When I looked in on Sunday I was shocked to see I had a chance. I was even more shocked in my family & friends league, where I started off 30th out of 32, or something like that, and still pulled it off. All it takes is 1, apparently.
Did Yahoo change the scoring recently? I don't remember having the finals be worth 32 points, but I may have not paid attention as I've been out the running of it pretty early for a number of years now. But definitely if you are the only one in the group with the champion, that's going to go far.
I've struggled with this in the past for the WGOM postseason competition. Right now it's double the points so if you pick the WS winner, you win. I'm curious on what the breakdown of how many you need to win without getting the champion right to upset someone with the correct champion but minimal/zero other right answers besides the champion's route.
Something about each round being equal points makes sense to me, but then it does seem like you wind up with so many points for picking the winner. Which should be important, but only to a point.
I wonder if there could be an interesting way to do the scoring that was team-centric instead of round-centric. Like if you get 1 point for each team where you predict the exact round where they are eliminated.
I am back again to rant and rave and tell all the kids to get off my lawn.
Finally in the fourth season I've had a kid in t-ball, I am firmly convinced that we are doing t-ball all wrong. Years and years ago, we had 7- and 8-year-olds play t-ball. Now we do t-ball for 5- and 6-year-olds but we barely changed anything. Let's break it down:
Hitting
- 7-8-yo: Average kids can hit the ball out of the infield
- 5-6-yo: Most kids don't hit the ball past the pitcher
Fielding
- 7-8yo: Fielders are allowed to make outs. You don't get a lot of action in the outfield, but you can get some plays there.
- 5-6yo: Every batter gets a single and there are no outs. "Outfielders" at best get to chase after some ground balls that make it past the "infield." Some teams line up their players in a straight line from third base to first base like it's a damn line of scrimmage.
Throwing
- 7-8yo: Average kids can throw the ball around a diamond with 50-foot basepaths
- 5-6yo: Basically no one can throw from the left side of the diamond to first base, even with 50-foot basepaths.
Baserunning:
- 7-8yo: Can advance on overthrows, not always forced to advance.
- 5-6yo: Every AB is a single, every runner advances one base.
Practice/Understanding:
- 7-8yo: We had a couple practices and then just games. 1st and 2nd graders had some idea of how to play, maybe they even learned some basics in PE.
- 5-6yo: They have a couple practices and then just games. None of the kids have any idea what is happening. They probably didn't learn any basics in PE and parents have to stand around in the field in order to instruct the kids what to do, because the kids really, really don't understand what is happening.
If there are all these drawbacks, then why are things done this way? Partly, it's because starting earlier "works" for the best players -- the strongest, fastest, the ones whose parents teach them separately from being on a team. It's become the only game in town. If I wanted to do t-ball for a 7-year-old, there's not really an option. If you skip it, you wind up throwing your kid even farther into the deep end when they start.
What kind of solution do I propose? We need to more strongly modify the 5-6-year-old game so that they can actually play a game. Not keeping score makes sense and it makes sense for all the teams to hit around every inning. But fielders should be able to make outs. If the fielders can't make outs, it's not a game anymore. And even 5-year-olds can play games. Like they play 4v4 in soccer, and sometimes you score goals and sometimes the other team scores on you, but mostly the kids run around and have a good time. We could do the same for 5-year-old baseball players.
We should acknowledge that the kids are smaller and weaker. The field should probably be tightened to something like 40- or 45-foot basepaths. We shouldn't let the "pitcher" position get all the fielding action, so I say at that age we should just eliminate the pitcher position, especially if we are tightening the basepaths. Put an arc on the field halfway between home and first -- anything shorter than that is a foul ball. If kids can't hit that far, I'm not really sure what we're doing. If they hit it inside the arc three times, then their turn is over.
Make it 5v5. (I'd be open to arguments for 4v4 or 6v6.) Innings would be way shorter than when we try to make 9-10-player teams and one outfielder is plenty at this age. With a shorter lineup to get through, you might even get through 5 innings in an hour, and that works out for each kid getting one inning per position in the field. One ball for 5 kids on defense means everyone gets more touches per minute and it's easier to pay attention. 5 hitters in the lineup means you don't spend so much time waiting for your turn to hit.
Have more practices! Whether you are playing once or twice a week, alternate sessions between practice and games. Games are fun, but you actually learn how to play in practice and you get way more reps. Even one game every other session is arguably not enough practice. My youngest daughter is in choir and for the first year they have one practice per week and they have one concert after 9 months of practice. Other kids play piano -- you wouldn't have two piano lessons and then put the kid in front of an audience, right? I don't really understand why we feel so compelled to throw 5-6-year-olds into "games" that they don't really understand. Practices can be way more fun at that age anyway. You can have 2-3 stations set up, kids can get way more swings, you can gamify different concepts like "race to first base" or "safety tag" around the bases, so the kids play mini-games and learn and practice at the same time.
