quote:Originally posted by Doughnutman:
If you are not on Varsity, you play with your age group to develop the team concept. A lot of times it is better to play on the freshman squad. JV is sometimes filled with players who have little chance to ever play varsity but they want them to be kept in the program to fill uniforms. JV is where more careers end than Freshman IMO.
I agree with this statement as opposed to frosh ball being the death sentence. When my son played HS ball, most of the key cuts were players going thru JV. Freshman kids are given a shot to develop and the ones who got cut for frosh ball had no real chance in the first place. JV is where the coaches see the development or the lack of it to play at the next level and the players who stick it out in JV thru their junior year typically will make varsity although they'll have to do a lot to get some playing time and have an idea their roles may be limited.
When my kid made the freshman team, he platooned and only got about 25 ABs in his freshman year. Part of that may be frosh coach is learning who the players are and in my son's case, he did most of his pitching freshman year because he had a strong arm. As he developed in the system, he got away from pitching and developed more as an offensive force and worked on his hitting and improve his speed because he was an outfielder and the way to win a starting spot in the OF was to hit and cover ground in the OF. It was his bat that won him a starter on the varsity batting in the middle of the order. Although when he made varsity, he played LF but once the coach saw he was more comfortable in his natural spot in RF during practices I assume, and had the strongest OF arm, he eventually moved back to RF and also played some CF. His defense improved each year He went on to lead in OF assists his last 3 years between JV and varsity, committed only one error in his last 2 years as a starter in the outfield and he may currently be the last player to get four hits in his conference in a conference tournament game since he graduated two seasons ago.
He paid his dues and wasn't in a baseball cemetary just because he played freshman ball. From what I've seen it's how they developed in JV.