Roster limit creates competition

Our younger son played for one of the best HS coaches in the country.  Thats not just me saying that, its backed up by lots of accomplishment.

In any case, his varsity roster at a very competitive HS varied each year.  The most I saw was around 27 players.  The least was around 20.

How did he decide?  He told me that it was incredibly easy.  He just looked at the talent break-off and drew the line there.  He said the line was always easy to find and falls somewhere in the 20's at his school.

He also allowed a little bit of player input.  He would explain to each player what his role was likely to be.  For example, when our son was a sophomore, he pulled him into a meeting and said, 'I need you on varsity as a pitcher, but not as a hitter this year.  If you really want to hit on a regular basis, I will let you go to JV, otherwise I'd be pleased to have you here.  Your choice.'

BTW, every player on those teams got a decent amount of playing time too - especially in games leading up to the league season.  I can't imagine a HS team being better run.

Unfortunately, for many schools such as ours, the definitive directive from administration regarding roster size is how many will fit in two vans

That aside...

I don't like having too many to where practices become too cumbersome and reps too few.  I don't like having too few where lack of depth, competition and role players are an issue as well as the inability to run some form of inter-squads and situational practices.  But beyond that, we take it year by year.  If players can fill a valuable role and be positive about doing so, keep them.  If a player is good but creates a bad atmosphere, don't keep.  Like jbb said, communication is key.  I think good competition is created more so by having/developing depth of decent players once the roster is chosen rather than limiting roster size in advance.

Originally Posted by justbaseball:

Our younger son played for one of the best HS coaches in the country.  Thats not just me saying that, its backed up by lots of accomplishment.

In any case, his varsity roster at a very competitive HS varied each year.  The most I saw was around 27 players.  The least was around 20.

How did he decide?  He told me that it was incredibly easy.  He just looked at the talent break-off and drew the line there.  He said the line was always easy to find and falls somewhere in the 20's at his school.

He also allowed a little bit of player input.  He would explain to each player what his role was likely to be.  For example, when our son was a sophomore, he pulled him into a meeting and said, 'I need you on varsity as a pitcher, but not as a hitter this year.  If you really want to hit on a regular basis, I will let you go to JV, otherwise I'd be pleased to have you here.  Your choice.'

BTW, every player on those teams got a decent amount of playing time too - especially in games leading up to the league season.  I can't imagine a HS team being better run.

The last coach I scored for like your has many accomplishments to his credit as a HS baseball coach, and except that one year out of the 8 I scored for him where we only had 19 on the roster, your post would be able to be used word for word with him. I’ve been scoring a loooong time now, and the truth is, except where the number of players coming out limited the roster size, I’ve never heard of a Varsity program that set a limit on the number of players.

That doesn’t mean if hasn’t happened, but I’ve never run into a coach who didn’t want as much talent on a roster as possible. I have seen Fr and JV programs that limit the roster size, but not Varsity.

Our roster was dictated by how many we had uniforms for.