Little League Player Participation Requirements

The Game Room
1

Little league International requires that every player who shows up at a game plays 2 defensive innings and gets one at bat.

Most Little League uses these minimum mandatory play requirements at the “Majors” level but have far more inclusive mandatory play requirements at lower levels.

Depending on how you measure the success of your little league, these requirements are a blessing or a bane. But it is pretty clear that one of the reasons for the slow leakage of players from little league to travel leagues is the result of these more inclusive mandatory play requirements. Thoughts?

2

I don’t follow. Are kids saying “I don’t want to play Little League any more, because they make me play”, or are they saying “I don’t want to play Little League any more, because they make my teammates play”?

And how relevant could these rules be, anyway? If a kid’s so bad that the coach wouldn’t want them to play even two innings, wouldn’t they not be on the team to begin with? Surely the teams aren’t required to accept every player who signs up, or you could kill a team just by signing up 41 kids to it (or whatever you get from 4.5 times the number of innings, rounded up).

3

It varies from league to league but in many places, “everyone plays”
Everyone gets placed on a team regardless of ability.

For example, my kid’s little league requires every kid plays an equal number of times on the field at least two of those fielding innings (out of 6) must be in the infield. They also require a continuous batting order so everyone bats about the same number of times. In addition there are “must draft” kids. So every 12 year old in the draft pool must be drafted onto a Majors team (this isn’t actually a big deal because the lower mandatory play requirements discourage bad players from signing up); every 11 year old must be drafted onto a AAA team; every 9 or 10 year old must be drafted onto a AA team. The notion is that every kids should have a little league experience regardless of ability.

So you frequently end up with teams with 4 good players 4 solid players and 4 bad players. The draft keeps the teams evenly balanced but Little League in many places with these more inclusive PPRs are losing its good players to travel teams where the good player can play with other good players.

There are little leagues that have been entirely gutted by the departure of all the good players older than 9 or 10. They have been reduced to a T ball, Machine Pitch and Coach Pitch. There are no player that can actually pitch the ball anymore in those leagues.

In our area the local Parks and rec league has closed up shop because Little league has taken all the parks and recs players but now the travel teams are taking all our good players.

4

I thought travel teams always had the best players?

5

The best, most serious players don’t want to play in their local league because there aren’t cuts (there will be some truly awful players), everyone plays, and they may not be playing as many games as travel teams. The travel team offers more games and better competition. And oh yeah, it’s probably gonna cost a hell of a lot more, too. Personally, I hate this revelation of travel leagues for baseball, basketball, hockey, you name it in youth sports.

The way my LL coach (my dad) handled the play time was as easy as it gets; a set rotation. LL games are 6 innings, so you can easily split up the playing time in half. With 12 guys on the team, 3 will sit the first 3 innings, the next 3 guys sit innings 4-6. In a tie game and the best player is due to be benched? Too bad, it’s little league. Deal with it. I sat on the bench the first 3 innings of every season until pony league to show the coach’s kid is not immune to the rules.

6

there was a strange game in little league playoffs maybe around 10 years ago. The team ahead realized they had not had one kid come up to bat. They wanted to tie the game up so they would have 1 more at bat - they were trying to give up runs. The other team figured out what was going on and tried not to score. I can’t recall the outcome.

(they had to get the kid an at bat or else they would lose by forfeit)

7

The purpose of Little League is to allow children to have fun and learn playing baseball. You cannot learn sitting on the bench, and if a child is so bad at baseball that its detracts from his teammates’ enjoyment of the game, the problem is with the coach’s ineptitude at teaching baseball skills, and his teammates’ attitudes.

The requirements as stated in the OP are, if anything, far too relaxed. If I were running a league, ALL the players would be in the lineup, even if that meant it was a lineup 12 to 14 kids long, there would be free defensive substitutions for all positions except pitcher, and no child would be permitted to sit out defensively for more than two consecutive innings or three innings out of six. (This is pretty much how my LL operated, actually.)

It is customarily the case that kids do not sign up to a team, they sign up to a league, and are then distributed amongst the teams.

Of course it is true that it’s unusual for kids who are totally inept to want to play at all, but there’s always a worst kid on the team. And he should get to play like anyone else. It’s a pay to play system, and if his parents paid the fee, he should hit and field.

8

I coached Little League in Virginia for three years as a team manager and several more seasons as assistant. Every kid who registers is placed on a team. You can put in requests but in levels below Majors the league has a draft at each level to decide what team you go on. The draft starts from scratch (empty teams) each year. (In the Majors the managers are actually doing team building and identify talented younger players and they get to keep them on their team in subsequent years.) We used more liberal participation rules below Majors, as Damuri Ajashi mentions. For levels below majors, we had rules that were something like no player can sit out two defensive innings until every player has sat out one inning; every player bats in the order (so you have more than 9 batters). The point was to give everyone as close to equal playing time as possible.

