This year's tryouts for Mavs baseball didn't quite go like I expected.
I watched the tryouts and thought that my son played fine. However, after a few days, we got a call that said they wanted to put Logan through an additional assessment.
My guess is that a few kids did really well and were going to displace Logan, but the Mavs wanted to be able to compare the kids head-to-head.
Problem was, Logan had a football scrimmage the night before. Gashed his knee open. Took him to the ER and he needed stitches. So, he couldn't do anything athletic for a week.
The Mavs tryouts are, in my opinion, fair. They're not perfect. There are some rather obvious problems with them. However, the team is a community resource and as such, they really try to do what they can to make the process as fair as they can.
They don't share a lot of the rationale behind their decisions. That makes sense to me. There comes a time when you have to name a team and that's that.
In my opinion, the system they've set up gets things pretty much right, most of the time. However, it has the potential every now and then to really blow it.
I think that's what happened with Logan.
First day of the tryouts, which is basically the only day anything happens, they're evaluating the players on the classic "5 tools".
On one of the fielding stations, the players are graded on fielding three line drives and making throws to first.
Logan made two of the plays. The third one, though, was simply impossible for him to get. He ranged and dove and really did everything humanly possible, but the ball was still beyond his glove. Nobody could have made the play.
They mark up these scoresheets, and I've always wondered what they did in a case like that. Is there a way to note that although he didn't make the play, that it wasn't possible and that he gave 100% trying?
I doubt it. I bet after that station, he got marked for making 2 good catches and 2 good throws, and that was it.
Even though it was a pitching machine that was shooting the balls out, there was a lot of inconsistency there. Most of the kids were able to make all 3 plays, and some barely had to move.
That's baseball, and that's the frustrating thing about it. You can't be purely objective. However, once you add subjectivity, you muddy the waters.
The next station involved fielding pop flies. I'm not exaggerating that on Logan's team, nobody was as good as he was at tracking and catching fly balls. In fact, from what I saw in league play, if they'd have given a gold glove for center fielders, Logan would have been in the running for it.
I didn't even watch the station. However, even there, things were a little inconsistent. One of the other dads whose kid was in Logan's group told me what he saw.
Instead of using a pitching machine, they had a guy hitting balls with a bat. The boys were supposed to cover an area inside 4 cones. One of Logan's balls was hit outside the cones and to a place where, again, there was no way for him to possibly make the play.
Generally speaking, you expect little errors like that to even themselves out, but this is a very small sample set. It's possible to roll snake-eyes several times in a row.
Personally, I think if they run that same tryout 100 times, my son makes the A team 97 of them or more. Just a bad day. He got bad luck on a few things. He didn't have his greatest performance on another, and in the end, he ends up getting hosed on the final number.
Now, do I think it's right? No. But do I think it's fair? Yes. I really do.
They have to have some way to make decisions. The best way would be to analyze last season's performance. If they did that, my son would have made the team without even a moment's thought. He led the team in OBP, was beaten out by only 4 other guys on the team in hitting (and he was really close to 2 of them), and he played phenomenal defense last year, not just ranging all over the outfield, but making a few highlight reel throws, too.
Trouble is, what do you do with kids who didn't play on the Mavs heavy team? Or kids who are coming from rec? Or kids who moved here from out of town?
They need a way to put all the kids on even footing and having a tryout and assessing ONLY what happens during the tryout is the fairest way to do it.
Now, I think they could improve the format of the tryout, even in a 2 day tryout. For some reason, some genius decided that they'd evaluate skills on day 1, but on day 2, they'd put the boys in "game situations" and evaluate their play that way.
Trouble is, there's no way to evaluate anything on day 2. My son ended up playing right field almost the entire day, except for the inning he played catcher. (He is not a catcher). Half the kids pitching are not pitchers, they're just trying out. So, the kids don't get anything to hit.
It's a total waste of time. However, it was probably implemented because some parent whose kid didn't make the team griped that despite skills, their kid would do better in games. Thing is, it's not a game. It doesn't even rise to the level of a scrimmage. It's a total waste of time.
Also, some whiney parent complained and now parents aren't allowed near the kids (in the spectator areas) during tryouts. This might have come into play because for some reason, Logan decided to use a practice bat (that's 1 ounce heavier) than his usual bat for the tryout. Why? Because he's 10. It made sense to him. If I'd have been there, I'd have had him use the right bat.
Chalk up another victory for stupid rules that came about because some loser complained.
A 2 day tryout is bad enough, but since they basically waste the 2nd day, they basically have turned this into a 1 day tryout, which reduces an already small sample size by half. If only 2 of your fly balls are catchable? Oh well. You caught 2 out of 3. If only 2 of your line drives are catchable? Oh well.
So, that's what I mean by it's fair, but it's imperfect and clearly flawed. All the kids have the same shot at it, but the way it shakes out, some of them are going to be dealt a crappy hand and that's that.
As I've pointed out many, many times before, baseball is the most subjective of sports from a coaching / team selection standpoint. Throw in the fact that some players are great in practice but absolutely stink at game time and it's very, very difficult to know who should and shouldn't be on a team sometimes.
The best a coach can do is make their best guess and go with it. Usually, they're right.
Once in a while, they're wrong. Everybody knows that this is just a normal part of baseball.
They blew it on this one, though. The Mavs heavy team just lost one of their best players from last year. Not just as his Dad, but even the raw numbers are indisputable.
He can play on the light team, though. I will be pinging a few other travel teams, but at this point, I'm guessing they've got their rosters set.
However, there's a team somewhere that would take him in a heartbeat. He was one of the better players on one of the better teams in 10U last year.
That, alone, should put him in good shape for finding an 11U team that needs a player.
However, the other thing to consider is that he's also eligible to play 10U again because of his age.
Which means he will likely be one of the better players in 11U, or can play down a year and probably be an utterly dominant player in 10U if he plays that division again.
If he ends up playing Mavs light (which is likely), I think there's a lot of upside there, too. Logan really didn't get any infield or pitching time last year. Infield, he got less than a lot of players who were clearly not as good as he was, because he had a position he was great at: CF.
Pitching? He really needed some work there, and with things being how they were, he wasn't going to get it.
Also, despite his great offensive numbers, he spent almost the entire season in the bottom half of the batting order.
That's just the way things go when you have a lot of talented players on your team. If I had to rank him, on the heavy team, there was a top group of players, a middle group, and a bottom group. In 9U, he was in the middle group, but towards the bottom of it. In 10U, he was in the middle group, but towards the top of it and sometimes making a case that he was in the top group.
If he continues this trajectory, I think he would have been in the top group of players next year.
Next year, though, if he plays Mavs Black, there's no reason why he wouldn't start in the infield and he will probably have to pitch. Also, with his offensive abilities, I would think he'd find himself somewhere in the top 5 in the batting order.
So, in a lot of ways, I'm happier that he'll be playing Mavs light next year. I think for his overall development, this may actually be a better situation for him.
So, not-making the heavy team for the first time is a disappointment, but I think the end result is good and maybe even a little better than making the heavy team.
Right now, he's focused on football, though. Until he was injured, he was a dominant force on the field, especially on defense.
His stitches should be coming out next Thursday or so. So, he will at least be able to suit up for the scrimmages on Saturday. It'll give him a week or so to get in the swing of things before the first game of the season.
The stitches are sort of unfortunate, especially because they kept Logan from being able to do another assessment that might have kept him on the heavy team.
Still, all in all, things have worked out well. I'm sort of excited at the prospect of seeing my kid play some new positions next year.
In the mean time, the football season starts soon. Then, I gotta get the boy ready for basketball tryouts.
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