Death by Intra Squad, Why No Focus on Skills

From what I understand, the fall is an entire tryout for Spring.  Having only a couple games would be very limiting.  As a staff, you'd want as many data points as possible.  The individual work is on their own.

everypitch:

When I coached at SSU in California. I expected the player to ask questions of the Coach. With batting cages, tees and a running track, no player should "stand around". Someone is always watching.

Develop your program, be creative. What signals are you sending the coach?

Bob

Half the team is pitchers.  They pitch their intrasquad innings against live hitters, they do their other training too.

That leaves half (20?) to form two fielding/hitting teams, plus some are always injured.  So I don't think there's a lot of standing around.

Let’s do some math. For the sake of discussion let’s say your school will carry a 35 man roster in the fall. Let’s also say that you have 25 players returning from last year’s team. Your new recruiting class contains 15 freshmen and 5 JuCo transfers. You also have brought in 5 players from the transfer portal. So that’s 25+15+5+5 = 50 players in the fall that are hoping to be part of the 35 man spring roster. That means 15 players will be cut at the end of the fall and coaches need to decide who will be kept and who will be let go based on in game performance. Not drill work. That’s why they play so many intrasquad games. Fall ball is an extended tryout. Half the roster has not made the team when they show up on campus. This is what many people don’t seem to understand.

I assume you're talking about D1? There are rules that dictate the amount of hours a team can practice as a team. I think at this level players should have the baseball IQ and abilities to to improve their individual skills on their own. When I say on their own, because of the rules a good part of the fall is spent on indies. Unfortunately if you're relying on the coaches to make your kid better, that's not the case at a lot of schools. For example I've seen the off season pitching programs several schools have given their players that are basically a vanilla NPA program (the holds are a giveaway). I know of one school that completely outsources their pitching instruction.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

I’ll add the HS experience here because this was a similar topic of conversation with my 2026 recently.  He said intra-squad play is 2-3 days a week and, in his opinion, makes or breaks some of the players chances of making the team in the spring.  It probably also helps the coach move some players up.