The boy is slumping really badly at the plate. One of the things about baseball that sucks is that it's probably the most subjective of major sports. It's not gymnastics, where people are sitting back and making qualitative judgements to determine the outcome. However, when it comes to spots on the lineup, it basically is.
"The judge from East Germany gives a perfect 10 to left-feet magoo who will now be playing starting shortstop!"
I thought Logan had a great off-season, but apparently, his coach didn't think so. He started off the season hitting 11 of 12. He's really been stinking it up, and now he's batting 12th.
Personally, I think the shock of starting the year in the 11 hole is what rattled his confidence. His coach doesn't think so. This is one of those things where you're basically just guessing. The coach has one guess, I have another. He could be right. Maybe he saw something about the boy that suggested he was slumping as the season started, and his performance is an indication that the coach was right.
More than anything, this is what's frustrating about baseball. Every player at every level will tell you that coaches have favorite players. They'll tell you about examples where a player really wasn't as good as the coach thought they were. They'll tell you about examples where a player was better than the coach thought.
There's no way to know, in the end. To a large degree, perception becomes destiny. If you treat a guy like the team's stud, he's that much more likely to be the team's stud. If you treat a guy like the worst guy on the team, eventually, he'll start playing like it.
Again, it's the subjective nature. It's seldom a case where you can say, "oh, look, this player is hitting .592, and this other player is hitting .121. The guy hitting .592 is better."
It's usually more like one guy is hitting .283 and the other is hitting .238, but the guy hitting .238 has a better on-base percentage because he's drawing more walks, etc.
You can see a guy muff a line drive, scramble to get it, make an off-balance throw that the first baseman can barely reach.
One coach, one day, for one player, will say, "He knocked down that hard liner and still managed to collect himself to put together a decent throw!"
Different day, or different coach, or different player, same play, and the coach is saying, "Well, I think we can see that kid has no skills with the leather. His throw was off-line, too."
Parents get to second guess the coach constantly. The complaint usually takes the form of, "Why isn't my kid doing X. That other kid isn't as good as my kid, and the coach lets him do X."
The coaches have a daunting task. Hours and hours of unpaid work. Having to make judgements on imperfect information. In the end, they're lucky if they get a thank you for all their trouble. It's like having a full-time job that you don't get paid for with 25 bosses any one of whom can ask for a meeting to tell you everything you're doing wrong.
On the other hand, coaches do have their favorites. A kid doesn't seem to have any defensive skills, but the coach thinks he sees something. That kid gets to play the entire game in the infield while another kid who is rock steady in drill after drill after drill ends up playing outfield the whole game.
One kid is as streaky as the next, but when he starts going 0-fer, he gets to work out his difficulties at the top of the order. Other kids on the team are hitting the cover off the ball, but the highest they can move in the batting order is 6th or 7th. The moment they have a bad game, they're back down to 9th.
It's frustrating to watch. Thing is, it's universal in baseball. You talk about these experiences to guys who have played the game long enough and they can finish every story for you. They've seen them all, a million times over.
I do wonder sometimes if my son would be better off playing for a different team. I worry that he's not getting the development that he should on this team. I do think he's one of the kids who has to prove himself twice as much in order to get half the respect.
It happened last year and he worked his way through it. The season started, and I was stunned to see him at the bottom of the order. There were broad swaths of the season where he led the team in hitting, but he never was allowed to move very high in the batting order. Eventually, he got to move into the leadoff spot and he continued to hit the cover off the ball.
He wasn't perfect. He had a big dry spell that lasted about 3 weeks. He didn't always mash. By the time the season ended, he finished middle of the pack on the team which, given the talent level on this team, is really an accomplishment.
I thought his off-season hitting was phenomenal. Frankly, I thought he had made a strong case that he was the best hitter on the team. If not the best, at least in the top handful.
When the season started, just like last year, with him batting in the basement, I think it took a lot of wind out of his sails. I know it took a lot out of mine. It just felt like, "oh geez, this again?"
I hoped that the first time was just a fluke. A lineup the coach threw together without all that much thought, and that would be jumbled up for the next outing. It wasn't. Then, by the time the coach got around to making changes, my boy was hitting dead last.
Is it just a slump? Could be.
Is it a case of perception being destiny? That since he's constantly treated like one of the worst, if not the worst hitter on the team, he just can't shake it off forever, given that he's 9 years old? I fear this is the case.
Am I totally delusional about the kid and unable to be objective about it? Quite possibly.
In the end, I don't blame the coach. I think he makes the wrong call with my kid a lot of the time.
Even so, I think he's a great coach. That seems like an apparent contradiction, but it really isn't. Holding a coach to a standard where they make the right call, every time, about every player, and where your son always gets things exactly as you think they should be is just a standard nobody can meet.
It is, in my opinion, a standard no youth coach can ever meet. In fact, I don't think there's a coach at any level that could meet it.
It's an impossible ideal and coaches shouldn't be measured against it.
Again, in apparent contradiction of this, I find myself hoping that my son can play for a different coach one of these days. Not because I think this coach is bad, or that another coach would be better.
Just because each coach is a little different and provides a different set of influences on the development of young players.
Having the same coach all 6 years of travel ball is good in a way: he's got a good coach. Frankly, one of the better coaches in the league, if you ask me.
It's also bad in a way, too. A new coach would bring different information, a fresh perspective, etc.
We played a team on Wednesday of last week and just clobberred them, despite the fact that we threw 5 different pitchers on them and they were probably the 4th through the 8th pitchers on the team. We played a lot of people defensively in positions they'd never played before.
The funny thing is: although the other team was not happy about losing, they were really enjoying playing the game. I just haven't seen that from my son on this team this season. I think maybe the team might be just a bit too serious, just a bit too talent-laden, just a bit too competitive to be on.
Granted, this is also a team that's likely to cruise to a tournament championship this weekend. Nobody else has been even close. Once our boys knock off all the Winter rust, they've got a strong case as being the best team in the league. There is only one other team that's good enough to make a viable claim, there.
Personally, I lean more towards fun than championships for 9 year olds. Plus, my son is 9, playing on a 10U team. It's not unheard of, but he is playing up. He's absolutely the youngest on the team, too.
I think due to the realities here, that my son will be playing for this team for the foreseeable future. I don't think I'll be doing the stats next year, though. I don't think it brings out the best in me. I'm too deep into it and I think having access to all this information just fuels some of my less noble tendencies.
The boy could also fail to make the team next year, too. It happens. If he made the "B" team, I see a lot of upside, there. He could get a lot more infield development. He'd get a lot more time on the mound. He wouldn't have to fight his way through quite as much talented traffic.
Basically, all I can do at this point is let things roll out however they're going to roll out.
In the mean time, my son is in a pretty dark place, baseball-wise. He's got too much going through his head when he's trying to hit. He's discouraged and I see it all over his at-bats. I've never seen him like this before. Today, his ABs were pretty bad. Three of them where it looked to me like he didn't want to be there at all.
If he were older, I'd be less worried. He's nine years old, though. He's in a place where I can't really help him. He's going to have to pull himself out of this. Nobody else can do it for him. That's a lot for a young kid to deal with.
All I can do is sit back, be supportive and let him know that my feelings about him as a person have nothing to do with what happens on a baseball diamond from day to day.
