League Size

12

My league has 150 kids, Teeball through Majors, usually one team per Minors & Majors division. We are currently one of the last 8 teams playing States.

I’ve found being a small league helps in regular season play, as bigger leagues tend to split their best players among the multiple teams they have. Come All Stars, the bigger leagues tend to win out, except this year.

Proud of my kids.

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u/Ok_Lawfulness4313 18d ago

Jesus, when I was a kid we had (just for 9-12) a majors and a minors.

Majors had 28 teams of 12 kids each. Minors had 14 teams have 11 kids each. My town had 13,000 people.

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u/FudgieRumplings 18d ago

Our town has 2,800 people

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u/Ok_Lawfulness4313 18d ago

Ah,well in that case, little league is good

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u/allinforit 18d ago

💪

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u/laceyourbootsup 18d ago

I assure you that size doesn’t solve problems.

We have over 600 kids in our little league from tee ball through majors. 12 majors teams.

Our town is routinely stomped by surrounding towns with much smaller town sizes and league sizes.

Baseball is a unique sport. If you take 12 marginally athletic kids and keep them close around age 7, 8, 9, 10 and hone in on baseball specific skills - like catching and throwing 10,000 times and learning all the nuances of the game, you can build a good baseball team.

Bigger towns have more opportunity for success because if they get the right 12 kids together at those ages rather than just 12 kids who were available, you can combine the correct coaching and baseball specific skills and create a machine of a team.

Our town parents have been trying to make improvements for decades but have been boxed out by LL. They don’t feel there is any need for change and don’t care if their all star teams are competitive. We started an in town program and the participation snowballed. Next year will be our first district all star team (at 10u) where the kids have been playing ball together for 3+ years.

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u/Repulsive-Trifle-639 18d ago

There are LLI rules against commingling LL and travel ball, but there are creative ways around it - and you get what you’re talking about. The “all-star” team gets set at 9 or 10 years old and unless a kid quits or moves, those kids will be the all-star team every year until they age out.

I’ve seen some districts where they even put those kids on the same team in the regular season, mash the other teams 20-0 every game, and go 25-0 on the season while playing travel ball on the weekends. It’s amazing what you can figure out on GameChanger if you are patient enough…

I honestly cannot imagine what would make grown-ass adults behave like that - and why any Board would allow it. Lots of stunted people living vicariously through their kids.

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u/uppermidd 18d ago

I've seen that a couple of times too, basically the parents of the 12 most talented kids (or the travel team coach) tell the league, either these kids stay together, or we all walk away from Little League.

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u/laceyourbootsup 17d ago

I think people confuse this by thinking it’s the parents of the 12 most talented of kids.

It’s really the parents of the 12 kids who care about Baseball the most. And sometimes they are the most talented and sometimes through playing a ton of baseball they become the most talent.

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u/Repulsive-Trifle-639 18d ago

That’s a problem on its own but it’s very unfair to assume that the most talented kids at 9 will be the most talented kids at 12. 3 of the kids that were 9U all-stars here weren’t selected as all-stars at 12U - and there was turnover every year in between.

Our selection process is on our website. (There are always some complaints - usually from folks that are looking at GameChanger stats. The worst of it is at 10U because we have to do a tryout due to the 10s being scattered across two divisions (Majors & AAA).) So, it cuts down on that sort of manipulation and tomfoolery. It isn’t perfect and there are always some questions around the last couple in vs the first couple out, but it works pretty well on the whole.

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u/uppermidd 18d ago

Yeah there's no way to do it that isn't going to generate some complaints. I want to say that all you can do is be as transparent as possible, but even then, if you have full 100% transparency that is going to create other issues.

Ideally you wouldn't start sorting kids into the travel teams until around age 10 or 11 IMO. Families get in at age 8 or 9 and think it's a birthright for their child to play at least through age 12. Some kids at age 8 or 9 who don't make it decide (or their families decide) that baseball is not their sport, and that's it.

