Scrimmage for HS tryout?

My son's team always did a combination. Tryouts were 5 days. The first 3 days were basically workouts, taking ground balls, fly balls, batting practice, bullpens, etc...  Last two days were scrimmages. Got to see the players skills as well as their in game aptitude. I thought it worked out pretty good getting the best of both worlds.

To me, if you can do both, then do both.  So kids are workout "all stars" but stink it up in a game.  Others may not look "athletic" in a workout but actually know how to play the game.  Unfortunately, in most cases I think HS are too pressed for time.  With only a couple of weeks before competition, they can't afford to spend a lot of time in tryouts.      

They are pressed for time, but very often there are very few hidden gems to discover, and the coaches know the ones they are expecting to shine.

If a scrimmage isn't done, what is a good measurement of pitching skills besides just a bullpen?

Golfman: I would actually disagree with that last statement, i feel you can get a lot done at tryouts, we run our tryouts for one week and get a scrimmage or so usually on last day or two for the last couple spots on the team (if weather permits).  But, i actually feel besides the fact that you can get alot done, while still evaluating that the evaluation is almost more important than putting in plays and such.  Arent we always constantly evaluating? 

 

But our tryouts usually first day is pro workout, then other days work bullpens (with radar), Ball Exit speeds, cage time, fielding drills and so on, then on the last two days barring weather we do game situations with live scrimmage (example put runner on 2b, to see how defense, pitcher, hitter, runner all react) We also use these as teaching moments not just see who knows it and who doesn't.  Our final roster is posted that saturday about an hour after the days tryouts.  

On the varsity level this is undoubtedly true.  JV might be a different tale.

 

We have an unusual set up where there is no middle school or freshman baseball so 8th graders tryout for the HS JV.  Coaches generally have no idea what they are going to see and there are usually 75-100 kids that show up and they will take 6-8.  If you don't make it then HS baseball is over unless your family moves or you go to a private.  Tryouts last a week and are grueling 3 hour practices.  After two days about half are gone.  The 3rd day knocks it down to 15-18 and the final two days are highly stressful and competitive environment to win a spot.  Once in you are never cut. 

 

It is an interesting way to run a program in that you are looking at 13 and 14 years olds for 15 hours make a call on who stays and who goes and never look back.  A good coach could probably take the top 6-10 kids that are cut and make a decent team out of them.  This surely has cost some kids HS careers because of the lack of opportunity without MS or Frosh baseball.

 

Wow luv baseball.  So you are saying that if a kid gets cut at 8th grade level, he never gets another opportunity to try out?  Maybe I misunderstood your comments.  Otherwise that seems to be a strange way to build a program, especially since a lot of kids don't come into their own until 9th or 10th grade.  Oh well, every coach has his own method.  I'm just glad my kid wasn't in a system like that.  We do have middle school and 9th grade teams, as well as JV and V.  My son did get cut in his first attempt at middle school as a 7th grader.  To be honest, everyone was shocked.  It was a shock to his system, but looking back, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to him.  I told him that at the time, but you can only imagine the response I got from him and especially mom.  Now, 5 years later he has signed a NLI to his dream school and he is getting moderate attention for the 2015 draft.  I can only imagine there are MANY kids just like my son that in your son's system would never have gotten a second chance, or even had the opportunity to receive a learning lesson for life in general.

My sons school is similar to Luvbaseball. No middle school & no tryout until 9th grade. If kid doesn't make it first time around they can try again but very very rarely make it.

I think things are a little more cut and dried than people would like to believe.  I have come out of coaching retirement and where I am now sadly we don't even get enough to cut.  That's why I am roaming the hallways looking for athletes.  But when I was at a school with 100 kids trying out freshman year the first 10 or 12 were pretty obvious.  The next five or so you figured out.  It was only the last few spots that were sometimes hard to figure out.  At that point we just took whoever was most baseball savy so we wouldn't have to wast a lot of time teaching them basics.  Not to be harsh but the 19th 20th and 21st guy on the freshman team was never going to be an impact player on the varsity anyway.  Now with a radar gun in everybody's hand I would be measuring exit velocities, positional velocities, mound velocities as well as pop times 60 times and any other measurement I could think of.  A scrimmage is nice but I would never cut someone with good measurables cause they had a bad day in a scrimmage.

 

Tryouts here a similar here.  Like Luv baseball, we don't have a freshman team and just in the last year formed a middle school team.  Prior to that 8th graders could try out for JV.  The JV team usually consisted of a mix of 8th/9th graders and a few sophomores that needed one more year of seasoning.  Varsity was usually juniors, seniors and 1-2 sophomores if they had the skill set.  Now that there is a middle school team, 8th graders can only be on the middle school team and cannot tryout for JV - freshman and sophomores only.

 

Tryouts were usually a week long process with the majority of the cuts by the middle of the week.  Then the coaches continued to evaluate those "on the bubble."  Scrimmages were never used as an evaluation tool during the tryout process though I believe the coach would have intrasquad scrimmages.  True scrimmages against another team were usually the week before the regular season would begin - well after final cuts.