I do not have experience with travel teams but this may be true. It requires more commitment from both the players and parents so it’s natural that there would be a correlation between commitment and skill level. But I’m not sure how tryouts work and how selective they are.

I agree wholeheartedly. At this age it’s about fun and learning, and not about winning at all costs. Vince Lombardi would have sucked as a Little League coach.

9

That used to be the case. In my area, there is a travel baseball league with AA, AAA and Metro divisions. All you need is a few dads to get together and announce a tryout and you have a couple hundred kids showing up 10 spots.

10

[quote=“Barkis_is_Willin, post:5, topic:824850”]

The best, most serious players don’t want to play in their local league because there aren’t cuts (there will be some truly awful players), everyone plays, and they may not be playing as many games as travel teams. The travel team offers more games and better competition. And oh yeah, it’s probably gonna cost a hell of a lot more, too. Personally, I hate this revelation of travel leagues for baseball, basketball, hockey, you name it in youth sports.

The only Little League requirement is that every player that is present at the start of the game must get 2 defensive innings and one at bat. If you follow this bare minimum little league requirement, the truly awful kids don’t really stick around. This makes the play a lot better and you lose fewer players to travel ball but you have closed Little League as an opportunity for un-athletic kids to participate in organized sports.

I always thought that little league in other countries were better because they all worked harder (Japan’s infamous 10 hour practices), etc. It turns out that many of these places do not have anything more than the bare minimum mandatory play requirements so you have 7 year olds sitting on the bench most of the game. All the marginal players just disappear by the time they are 8 or 9 and in order for them to field the minimum number of majors teams, they have to expand the territory so you get a higher concentration of talent. The midrange or entry level travel teams don’t really offer anything little league isn’t already offering in those places.

11

You don’t have to play in games to get better. You can attend practice. That’s where you earn game time.

You have obviously never coached little league. Its not that these kids can’t get better, its that they will never get any good, the potential simply isn’t there. They will never be able to consistently make that throw from shortstop to first.

That is in fact what we use before majors. Its called a continuous batting order.

Our league does not allow anyone to sit out two innings until everyone has sat out one. Noone sits out 3 until they get to majors.

It is not unusual at all for totally inept kids to sign up for little league, I’d say at least 10-20% of the kids are never going to be decent players. Every team has 2 or 3 or even 4 of these kids. Knowing this, you pick your poison and pick the inept kid whose mom makes brownies or whose dad is a good coach, etc. But when you have 3 or 4 of them on your team it is painful.

Other parents are paying the (very low) fee as well, you are allowing something to suck for 12 kids so that 2 kids who will probably quit as soon as the lower play requirements kick in. All the coaches are volunteers, everyone in the organization is a volunteer. And almost worse than the player drain is the drain of coaches and other volunteers who take their kids to travel teams.

12

It wasn’t a Little League game, but a Cal Ripken league game - and somewhere in the national tournament, no less. The team that was batting intentionally struck out, so the game ended with one of the home team’s players not batting (IIRC, he would have batted in the previous inning, had there not been a double play), and the forfeiture was upheld.

Originally, when Little League added the rule nationwide (the league I played in was one of the first to do it, but (a) instead of a forfeiture, the game had to be replayed, and (b) our league had a two-hour time limit, and the vast majority of games didn’t get to the sixth inning in time, in which case the rule did not apply it was possible for everyone to have played had there been a sixth inning), it did not apply to tournament play - after all, each team already consisted of a league’s best 14 players - but eventually it was included.

I also think one of the reasons it was added was, it was right after Little League had gotten rid of its “boys only” policy, and they wanted to make sure managers didn’t sit the girls out intentionally.

As for “the slow leakage to travel leagues,” could the shift from the softball-sized fields to the regulation sized ones have something to do with it? And how many travel league teams have 13 and 14-year-olds? You would think they would continue onto something like Babe Ruth or Little League Senior League first.

13

Well, I have. And at ages 6-10 it’s not about making the throw from shortstop to first, it’s learning to be part of a team, learning a love for the sport, and having fun. This is not grooming for MLB.

14

Hey listen, you’re right. But as you note, your local little league fees are much lower than the travel league. If your top priority is for your kid to play meaningful baseball against the best competition, play travel ball. If that’s not a commitment you want to make, well, you’re stuck with little league.

I’ve coached a few levels of baseball too, and it’s one thing for bad players who want to be there. If they have the desire to play then I want to coach them. It’s the kids who don’t want to be there, regardless of their talent level, that are a drain on the volunteer coaches.

15

You can’t walk the batter to tie it up?

Its not like it used to be. Travel ball starts as early as 8U. Most travel clubs have a 10u squad. Just about every travel club has a 13U team. There are little leagues in my area that have collapsed from the hemorraghing of all the good to decent players to travel teams.

