Preparing for the Draft
(Excerpts taken from https://www.filterjoe.com/2015/02/13/how-to-draft-in-youth-baseball/)
There are three keys to successful drafting in youth baseball and softball:
1. Establish clear goals
2. Gather the player data you need
3. Organize your data for rapid access
An unfortunate reality is that many youth managers rely on working the system to their advantage as the fourth and most important key to successful drafting. This leads to unfair outcomes for newer managers and for kids, and sometimes involves cheating.
Doing whatever it takes to create a dream team is detrimental to doing what’s best for the kids and the league. So please don’t do it. Better yet, have your league develop drafting policy that eliminates unfair outcomes.
What is the Purpose of Youth Baseball/Softball?
Before delving into details, I think it is worth considering the purpose of youth baseball/softball.
As stated in Little League’s mission statement:
Through proper guidance and exemplary leadership, the Little League program assists children in developing the qualities of citizenship, discipline, teamwork and physical well-being. By espousing the virtues of character, courage and loyalty, the Little League Baseball and Softball program is designed to develop superior citizens rather than superior athletes.
The way a lot of people like to sum this all up is that we want kids to have fun and develop their baseball/softball skills.
National organizations and local leagues implement rules and policy to support these missions. Drafting policy is usually aimed to create a relatively even distribution of coaching and player ability so that all players in the league are able to have fun and develop their baseball/softball skills.
Nothing in these mission statements suggests providing an opportunity for adults to concentrate many of the top players on one team to win a lot of games. Nevertheless, we are competitive by nature, so it’s natural to expect most managers to have among their drafting goals to create winning teams. A well designed draft system will take this natural competitive drive as input, and produce relatively evenly matched teams as output.
Drafting Goals
No two managers have the same ideas about drafting. Of course, managers will differ in which individual players and types of players they prefer. However, they also differ in overall goals. It’s important for you as manager to be very clear on what your goals are before the draft and communicate these goals in advance to the coaches that will be with you on draft night.
Even if they don’t consciously realize it, most managers will draft with more than one goal in mind. What differs between managers is how much they emphasize each goal. Here’s a list of goals, grouped in three sections:
Create a team that wins a lot
· Obtain players with as much skill as possible
· Obtain players with as much athletic talent as possible
· Go for the best pitchers
· Fill positions (several pitchers, a shortstop, a catcher, etc.)
· Avoid the weakest players in the league
Create a fun and comfortable team
· Create great team chemistry (great teamwork, sum of whole greater than parts, etc.)
· Go for players you know and like (including their families)
· Go for families supportive of your coaching philosophy
· Go for families that you know will happily fulfill their volunteer duties and beyond
Develop players
· Draft the most coachable kids—those who listen, learn, and try hard.
· Draft players with parents who have substantial skills or who are willing to help on the field to aid player development
· Draft players that you think are much more likely to flourish and develop with your coaching style than they might otherwise
Perhaps this list is too long—there’s overlap between some of these goals. However, for those of you who have done this before, think back to some prior drafts:
Did drafting the most skilled and/or talented players lead to the winningest team? Which players perform better—players with many years’ experience but little athleticism or talented athletes with little experience? Were all of your individual player evaluations accurate? Which player worked out better for you—the easily coachable “pretty good” player or the top athlete with “attitude?” Were the skills that mattered most the same for 7-8 year-olds as 9-10 year-olds or 11-12 year-olds?
Before the draft, think about which of these goals matter and how much you want to emphasize them. In my first year as manager, I knew I would need help so I prioritized getting players whose parents either had substantial coaching skills or were willing to help on the field. I also tried to get skilled and talented players of course but I especially emphasized pitching and tried to avoid getting a really weak player, which was possible to do by sometimes skipping slightly stronger players earlier in the draft in favor of a player with a lower score.
I like winning but I care more about making sure every player learns and develops. I was very pleased with the incredible coach and parent support I received. I was even more pleased with how much our players improved during my first season. Being clear with my drafting goals in advance definitely helped with that. In case you’re wondering, our record was 8-7. Emphasize player development and you’ll typically win some games as a by-product.
Several years ago, my son was on a team that lost every single regular season game, though some were close. The returning players had not received adequate training from the prior-year manager. However, the manager of my son’s team cared more about developing players and having fun than he did about winning games. Every single player came back to play in our league the following season. My son learned a lot, enjoyed the season, and looked forward to having the same manager the following year. It’s not necessary to win a lot of games or even win any games to have a great season. As luck would have it, my son did get back this manager for the second year with the same team . . . which finished second in the playoffs.
