Our experience:
Team makeup should be of single class year (I.e. 2025). D1s will be scouting 2025 events this summer, not 18U/2022.
—5-6 Shortstops
—5-6 Center Fielders
—3-4 Catchers
—Pitchers for each day. If 2 way they appear above. Pitchers knew their innings in advance.
Lots of evidence on this site to say those are the positions recruited. Not to say if you are a left handed first baseman you can’t have a spot—of course you can.
Usually we didn’t have every player make every event. In our son’s case we did Showball and some college camps and missed some weekends. You don’t want a roster so small you can’t do your own thing when you need to.
Scouting:
Our team was pretty consistent featuring the players in their “normal” position when they were being actively scouted, especially when coach had spoken to scout prior to game. For early D1 commits, we had a national team to increase draft exposure and that team travelled out of region to Florida, etc.
Coach should offer to speak to college coaches on your sons’ behalf. Team used fieldlevel which was inexpensive recruiting service where we could post videos and coach could market players.
Lineup was visibly posted at all games with positions and jersey numbers. Super simple, but amazed how many teams don’t do that. They also set up radar and video stream—takes almost no investment to do that with a phone and pocket radar. I was surprised how many people would stop by and just watch the velocities.
Practices/other:
We were regional team and had practices 2 times per week. Many teams don’t, and our son appreciated the opportunity to practice.
We only played in scouted events and showcases. We picked up games/scrimmages locally rather than traveling for a non-scouted tournament (except during Covid).
One thing I better appreciated after going through the process was that our coach gave equal opportunity to all levels—NAIA to D1 P5–we had all levels on the team. His emphasis was to get son on an appropriate roster—as one player committed, he worked his way down the roster to get the next in line a spot.
One thing we didn’t have that we would have liked was a facility with cages and tunnels to use outside of practices.
We had a tryout, and some players were recruited without tryout. Coaches also coached for high school and knew who could play.
I would say we had equal playing time—if you made the team you were going to play. Our team batted entire lineup. About the only “unequal” part of playing time was batting order, but again if player was being looked at he would be in top 4 batters. That being said we won a lot of games and finished as runner up in large tournament—players gave a lot of effort. No one should pay money to sit on the bench—this isn’t high school where only focus is on winning.
Hope this helps and good luck this summer!