[Carrman]

As I posted a month or so ago, I'm the head coach for my son's 8-9 year old LL baseball team. I've coached him individually (successfully!) for the past 4-5 years in baseball, but never coached his team before.

Our practices are done, and our games are beginning. Wondering about a couple of different strategy calls:

Background - 8-9 year olds, 12 to a team. Kid pitch. Regular rules, except can't lead off (steal after pitch passes the plate) and can't steal home.

Kids try out, and are then selected in a draft. As you might expect, there is a wide range of players. Some, like my son, have played 5 years and are very seasoned. For others, this is their first year!

As the teams generally break down, the first 4 or so players are very strong. The next 2-3 are pretty good. The next 3 average. The bottom 2 or 3 are of very limited abilities. By "limited abilities" I mean they cannot accurately throw from the second base position to first base, cannot usually catch a routine infield pop fly, and at this point are very unlikely to hit a pitched ball.

Questions:

1. Batting. It is best to just put all the best players up front? The first 3 who are most likely to get on base, fourth batter the power hitter, then the rest in order of likelihood to hit the ball? WE HAVE TO BAT ALL 12 PLAYERS IN ORDER THE ENTIRE GAME.

My strategy has been as above. Basically, batting in order of skill, from best (most likely to get on base, either by hit or walk) to worst.

The obvious problem with this is when you get to the bottom of the order! Kinda brutal with the last 3 being almost certain outs.

My wife thinks it would be better to "spread out" the bad batters throughout the lineup. I think it's better to keep them together at the bottom. What do you think?

2. Fielding. Kind of the same issue with fielding, but a bit more difficult.

No kid can sit out more than one inning in a row, and has to play 2 innings of infield (one in the first half of the game, one in the second).

Pitching is taken care of, that has to be the best pitchers, this is a position earned in practice.

Same with first - for safety reasons, I have to have a skilled player at first so we don't have teeth on the field.

But what about the rest of the infield? When I have my skilled players in the infield, they can easily turn plays and catch any catchable popup. The lower players have almost no hope of fielding the ball and throwing someone out, or of even catching an easy pop up.

Should I put all the skilled players in the infield at the same time, and hope to get some shutout innings? And then run the lower skilled players as an infield group, and hope for the best?

My inclination is to mix them up, always have at least 2 skilled infielders.