son, so at least that’s something positive.

Adding to the mess is, 6 staring position players and 4 of the 6 pitchers from last season graduated, leaving only one starting pitcher, one reliever, a starting outfielder, and last years starting 2^nd baseman.

The final straw is, we’re a DI(Largest) school that had played in a 6 team league for 8 years. This season there’s been a realignment, and they’ve combined two 6 team DI leagues into 1 8 team league made up from only the best teams of the old 2 leagues.

It isn’t too difficult to see this guy’s got one heck of mountain to climb, so fall ball this year has taken on a whole new meaning, and I’m having a ball watching what’s going on!

....crickets!