Gathering player data
The better you know players and their families, the better you’ll be able to meet your drafting goals. A great source of knowledge about a player is observing performance in many real games. This necessarily means that managers who are new to the league are at an informational disadvantage. If you are new to a league or it’s your first year managing, talk to as many people as you can to learn about various players and families. Unfortunately, you’ll still be at a disadvantage to those who have seen the kids play.
Conversely, players who are new to the league are a mystery to everyone. You can get hints by talking to one of the player’s parents. Has this player played before? If so, how many years? If not, has he played any other sports? Multi-sport athletes tend to be physically fit and are likely to pick up the game of baseball or softball much faster than the average kid who isn’t so athletically engaged. I have observed several instances of players from other sports who, during their first year of playing, soon surpassed many other players in the league.
Another source of information is player evaluations. You’ll get to see each player hit, field grounders, and catch pop-ups. If you’re lucky you’ll get to see pitching too. The several minute look you get for each player is low-quality data. Some players may be rusty, some may be sick, others may perform worse or better than normal by random chance. Some kids may even purposely perform poorly.
You will probably be able to sort out which players are very obviously near the top or bottom, with regards to skill and athleticism. But the majority will be in the middle, difficult to distinguish from each other. Nevertheless, this is all the information you’ll get for some players, so the next few paragraphs will give you some ideas of what to observe.
Look for signs of baseball/softball skill. What player strengths and weaknesses do you see for each skill? How is ball tracking? How is form when getting down to field a grounder? How are throwing and hitting mechanics?
Look for signs of athleticism. How is foot work? Are they fast? Do they move gracefully or awkwardly? Do they have quick reflexes?
Pay attention to attitude. Does the player hustle? Pay attention? Get frustrated easily? Seem enthusiastic?
Don’t get too caught up in whether they actually field the grounder or catch the pop fly—you may miss out on all the other little clues about skill, athleticism, and attitude.
In every draft there are several kids I mark as “do not draft” because of attitude. A kid who doesn’t try hard, pay attention, and/or gracefully recover from mistakes is going to be difficult to coach and teach, no matter how skilled or athletic. On the other hand, if you are particularly good at turning such kids around, you may see opportunity where I see difficulty.
The best source of player information is stats from the prior year. Making stats available for all returning players to all managers before the draft would go a long ways towards making drafts fair, but I have never heard of a league that does this. It would take a bit of work, and even if done, the data would not be consistent across players. Judgment is involved in marking errors vs. hits and steals vs. passed balls. But many stats, such as strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitch, reaching base, etc. are not open to interpretation. Such data would be objective and useful.
The best thing about stats is that it reduces bias. For example, a strong, tall power hitter that crushes the ball at batting practice may actually strike out 70% of the time during actual games and have sloppy fielding and base running due to inattention. Stats will show this. Direct observation may not, as it’s a lot easier to remember a player’s home runs and bulging muscles than his strikeouts and errors. Conversely, short, skinny kids who can’t hit the ball very far are often underrated. Stats that show getting on base 7 out of 10 at bats and scoring over 2 runs per game might help overcome short-person bias for a particular player.
Because stats are generally not available, gathering of player data is difficult and imprecise. Everyone makes mistakes, especially in judging potential. Kids who display poor skills at evaluations can surprise you with very rapid improvement, and vice versa. But nevertheless, you need to base your drafting decisions on data so you’ll have to do the best you can to get accurate data on each player.
Last Words
You can still draft well in the face of unfairness. Be clear with your goals, gather as much data as you can, and organize your data for rapid access on draft night. Get a good coach or two to help. And yes, it helps if the player that comes along with the coach would likely be an early draft pick.
However, if you’re a veteran manager, I encourage you not to pre-empt two coaches with the top two pitchers in the league. It’s a better experience for the kids throughout the division if you can have the veteran coaches and top players spread throughout the division evenly.
If it’s your very first year as manager, it may be unrealistic to expect to end with the best win/loss record. However, prepare well and you will end up providing an experience for your players that is fun, competitive, and developmental, regardless of the win/loss record. That’s what we all say we want for youth baseball and softball. So let’s do it!