Hi All –
Not sure if anyone has any experience with this, or if there are any HS coaches out there. Here is the situation. My son is a freshman in HS. Tryouts for the baseball team this week. It’s a pretty competitive program at his school and they normally get 75 – 100 kids going out for 28 positions. For the most part my son is a position player. He is saying he is going to primarily tryout as an outfielder as about 90% of the other kids have indicated they are primarily infielders. Over the last couple of years he has played mostly 1st base and left field. Splitting his time between both of them. In addition he has done some pitching in the past. In LL he was the primary pitcher on his teams. Last year in travel ball he only pitched 8 innings; pitching occasionally whenever the coach felt like he needed someone in relief but did not want to “waste” one of his primary pitchers. I think his ERA for the 8 innings pitched was 0.2. Anyway, one thing we noticed with his coach was that he had a tendency to stick with what he knew and as our son hadn’t pitched for him in the past he would go to one of his past pitchers whom he had worked with for a few years. We went into the season knowing this about the coach so it wasn’t a major issue for my son.
Fast forward to HS tryouts. My son is now debating whether or not to tryout as a pitcher as well as a position player. My general thought on this is that if he shows he can also be used as a pitcher, though not his primary position, then it wouldn’t hurt him. In fact if the coach knew he had a player which could fill in in an emergency situation then it may help him make the team. On the other hand, it could look like desperation, a kid looking for anywhere to fit in. I have suggested to my son that he go talk to the coach and ask him how he feels about this, but 14 YOs aren’t necessarily reliable so Im guessing he will get nervous and not do this. Anyway, does anyone have any insight on to how they would handle this situation?
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