 

There's nothing stopping an athlete from trying out every year if they failed to make the team the year before.  However, if they haven't made the cut by their sophomore year, the chances of making the squad are probably on the low end.  Conversely, just because you've made the squad (JV or Varsity) the year before is no guarantee you'll make the squad the next year.  You still have to prove yourself.  I have seen juniors who made varsity as a sophomore, get cut from varsity.  It's rare, but it has happened.

Makes no sense ending a kids baseball chances at 14 years old.  Luckily our youngest son did not go to a school like that. They had a no cut policy.

 

When he was 14, there is little doubt, he would have been cut if they had a cut.  No way would he have made it based on ability and physical weakness. Three years later he was all state. Improved the most after high school. Then at age 22 he was playing in front of 50,000 fans in the Major Leagues.

 

Sounds like that could not have happened at some high school programs. That is really sad and very narrow minded.

Our HS has both kinds of tryouts, skills and scrimmages over a four day period. Several camps and open fields before the tryout also provide opportunities for kids to get a look.

 

Our HS will normally keep 20-25 Freshmen on the freshmen team, 18-22 on JV and 20-22 on varsity.

 

In discussions with the coach, he tries to keep every freshman who shows any kind of skill and basically won't be in a safety hazzard situation if they play. The most difficult cuts are at JV where things really get cut down and then again when 3-5 broken hearted seniors who don't make varsity and are let go. Every player is required to try out every year.

 

I think our HS coach does everything he can to provide the player to show he belongs and prove it.

I never did scrimmage games as a part of tryouts.  I had too much coaching/teaching to do and so, didn't want to spend my time in that way.  We had 3 days of tryouts before 1st cut.  Then, typically had to wait a couple of days before basketball players tried out.  In Illinois, there is an overlap of those sports seasons.  The first Saturday after the team was picked, we had our parent's meeting and then, pretty much concentrated on skills development.  Instead of scrimmages, we did live BP where our staff threw and inning or two to hitters who rotated in.  Instead of fielding balls from scrimmages, instead we put runners on the bases and one in the left handed batter's box and the pitcher delivered a pitch.  I then hit the ball somewhere.  I loved situational infield/outfield like this and could get a lot more done than in a scrimmage. 

I coached at two stat championship programs in illinois and we would never have said a kid can not try out again.  In fact when I kid came back out sophomore year after being cut freshman year we made every effort to keep him because it showed a lot of courage and determination to put himself out there again.  And we never cut a senior.  Why would a school this?  Are you telling me that spot on the bench is that important?  Are you up against roster limits? I don't care if the kid is going to play or not I would never cut a kid who has given three years to the program unless he became some sort of issue.

Younggun - yep...as noted by others you could come back in 9th or 10th grade but it was a big stone to get up the hill.  When mine were going through never saw it happen.  Also noted that I wondered if they "missed" on late bloomers that went on to football or something else. 

My son was one of those 5'8" 155lb 13 year olds that was very polished and he finished as a 5'10" 165lb very polished player.  There were kids he played with - that jumped up 6+" and added 30lb in that Freshman/Sophomore time and I wondered if they might have given up too soon.

 

The thing that drives a lot of it IMO is that the 10-14 travel thing is huge in my area and anyone who wants to be a player is on that circuit - or at least 90% are.

This year’s tryouts are going to be far far different than any I’ve been associated with in the past. When my boy was playing, the HC had only been HC for 1 season, but he’d been the asst V coach for 4 years so he knew all the players in the program and it was a moderately successful program. For the last 8 seasons it’s been different. The school opened 10 years ago, only had 1 coach and he was already a 15 year very successful HC, so he knew all the players in the program too, and it was an extremely successful program.

 

Then we come to this upcoming season. The team I’ll be scoring for has been playing baseball since 2006. They’ve won 33 games while losing 170 and won 2 league games in 118 contests. They’ve never had a HC longer than 3 seasons, and this year’s HC is new. Not only is he new, he took over the program in Oct this year, so he’s never seen anyone on the team play although he was able to have several fall practices. About all the information we have about last season’s team is the stats. Without going into too much detail, the team BA was .208, OBA was .298 and ERA was 13.40.

 

The reason I gave all that information is to show that this year will be the 1^st time I can remember that the spring tryouts will really be that. Literally no one has a spot, so I can only imagine how much time is gonna go into the selection process. With only 18 players showing up for fall practices for all 3 teams, it’s unlikely there’s gonna be a lot of cuts, but there’s certainly gonna be one heck of a lot of trying to figger out who’ll be playing where and how often.

 

No matter what anyone thinks, in most programs there are very very few spots open. The reason is, few of the players are total unknowns and there is a lot of “carryover”. Because of that I’ll be very interested in watching the process work. The OP asked about a scrimmage, but how do you have a scrimmage when you know so little? Yup, this year is gonna be a real trip.