The only way anything like this would gain traction would be for it to get pushed from the top -- from MLB or LL maybe.
Ultimately, my concern is that if we *don't* make changes like this, we are just going to gradually kill participation in the game. Kids who don't understand what is happening are less likely to come back and play again. There are more options these days. They can play soccer and get a balance of practices and games, and the games are more engaging because they are 4v4 or 5v5. Or flag football or whatever else is out there. I also think as a side effect, we'd have better players at younger ages, but that would be a side effect. The main impact would be having kids playing an age-appropriate game where they can be more engaged and have more fun.
I coached youth baseball when my son was 3rd grade through 9th grade. When he was in T-ball before that I was too busy at work to even go to any "games". When I did coach, I initially got a lock of flack from parents because my practices were "different". I took the principles of USA hockey's Advance Development Model (ADM) and applied it to baseball. More reps is the biggest key. For example: batting practice. Most coaches would use regular baseballs and use the whole diamond. As a result, it took FOREVER to get all 12-15 of the players through a round of BP. I would do batting practice with wiffle balls in one corner of the outfield and my players would get 10 times the swings compared to other teams. At the same time, I would have one coach running an infield fielding practice and another coach hitting flyballs in the other corner of the outfield with players "hitting the cutoff man". Most years I had, by far, the best hitting team. Those reps added up and the kids were confident swinging the bat. We also developed some pretty good fielders as well. Whenever I was confronted by parents I basically told them I had 2 goals only: 1) develop passion for the game in ALL my players 2) work on developing skills that will make players better in future years. I really didn't care much at all about winning games until the last couple of years.
Shortly after I was done, our hockey director started a baseball development league in a small town north of us with a similar mentality. Small area games, lots of reps... keep it fun... less "real" games. Since he was a college athlete, parents gave his ideas a chance and he did help change some of the mentality around here with parents.
I would think somewhere on the google machine, a guy could find some similar examples of this type of development working out. If examples are out there, I would print it all out and get it to the leaders of your "league". In the end, ubes, you have the right idea on what would be best for the players.
That all sounds really great (except for the nagging parents maybe.) I didn't know about USA hockey's ADM, but it sounds similar to the same concepts that US Soccer recommends for coaching youth players. Lots of time for everyone on the ball, try not to have players stand around in lines, do a lot of small-sided games, etc.
My older daughter's softball practices are a lot better than any of the t-ball stuff I've seen around here. Like one practice when they were hitting they had three stations set up -- one with a tee, one with side toss and one with front toss. There were 3-4 kids per station and they stayed engaged and got a lot of reps.
It's absolutely great to prioritize fun and skill development. The winning side of things kind of touches on the fun at times -- teams that lose a lot (especially if it is by a lot) can start to develop bad vibes. One soccer game I was managing the subs and the team hadn't won all year. They had a late lead in their last game and I skipped the last (unofficial) sub window to keep our better players on the field. I felt a bit uncomfortable about that, but it seemed like trading off 5 minutes of play time for a couple of players for the season's only win worked out pretty well because they were all happy about finally winning a game. Ideally the teams are closer to .500 and games are close because players generally learn the most then anyway.
You also sometimes get interesting fun versus skill development tension. Like my daughter is left-footed and loves to play on the left, but for her club team her coach will play her everywhere (which I agree is generally the way to improve them as all-around players at that age) but when she's on the right, she'll sometimes try to work out deals on the field with whoever is on the left to swap positions. 🙂 For rec games, if there's a kid who absolutely doesn't want to play forward or defense or something, I'll usually try to make that request work since the balance is more toward fun than skill development, even if technically it would benefit them more to broaden their horizons.
Having more of a window into youth soccer has changed my perspective on this more than a bit. It's interesting to me that most of the kids seem to love practice just as much as the games and it's nice to see a higher ratio of practices to games so that they can learn and grow a little faster.
Giving up a big run down the stretch is the sort of thing I would expect from road weary players on their fourth straight road game. Hopefully they can overcome the loss and stay out of the play-in.
Usually, after I go to a concert, I really get into that artists music.
After seeing Jack White last night, I've been listening to John Prine and Jason Isbell. It was great but I'm exhausted.
When I looked in on Sunday I was shocked to see I had a chance. I was even more shocked in my family & friends league, where I started off 30th out of 32, or something like that, and still pulled it off. All it takes is 1, apparently.
