That is way too many. Some parents just wasted a lot of money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are there a few kids who are playing other sports and will miss a lot of games? I wouldn’t be happy with paying for so much sitting, even if it was rec!

At that age, my kid's team had about 11-12 players. Once they reached 14u and especially high school aged, the roster was more like 15-16 because our coach accepts that kids play other sports. And seriously, you wouldn't believe how sometimes a team that large would have to find guest players because many of its full-time kids had other commitments.

Agree with this. My kid has been on multiple travel baseball teams. Often times we would still need to bring on guest players.

15 too high. 12ish is about right as long as everyone agrees Baseball is the primary sport.

Our DS’s club is 8U to 12U, and all rosters have between 11 and 13 kids. DS’s team has 13 this season, and I can already tell it’s not ideal. Some kids will sit a lot more often and fewer at-bats for everyone.

One team DS played in a tournament had 20 kids on the roster. They essentially had an A and B team, within one team, and would assign kids to certain games so only 11 or 12 showed up any given game. The kids DS faced Saturday were almost all different on Sunday. Not sure how that is allowed!

15 is too many on a roster at this age. Best case scenario, all the kids are sitting 1/3 of defensive innings and many end up averaging only 1 at bat per game. In practice, it will likely be even worse than that- usually there are around 4 kids who will never sit (leaving the rest to split playing time 50/50). I’ve also never seen a continuous batting order of 15 kids in baseball at any level- if they are really carrying that many, my guess is they plan to bat 9 or 10.

Anonymous wrote:DDs 12U softball team had 14 girls last year and it wasn't great-- they almost all showed up to all the games, so you'd have about half of a team sitting each inning. And because the pitchers and catchers tend to play more than the other girls, it was a lot more sitting if you weren't one of those positions. There was one game where the last girl in the batting order didn't even get to bat. DD loved the team so I didn't complain, but it was frustrating. I think 12 is perfect at that age, especially if they have multiple pitchers.

thats horrible

DDs 12U softball team had 14 girls last year and it wasn't great-- they almost all showed up to all the games, so you'd have about half of a team sitting each inning. And because the pitchers and catchers tend to play more than the other girls, it was a lot more sitting if you weren't one of those positions. There was one game where the last girl in the batting order didn't even get to bat. DD loved the team so I didn't complain, but it was frustrating. I think 12 is perfect at that age, especially if they have multiple pitchers.

Anonymous wrote:What is a reasonable number of kids on an 11U or 12U travel baseball roster? There are no pitching specialists yet and everyone theoretically bats.

I ask because our team just sent out rosters with 15 kids. That means if everyone shows, 6 kids will sit every inning and, unless the team is great at batting, each kid will bat maybe once or twice over a 6 inning game. Seems sort of crazy to me, but I may have been spoiled by our last team with only 11-12 kids on the roster.

Have you asked the organization why so many kids and how it will work?

Not the norm for 11-12U.

Email back and ask “I see there are 15 kids listed on the roster., which seems like a lot. Will there actually be 15 kids at games? Just wondering how that will work. Will there be a continuous batting order of 15, or will you sometimes be batting 9 or 10?”

It is a normal thing to ask at this age and will tell you what you need to know.

Do leagues have caps on players. IMO it would be better to just have kids sit out, than try to rotate. That is what they did in travel soccer when we had thirteen with a twelve-roster cap. It totally sucked, but many games it didn't matter people didn't show anyway.

I've seen this and unfortunately it means there will be kids who get very little playing time and reps. How do you even run through a 15 roster batting order? So many of these travel teams are just a money grab and don't care that this will deflate those kids who love the sport and really want to develop, but will ride the bench all season.