Mone Davis - SI cover

It is amazing how much things have changed. I played legion ball with a guy who was a first-round pick and the notion of playing any one sport year round would have seemed absurd to him, but it seems logical for 8-year-olds these days.

 

I don't know how much I believe it, but I've read recently that the backlash to year-round baseball players has emerged in scouting, in part because of how we have an entire generation of young pitchers getting TJ surgery once they get to the bigs. Scouts are starting to speculate that it's year-round baseball when kids are 12-17 that's doing the damage, and are now gravitating toward all-around athletes again (Byron Buxton being the model) who might have less refined baseball skills at 17, but less potential for burnout and injury. Fewer miles on the odometer.

We'll see if it's actually true. But there seems to be some pushback at the highest level for all-year baseball focus.

 

Of course in the really small-school podunk classifications, there are plenty. But if an average team (.500) in a large-school (over 1,000 students) classification played the LLWS champion in a 10 or 12-game series (enough games to go through the pitching rotation two or three times), the HS team wins 80-90+ % of the time.

Every half-dozen games or so, .500 high school teams walk eight guys and commit five errors, so every so often they'd lose one like that. But the rest of the time the 16-18 year olds kick ass on the 12-13s.

 

I'm friends with a former pitcher who was a first-round draft pick of the Mets. He can chronicle a one-year stretch starting with his senior year in high school, through American Legion ball (they won the national championship), through fall ball at his the college he attended. He was 17. He threw 330 innings. In his major league debut at chilly Wrigley Field a few years later, he suffered an elbow injury in the second inning.

 

I am starting to see what DD is talking about from the other end, the parents' side. My son (12 yo classification) has been on a few different teams that have all blown up for various reasons, but largely because parents and kids are feeling pretty unfulfilled by the whole experience. And we've had a number of pitchers develop arm trouble, which has served as a caution to the rest of the group.

The number of innings is insane. The team my son was on at age 10 -- he wasn't a pitcher, thank God, because some of those kids were well past 500 lifetime innings pitched.

 

I'm trying really hard to wrap my mind around some point to this, and all I can come up with is . . . so what?

 

I have a much different viewpoint on the LLWS champion vs. high school baseball team question.

I am operating on the assumption that these two teams would be playing on a regulation high school baseball diamond and not one with Little League dimensions. That stipulated, I don't believe the LLWS team would be able to compete, unless we are talking about a very bad high school baseball team, for the following reasons:

1. All of these stud (and studette) LLWS pitchers we are talking about would have to pitch from 60 feet, 6 inches instead of the LL distance. That is a HUGE difference. I can't tell you how many Johnny Superstars who have struggled just to make the jump from the LL distance to that used in the PONY system. Going all the way up to 60-6? That would severely limit their effectiveness.

2. A major part of the offensive game plan for LLWS teams is the home run. These teams succeed because they have kids who can hit the ball 250 feet and get a home run out of it. Put these same kids on a regulation field, and all those mammoth LLWS blasts become routine fly-ball outs.

3. I coached in a Babe Ruth baseball league where kids ages 13-15 had to play on a 60-90 field. Not only did a lot of kids this age struggle with the pitching, but many could not make the throw from shortstop or third base with any degree of velocity. Also, you could time some of these kids running to first base with a sundial. Now, obviously, you would think LLWS-level players could be the exception, and maybe some of the kids would be. But again, you are talking about a select few who could make that jump playing against a team that is accustomed to it.

Yes, you may have the rare day where a high school kid can't throw strikes, or something of the like, and the LLWS team could find a way to pull out a win. But I'd put it at more like a one-in-a-hundred scenario than the 20 percent chance some people on here seem to be giving them.

Just my two cents.

 

Pretty sure he was answering the likelihood that a high school varsity team would beat a LL team. I'm trying really hard to wrap my mind around your response.

 

Yes. Bottom-level inner-city teams and bottom-level small private schools.

 

All true.

To me, the hypothetical matchup between a LLWS-championship team and a .500 high school team simply comes down to the question of when the HS team is going to throw its No. 4 pitcher, walk a dozen guys and make six errors. When that happens they'd probably lose like 8-6.

But in the meantime, even CHAMPIONSHIP LLWS teams have games like that too, and those are the games the .500 HS team wins 22-1.

 

Little League kids, 12 years old or thereabouts, can barely hit 70 mph pitches. There's no way they're going to hit the 80s — hell, even the high 70s — a high school team will be throwing at them. The notion that a LL team could beat any high school team is absurd. They're two completely different games.

And what SportsHack said about the field dimensions is spot-on. Shit, everything he or she said is spot-on.

And I say all this having covered some god-awful — I mean, truly hideous — high school baseball teams in my day.