Wow luv baseball. So you are saying that if a kid gets cut at 8th grade level, he never gets another opportunity to try out? Maybe I misunderstood your comments. Otherwise that seems to be a strange way to build a program, especially since a lot of kids don't come into their own until 9th or 10th grade. Oh well, every coach has his own method. I'm just glad my kid wasn't in a system like that. We do have middle school and 9th grade teams, as well as JV and V. My son did get cut in his first attempt at middle school as a 7th grader. To be honest, everyone was shocked. It was a shock to his system, but looking back, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to him. I told him that at the time, but you can only imagine the response I got from him and especially mom. Now, 5 years later he has signed a NLI to his dream school and he is getting moderate attention for the 2015 draft. I can only imagine there are MANY kids just like my son that in your son's system would never have gotten a second chance, or even had the opportunity to receive a learning lesson for life in general.
Younggun - yep...as noted by others you could come back in 9th or 10th grade but it was a big stone to get up the hill. When mine were going through never saw it happen. Also noted that I wondered if they "missed" on late bloomers that went on to football or something else.
My son was one of those 5'8" 155lb 13 year olds that was very polished and he finished as a 5'10" 165lb very polished player. There were kids he played with - that jumped up 6+" and added 30lb in that Freshman/Sophomore time and I wondered if they might have given up too soon.
The thing that drives a lot of it IMO is that the 10-14 travel thing is huge in my area and anyone who wants to be a player is on that circuit - or at least 90% are.