Each season, volunteers from the SOM Baseball Committee lead the evaluation and team selection process for Minors, M60, M70 & Babe Ruth divisions. During evaluations, volunteer coaches work as the evaluators for age groups other than the one they are coaching in. Players are scored at each station (ground balls, fly balls, throw downs/long throws, pitching and hitting) and then the scores are aggregated into one total score per player.

 

The SOM Baseball Committee members then lead the coaches through a team selection process (or "draft") utilizing that information collected from evaluations to ensure teams are as balanced as possible. Players are ranked by their overall scores in a draft list and divided into "rounds," and the draft order is assigned randomly for each division. The kids of head and assistant coaches are automatically added to their team, and that team loses picks in the rounds where the players were ranked.

 

The draft is a "snake draft," in which the order of selection reverses after each round, meaning the team that picks first in Round 1 picks last in Round 2, and so on. This ensures that each set of coaches has a fair opportunity to select players for their roster, while losing picks where their own kids were ranked. This also ensures coaches cannot stack their teams with top players. 

 

Thank you to the coaches and volunteers who help conduct evaluations and make them a success.

 

At our T-Ball and Rookie divisions, teams are formed utilizing friend requests. The effort is made to accommodate as many friend requests as possible, but we cannot guarantee 100% of requests are fulfilled. For players that do not submit friend requests, we try to make sure they are teamed up with at least one child from their school to make sure they see a familiar face at the first team practice.