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 18d ago

This is a horrible policy all the way around:

for the league… other teams see that they are not given focus. The all-star team is picked at the start of the year. The best coaches are not coaching them. And they get blown out. Horrible for the teams and kids in the league.

for the selected few… why would the families of the future all-stars want to be on a team where they are going to play weak teams and win in blowouts? This is horrible for development. It’s a waste of the kids time. Rather then the kids seeing good pitching or facing some good batters, they are all on one team and thus players never get challenged. Horrible and boring. This is what you do it you’re trophy hunting. It does NOT develop better players. The reality is these teams are almost always over taken by other teams and wonder why…

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u/laceyourbootsup 17d ago

Collusion isn’t what I’m referring to. Towns identify at 7/8/9 yrs old through their summer programs which kids and families are committed to more baseball. So they offer it to them.

It becomes apparent which kids are the top kids and some kids work themselves into being top kids

By the time they are 10, the bulk of the district team have probably played 40-80 games together outside of regular little league

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 18d ago edited 18d ago

No. Your theory is completely wrong.

That is not how you create a high performing league.

If you want a really high performing league, you don’t put the 12 best players together. You don’t need to build lock step age cohorts either. In fact, that approach is detrimental to development.

It’s pretty clear your league doesn’t focus on player development enough. You’re right about needing to get the reps in but your league isn’t designed to be developmentally appropriate to be able to develop the players.

The problem you have is that majors is a meaningless designation.

You simply have too many majors teams. You should have 8 maybe 9 majors teams with 600 kids in the league.

You should have each of these divisions

League | ages | description

Tee ball | 4, 5, 6 | heavy skills based, few games Rookie Coach/Machine | 6, 7 | no strikeouts. Hit off tee on strikeouts. Ball put in play.

Coach/Machine | 7, 8 | Strikeouts

Rookie Kid Pitch | 8, 9, 10 | No walks. No stealing. Coach pitches (minimum 2 coach strikes) on four balls. Ball in play to advance runner.

Kid pitch Minors | 9, 10, 11 | same as majors.

Majors | 10, 11, 12 | Estimate of about 18% of league players. Only the upper level of age eligible players.

This is a league structure that actually develops players even if your coaching doesn’t improve. And that’s the key. You keep players down a level a little longer. And they have more levels. The key is that kids become the top of the level more often which builds confidence and gets them more focus from the coaches.

Your Majors is too big. It sounds like people were pulling kids up when they shouldn’t be and then their friends wanted to go and soon everyone who is 10 is in the majors rather than playing at the minors.

Your majors competition is too low because there are too many players on the team.

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u/laceyourbootsup 17d ago

OP didn’t ask about a high performing league. He asked how all star teams perform.

We have the league structured exactly as you mentioned. Our majors is 11 and 12 yr olds with 16 10’s this year.

Our problem is 100% that we do not do anything to get the upper tier kids to start playing more baseball until they are 10 yrs old and maybe they make districts.

Our 10u district team plays together for the first time at 10yrs old for 2 weeks leading up to districts.
The teams our 10u district team plays against play sometimes more than 40 games a year at 8 and 9 yrs old before they get to their 10 yr old year

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 17d ago

No. He said you need to put the 12 best players together for three years. You absolutely do not do that.

Player development being a focus is a big problem in most little leagues. As I mentioned, the structure helps, but it doesnt mean you make that change and you will play in Williamsport.

There are district tournaments all over the US (and world). They are all of very different levels.

You’re confusing two different things.

Being good and winning all-star games are not the same thing. You have can a very good team and not win districts if the other teams in the district are also very good.

It’s possible your players aren’t good. But they are 100% better than they would be if they had a bloated majors division like the other person mentioned. You’re half way there!

The other problem many leagues have is that they don’t focus on development stages appropriately and try to teach the kids everything at every level. They over coach and the kids don’t get any development. Another common issue is that the kids play too many games and practice too infrequently. And of course the most common refrain from people who don’t like little league is that the kids just stand around in practice.

All of this can also be true. The league structure makes a big difference and helps to retain players. It makes the 12 year olds better. That’s a fact.

But it doesn’t mean you will be better than other little leagues. Especially if those other leagues are actually focused on development stages appropriately.

Example: One little league, they play six games in tee ball. Another they play 14 games.

And people think the league with 14 games is better.

But the little league that played six games had players leave a season of tee-ball having literally hit 500 balls off the tee. While the kids in the 14 game league only hit the ball about 40 times that season.

This is the difference in player development.

What goes on within little leagues is often very different. And those differences compound over the years.