Did Yahoo change the scoring recently? I don't remember having the finals be worth 32 points, but I may have not paid attention as I've been out the running of it pretty early for a number of years now. But definitely if you are the only one in the group with the champion, that's going to go far.
I've always hated the "double points every round" system but it is pretty commonly used.
I get it, but I wouldn't mind a modified version with more but not double points for each round. Maybe 1.5 or something?
I've struggled with this in the past for the WGOM postseason competition. Right now it's double the points so if you pick the WS winner, you win. I'm curious on what the breakdown of how many you need to win without getting the champion right to upset someone with the correct champion but minimal/zero other right answers besides the champion's route.
I prefer 1,2,3... But my daughter was really mad when we used that a few years ago and she picked Villanova to win and still didn't win the bracket.
Something about each round being equal points makes sense to me, but then it does seem like you wind up with so many points for picking the winner. Which should be important, but only to a point.
I wonder if there could be an interesting way to do the scoring that was team-centric instead of round-centric. Like if you get 1 point for each team where you predict the exact round where they are eliminated.
I am back again to rant and rave and tell all the kids to get off my lawn.
Finally in the fourth season I've had a kid in t-ball, I am firmly convinced that we are doing t-ball all wrong. Years and years ago, we had 7- and 8-year-olds play t-ball. Now we do t-ball for 5- and 6-year-olds but we barely changed anything. Let's break it down:
Hitting
- 7-8-yo: Average kids can hit the ball out of the infield
- 5-6-yo: Most kids don't hit the ball past the pitcher
Fielding
- 7-8yo: Fielders are allowed to make outs. You don't get a lot of action in the outfield, but you can get some plays there.
- 5-6yo: Every batter gets a single and there are no outs. "Outfielders" at best get to chase after some ground balls that make it past the "infield." Some teams line up their players in a straight line from third base to first base like it's a damn line of scrimmage.
Throwing
- 7-8yo: Average kids can throw the ball around a diamond with 50-foot basepaths
- 5-6yo: Basically no one can throw from the left side of the diamond to first base, even with 50-foot basepaths.
Baserunning:
- 7-8yo: Can advance on overthrows, not always forced to advance.
- 5-6yo: Every AB is a single, every runner advances one base.
Practice/Understanding:
- 7-8yo: We had a couple practices and then just games. 1st and 2nd graders had some idea of how to play, maybe they even learned some basics in PE.
- 5-6yo: They have a couple practices and then just games. None of the kids have any idea what is happening. They probably didn't learn any basics in PE and parents have to stand around in the field in order to instruct the kids what to do, because the kids really, really don't understand what is happening.
If there are all these drawbacks, then why are things done this way? Partly, it's because starting earlier "works" for the best players -- the strongest, fastest, the ones whose parents teach them separately from being on a team. It's become the only game in town. If I wanted to do t-ball for a 7-year-old, there's not really an option. If you skip it, you wind up throwing your kid even farther into the deep end when they start.
What kind of solution do I propose? We need to more strongly modify the 5-6-year-old game so that they can actually play a game. Not keeping score makes sense and it makes sense for all the teams to hit around every inning. But fielders should be able to make outs. If the fielders can't make outs, it's not a game anymore. And even 5-year-olds can play games. Like they play 4v4 in soccer, and sometimes you score goals and sometimes the other team scores on you, but mostly the kids run around and have a good time. We could do the same for 5-year-old baseball players.
We should acknowledge that the kids are smaller and weaker. The field should probably be tightened to something like 40- or 45-foot basepaths. We shouldn't let the "pitcher" position get all the fielding action, so I say at that age we should just eliminate the pitcher position, especially if we are tightening the basepaths. Put an arc on the field halfway between home and first -- anything shorter than that is a foul ball. If kids can't hit that far, I'm not really sure what we're doing. If they hit it inside the arc three times, then their turn is over.
Make it 5v5. (I'd be open to arguments for 4v4 or 6v6.) Innings would be way shorter than when we try to make 9-10-player teams and one outfielder is plenty at this age. With a shorter lineup to get through, you might even get through 5 innings in an hour, and that works out for each kid getting one inning per position in the field. One ball for 5 kids on defense means everyone gets more touches per minute and it's easier to pay attention. 5 hitters in the lineup means you don't spend so much time waiting for your turn to hit.
Have more practices! Whether you are playing once or twice a week, alternate sessions between practice and games. Games are fun, but you actually learn how to play in practice and you get way more reps. Even one game every other session is arguably not enough practice. My youngest daughter is in choir and for the first year they have one practice per week and they have one concert after 9 months of practice. Other kids play piano -- you wouldn't have two piano lessons and then put the kid in front of an audience, right? I don't really understand why we feel so compelled to throw 5-6-year-olds into "games" that they don't really understand. Practices can be way more fun at that age anyway. You can have 2-3 stations set up, kids can get way more swings, you can gamify different concepts like "race to first base" or "safety tag" around the bases, so the kids play mini-games and learn and practice at the same time.
