What is the perfect team size?

We had this discussion going before I brought down the site twice in as many days.

I believe team size is the single most important issue a youth sports board can address. I think it was Jim J. that mentioned that "playing the game" is the most important thing about baseball. Team size is a major contributor to amount of playing time a kid gets.

If my memory serves me Kenneth Bean mentioned that he thought the perfect team size was 11 (age group of 12 and under). That would be my preference as well. That way you are only subing a maximum of 4 players per game.

My number #2 son made LL majors this year as a 10 year old. But with a team size of 13 hardly any of the 10 or 11 year olds have the opportunity of playing an entire game. For most of the players it is bat once and play 2 or 3 innings in the field. It's pretty discouraging for the 10s and 11s.

On the downside what happens when you have a team size of 11 and a couple of players miss...

Some years ago I was associated with a league that had what I thought was the near perfect solution. What they did was to have a "chain" of 33 to 35 kids ages 9 thru 12. From the chain they formed 3 teams. Majors, AAA and AA. Kids had the option of staying on the chain for the entire 4 years if they wanted to. With this system if a major's team needed a player they simply called one up from AAA, but only for that game. The kid called up could not pitch. The schedules were made up so that AA and Majors played on the same night while AAA played on an opposite night. That way the chance of a conflict was minimized. Likewise if AAA or AA needed a player they could call one down. In both cases the player called up or down had to be approved such that an "ace" wouldn't be called down giving the team an unfair advantage. The kids being called up or down loved it because they got to play in more games. Accordingly a stud 10 year old could get his pitching in with his AAA team and still get some playing time on a major's team. The lesser skilled majors and AAA players could be called down and possibly get a more positive experience from a better contribution to the team.

BTW: Thank you for sticking with the site. The crashes that occurred were because of a programming error on my part. That error will not occur again. Also, my Internet provider gave me a good solution for backing up the site which I instituted yesterday. If followed at most if the site ever were to crash again we would lose only 1 days worth of information.

Thanks again,
Al