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OK folks, interested in your opinion on this one.

7-8 year old boys in a coach pitch league. 13 boys on the team. 9 boys are into baseball, 4 are not. Of the 13 boys, 7 of them hit well. The other 6 are automatic strikeouts 95% of the time. We work hard with them for our 1.5 hour practice per week, but the 6 who struggle don't work on it at home.

Do I bat the 7 batters in order, and then the 6 who struggle? Or do I mix and match the good, the bad and the ugly?

All of the batters hit, whether they are in the field or not.

I ask because some of the good 8 year olds are getting frustrated because the 6 who don't work at it almost always kill rallies.

Should we just try to make hay 2 of the 6 innings, understanding the other 4 will probably be goose eggs?
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Hey Coach May...how ya doin?

You know what, I tried that. Because 1/2 the players are automatic outs, we can't get anything started. If it were 2 or 3 out of 13, then I wouldn't doubt myself. I could go 3 good, 1 bad, etc... and I believe we would be fine. If I go 1 good, 1 bad, etc... which is how it would be with a 50-50 split...we are lucky to get someone to 2B or 3B before the 3rd out. We don't score at all in those games.

I was thinking with putting our good 7 in a bunch, we stand a better chance of scoring 2 or 3 runs. Then we have 2 innings of nothing (5 or 6 strikeouts in a row). But at the end of 3, we have a few runs.

Just so you know, I like keeping the batting order fixed so the boys know who they follow from game to game. The only thing that varies is who leads off. If Ben leads off today, he moves to the bottom of the order next game.
Last edited by larrythompson
My experience is that you do a 1/3 to 2/3 mix. Here is the issue. If you stack your top 7 at the top, you can easily leave the bases loaded while 8,9,10 strikeout to kill the inning. If you have your weak 6 at the bottom, you waste two innings, you kill momentum, and you take away at bats from those who want to play. And if you go every other batter, you are almost guaranteed to never start a rally.

I used to mix them up. Take your weak 6...take the two best and bat them "up" (maybe 4th and 6th), take the two worst and bat them 12th and 13th, and then take the other two and maybe bat them 8th and 10th. Momentum can carry a team. Expectations can boost a team. Suprisingly, the "tweener" who is now batting 4th between two studs may find some success (even 1 in 5 balls will be an error or bad hop). And you have heard more than once that hitting is contagious....

Hope this helps...work hard, focus on the fundamentals and the rest will take care of itself. Good luck.
From my experience I have found that at the 7/8 year old age better than half the kids are there because Mommy and Daddy think it is the social thing to do---with that in mind you cannot expect all of them to return home and "work out" between practices and games.

I always interspersed the want to's with the want nots and hoped for some luck---at that age I was more concerned with them learning the game as best they could and not worry about winning even if the parents did worry about winning

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