The only way anything like this would gain traction would be for it to get pushed from the top -- from MLB or LL maybe.
Ultimately, my concern is that if we *don't* make changes like this, we are just going to gradually kill participation in the game. Kids who don't understand what is happening are less likely to come back and play again. There are more options these days. They can play soccer and get a balance of practices and games, and the games are more engaging because they are 4v4 or 5v5. Or flag football or whatever else is out there. I also think as a side effect, we'd have better players at younger ages, but that would be a side effect. The main impact would be having kids playing an age-appropriate game where they can be more engaged and have more fun.
I coached youth baseball when my son was 3rd grade through 9th grade. When he was in T-ball before that I was too busy at work to even go to any "games". When I did coach, I initially got a lock of flack from parents because my practices were "different". I took the principles of USA hockey's Advance Development Model (ADM) and applied it to baseball. More reps is the biggest key. For example: batting practice. Most coaches would use regular baseballs and use the whole diamond. As a result, it took FOREVER to get all 12-15 of the players through a round of BP. I would do batting practice with wiffle balls in one corner of the outfield and my players would get 10 times the swings compared to other teams. At the same time, I would have one coach running an infield fielding practice and another coach hitting flyballs in the other corner of the outfield with players "hitting the cutoff man". Most years I had, by far, the best hitting team. Those reps added up and the kids were confident swinging the bat. We also developed some pretty good fielders as well. Whenever I was confronted by parents I basically told them I had 2 goals only: 1) develop passion for the game in ALL my players 2) work on developing skills that will make players better in future years. I really didn't care much at all about winning games until the last couple of years.
Shortly after I was done, our hockey director started a baseball development league in a small town north of us with a similar mentality. Small area games, lots of reps... keep it fun... less "real" games. Since he was a college athlete, parents gave his ideas a chance and he did help change some of the mentality around here with parents.
I would think somewhere on the google machine, a guy could find some similar examples of this type of development working out. If examples are out there, I would print it all out and get it to the leaders of your "league". In the end, ubes, you have the right idea on what would be best for the players.
That all sounds really great (except for the nagging parents maybe.) I didn't know about USA hockey's ADM, but it sounds similar to the same concepts that US Soccer recommends for coaching youth players. Lots of time for everyone on the ball, try not to have players stand around in lines, do a lot of small-sided games, etc.
My older daughter's softball practices are a lot better than any of the t-ball stuff I've seen around here. Like one practice when they were hitting they had three stations set up -- one with a tee, one with side toss and one with front toss. There were 3-4 kids per station and they stayed engaged and got a lot of reps.
It's absolutely great to prioritize fun and skill development. The winning side of things kind of touches on the fun at times -- teams that lose a lot (especially if it is by a lot) can start to develop bad vibes. One soccer game I was managing the subs and the team hadn't won all year. They had a late lead in their last game and I skipped the last (unofficial) sub window to keep our better players on the field. I felt a bit uncomfortable about that, but it seemed like trading off 5 minutes of play time for a couple of players for the season's only win worked out pretty well because they were all happy about finally winning a game. Ideally the teams are closer to .500 and games are close because players generally learn the most then anyway.
You also sometimes get interesting fun versus skill development tension. Like my daughter is left-footed and loves to play on the left, but for her club team her coach will play her everywhere (which I agree is generally the way to improve them as all-around players at that age) but when she's on the right, she'll sometimes try to work out deals on the field with whoever is on the left to swap positions. 🙂 For rec games, if there's a kid who absolutely doesn't want to play forward or defense or something, I'll usually try to make that request work since the balance is more toward fun than skill development, even if technically it would benefit them more to broaden their horizons.
Having more of a window into youth soccer has changed my perspective on this more than a bit. It's interesting to me that most of the kids seem to love practice just as much as the games and it's nice to see a higher ratio of practices to games so that they can learn and grow a little faster.
Must be an offset from my son. He hated practice so much he refused to do anything. He would participate in games, real or practice, at least.
Worst Wolves loss of the season. If a team were to throw a game, that's what it would look like.
Giving up a big run down the stretch is the sort of thing I would expect from road weary players on their fourth straight road game. Hopefully they can overcome the loss and stay out of the play-in.
I only saw the end score, so it wasn't that bad, right?
Just don't look at the fourth quarter scores.
10 turnovers and 8 points in the quarter