16

I don’t recall saying anything about the MLB but little league international is the one that set the 2 defensive innings and 1 at bat minimum. Did they get it wrong? should they have an “equal playtime” requirement?

I was pointing out that the are in fact plenty of kids that are bad enough that managers would want to bench them most of the game and they are really not going to get anywhere near good from volunteer parents coaching them. When all the good kids leave for travel teams and the concentration of the kids that can’t play gets high enough, the little league collapses because noone want to play a game where the pitchers can’t throw strikes. Better to go play some something like soccer where you can have fun even if you are not athletic as long as you are playing with other non-athletic kids.

And at the 10 year old level most solid players can make that throw from shortstop, its not a high bar.

The kids that are not good may be learning a love of the sport, but it’s at the expense of other kids who are good. They’re not having fun or even learning the game. Its hard to learn the game when half your infield can’t throw or catch. So the parents take the good kids to travel teams and the little league is left without any players that can pitch and you get walkathons up to the 10 or 11 year old level. It isn’t long before registration numbers drop and the little league pretty much becomes a T Ball and coach pitch league.

17

The kids leaving are a problem. The bigger problem is that they take their parents with them and majority of the volunteers that form the backbone of every little league have kids that are good. So you lose those volunteers and then there is no little league. Mostly I don’t want to see little laague die in my area like it did in a neighboring area. Its incredibly easy to start your own travel team. All you need is a dozen kids that can play.

From the coaching perspective, you’re right. It’s gratifying to coach a kid that wants to play, no matter how good he is. I would gladly take one or two of those on my team. What happens when you have 4 of them and you have to play 2 of them in the infield every inning? Players start leaving the league for travel ball after a couple of season on teams like that.

You have to play those kids, even when they miss every practice and they miss every third game.

I suppose the question is whether it is worth reconsidering the “everybody plays every inning” policy that so many little leagues have in order to stanch the hemorrhaging of good players to travel ball.

You know where they don’t have travel ball issues? In places where they don’t self impose higher play requirements.

18

The MLB comment was not a quote but in response to the general tone of your posts with comments like, “Better to go play some something like soccer where you can have fun even if you are not athletic as long as you are playing with other non-athletic kids.” Kids do need to learn about competition but at Little League age (at least the minors) kids are there to play. It shouldn’t matter how talented they are.

“[there] are in fact plenty of kids that are bad enough that managers would want to bench them most of the game” But why? This implies that the managers are so hung up on winning that they forget that they are there to create an experience for the kids. “they are really not going to get anywhere near good from volunteer parents coaching them” So what? They are kids playing an organized sport–and this is where my comment comes in–not training to make it to the MLB. Or even college ball. Or maybe not even high school ball. These are children.

“the little league collapses because noone [sic] want to play a game where the pitchers can’t throw strikes” Maybe I was fortunate to live in a community that has huge support for its little league. There was never even the least bit of concern that LL players were leaking out to travel teams and threatening the collapse of LL. Our LL has about 60 teams. When I was coaching the concern was not losing players to travel teams but how to get enough coaches to be able to create enough teams to meet the demand.

19

I think that the rise of the travel teams, etc… are a symptom of a larger problem in youth sports.

That problem is that people take it WAY, WAY too seriously. Some small percentage end up making into the minors/college, and a small percentage of them make it to the majors.

Yet parents are starting their kids at 3 or 4 playing baseball, basketball and football. My son started playing YMCA rec-league basketball at 6 after he finished kindergarten, and he seemed to be far behind in terms of basketball skills! At 6! How fucking absurd is that? A kid who just finished kindergarten is one of the worse kids on his team of 6 and 7 year olds because he didn’t start years earlier?

And it only gets worse from there- you get people doing nutritionists, special coaching/private coaching, conditioning coaching, etc… And they play on travel teams / club teams, etc… which seem to be taking the place of the traditional school teams.

A friend’s daughter was a semi-serious soccer player, and he opined that the girls really considered their club teams to be the “real” teams, and the school ones were just for fun. The parents spent THOUSANDS of dollars on dues, travel, uniforms, coaching, etc… for high school age girls soccer. This for a sport that pays its players at the highest level UNDER $8000 a year in most cases.

It’s crazy; it sucks a lot of the fun out of it I suspect, and also makes it more of a game to see which kid has the richest and/or most committed parents, so that they can make the most of their mediocre natural talent.

To me, this somehow seems fundamentally wrong; it’s putting a lot of pressure on the kids from parents who want to see results for their money, and kids who feel like they have to perform, along with setting up an un-level playing field for kids whose parents can’t afford professional coaching or nutritionists, or trainers or for them to play in high-level summer leagues, etc…

I think what the OP is describing is just a subset of this larger phenomenon.

20

You can’t walk them if they keep swinging at the pitches.