Make no mistake. Taking this approach to youth baseball & discarding what doesn’t serve the long term goal can have consequences.

The choice is whether we fear those consequences enough to be driven by them, or if we accept them because we can provide context for them.

Those consequence are seen on the micro & macro level. Small things that show up under competition, and also big things that stress the strength of your convictions.

It’s easy to say effort over outcome. It’s harder to a degree to say the same when you get mercy ruled...twice.

Which happened to our 9U team.

Why? Well it’s about allocation of time in training. Our 9U team is all 8’s - and a couple of 7’s. I believe that the thing that benefits those kids the most is building the skill base that will set their foundation for at least the next 3 years.

And if we really pursue that pathway - especially in February - means that you make small sacrifices along the way by not allocating a lot of time to things that do not serve long term skill development, but do limit failure in games. PFP’s. 1st & 3rds. You know what I mean.

And the answer really isn’t just “do both”. Sure, we want to get to the point that there are no holes in how they present as ball players. But you gotta stand for something, and when you’re making hard choices about time allocation you should know the when & why of those choices.

I’m quite confident that the appropriate time to help a player get to truly maximum game and situational awareness is not when their age is still counted in single digits.

Additionally, because of COVID these kids haven’t scrimmaged...because we couldn’t. So their 1st kid pitch game took place in a setting where some of those micro things - literally learning the mechanisms & rhythms of a game - can be perceived to have stronger macro consequences.

But...why?

Does anyone “solve” baseball at 9U? Is that realistic?

And why on earth would I fear failure as a consequence at 9U when the only consequence is that a kid stops wanting to play? Baseball is FILLED with failure. We know & literally celebrate this part of the game.

I will not fear the consequence of failure because I am not, not are any of our teams, defined by it.

We receive these consequences as opportunities to learn. And then we provide context that these struggles are part of a much larger macro level goal.

Keep playing the game.

You can’t future proof a kid, and there are no guarantees about viability in the game based on what you did previous to now. That’s not how baseball works.

BUT if we can maintain the course & compound these gains over time I do believe we have the opportunity to shift the odds.

So, with one more day of games it’s possible that as an organization we may lose more games than we win.

That’s ok. We’ll keep compounding gains - and learning - while we maintain the commitment to what matters most long term.

Skills that scale. That’s what we’re here for.

And as for me as simply a dad, I got to watch one of my kids launch absolute nuke shots, have a metric ton of fun playing again and bond with his teammates on the field. Then we crushed Applebee’s steaks on the bed while watching Martin re-runs. It was pretty tight.