How does your handle fielding positions?

We take infield and outfield at every practice and every player has at least one infield position and takes outfield. Many of our players have 3 or 4 positions. We are gifted with 7 pitchers and 6 players that want to catch.

My son's LL coach likes each kid to play a few positions including one outfield position. My 12 year old plays 1B/3B/RF/P. His glove and arm are decent but his foot speed isn't very good.

Jason

We carry 10 kids...all of the play IF and OF...all of them pitch (and have pitched this year)..anyone who is interested in Catching will be taught to do so...right now we have 6 Catchers and 5 of them have caught in games

redbird,

We have a similar situation. All of ours have played infield and outfield, and almost all pitch. We have a 5 man starting rotation and 11 of the 12 have pitched in games. We play a lot of games (70+) and need to be able to spread the innings around. Wished I shared your fortunes on catchers though...We have 2 that catch regularly and 2 that have occasionally. One of our regulars is out for 6 weeks with 2 broken wrists.

I've got a LL majors team at the moment. We've got 12 kids on the roster and only 1 hasn't played in the infield yet. He's the one who has consistently been late to or missed practice and games. We've twice told him we'd work with him on an infield position at the next practice and he then missed the practice.

All the kids, even the one missing practices, play a minimum of 3 innings per game and usually at least 4 innings given that we've had a couple games without a full roster.

My freshman college son is a good example for kids learning more than 1 position.

In high school he was a well regarded catcher here in San Diego. At his DI college what has gotten him the starting lineup is his ability to play more than one position. So far this season, he has started in left field, center field, right field and 3rd base. No time yet at the position he was recruited at, catcher. Luckily for him he played many positions growing up so he could learn more about the game. It's helped immensely in his first year of college baseball.

He hasn't missed catching at all to this point I guess because he's happy to be in the starting lineup at any position.

Advice: try to learn and master more than 1 position as you go, it will give a coach at the next level several options to get your bat in the lineup that maybe other players on the team don't give him.

I agree with matadordad. My oldest son(an '02 HS grad)only played first base beginning with summer little league. He was so good at catching the ball and at that level catching the ball at first was very important. He was also a power hitter. When he transferred to another school his junior year the first base position was filled. He had to quickly learn to be a utility player(right field, left field, third base, catcher and pitcher). This past year his high school coach said he wished he had made him his varsity catcher when he came to the school. Hindsight is 20/20.
My youngest son(an 8th grader) is the catcher for his jr. high team, but is also the #2 pitcher. He also fills in at 3rd base and at shortstop.