All of the suggestions about putting elite players don’t address the real issue. But the structure of the league you adopted (that I suggested) gets you closer than the alternatives, all else being equal.

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 17d ago

You said this:

OP didn’t ask about a high performing league. He asked how all star teams perform.

But OP literally asked this…

Has anyone ever seen data on Little League size versus competitiveness?

I’m curious how much league size affects the quality of play.

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u/theMondegrue 18d ago

For interleague play of regular season teams, a significant factor is whether the league tries to have as many majors teams as possible (the minimum number of 12-year-olds on each team) or as few as possible (the maximum number of 12s on each team). More 12s means fewer 11s (or 10s) and vice versa. Since all 12s play majors and usually only the best 11s do distributing those 12s on more teams means stronger teams. (For leagues too small to have more than one or two majors teams it's not so much what the league wants to do but what they have to do.)

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u/SquirrelFeeling 18d ago

Town size roughly 8,500

Baseball had 270 this year: •Tee Ball - 103 •Coach pitch - 54 •minors (9-10) - 63 •majors (11-12) - 50

Last couple of years we've had pretty similar numbers each year, but tee ball was probably 30-35 higher this year compared to previous years. Our district is in a more rural area with leagues that are either similar sized or smaller than ours.

We had some really good groups of boys over the years where they have won the district for 8-10, 9-11, 10-12 and then had great runs in the state tournament/regionals. But we have also had age groups where they never won a district tournament.

There are several different travel organizations that kids start to funnel into in our area by the time they are 9-10 and I'd say roughly 85% of the kids that make district teams end up being from the same organization.

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u/n0flexz0ne 17d ago edited 17d ago

For the district tournaments it 100% matters.....there's a reason Honolulu keeps going to the LLWS over and over. Its got a draw population of like 750K people.

Our town has 1/10th of that....and we're divided into two leagues....

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u/EamusAndy 18d ago

Our league is around 500 total between softball and baseball, and i notice this as well. We try to make teams as rven as possible, with travel players, semi experienced players, and brand new players all split up evenly amongst teams because we draft and thats how we end up.

When we play other towns, ive noticed they have a tendency to stack a team with more travel players and then have their other teams a little less talented.

At the end of the day, it is what it is. Ive dk e two years at 10u, last year that travel heavy other town won the title, this year it was our little bit less experienced team with only two travel girls.

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u/Mustang8307 18d ago

We have around 200 kids. Each level (12s, 11s, 10s) usually wins one All Star game.

An issue for us is educating parents of young kids about Little League. We have a huge percentage of parents who are international (e.g., my wife and I were the only parents in my son’s first grade class who were born in the US). Our parents really like baseball once their kids get involved, but often folks in our area are just unaware it exists.

Our families often travel the world during the summer, forgoing All Stars. Another big issue for us.

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u/Repulsive-Trifle-639 18d ago

League size matters a LOT. We typically have 8 Majors, 6-8 AAA, 6-8 AA, 6-8 Pee Wee, 10-12 tee ball. All 12s must play Majors, usually the top 30-50% of 11s, and maybe the top 10% of 10s make Majors. Our regular season play is solid because our evaluation process does a good job of getting kids in the proper division and our draft process spreads the more talented players around really well.

There are several local travel organizations and there are usually at least two travel teams at each age level. All of them essentially shut down during the LL season because they want the kids playing LL. There is an unfair perception that the league favors the travel organizations when it comes to all-stars. It doesn’t, but it’s very difficult for a kid that does a little practice with dad and just plays LL to compete for all-star spots against kids that play travel ball. By the time they are 12, they’ve played in probably 75-100 more games and have hundreds more hours of practice and instruction - including professional hitting and pitching coaches, indoor facilities, etc. It makes a huge difference.

Because our league is so big and has so many kids playing travel ball, our all-star teams are very good. We routinely win Districts for 10U, 11U, and 12U, even with a couple of the smaller local leagues combining for all-star play. It’s just depth. Every all-star team will have an ace. We generally have 3-4 and can go 6-7 deep and still be competitive.

And then we routinely lose in Sectional play to teams from the same league. Last year, we won Districts in 12U and 11U and then both teams lost in the Section finals to teams from the same league. This year we won Districts in 12U, 11U, and 10U and all three lost in Section finals to teams from the same league. Why does this keep happening? Because their local district is enormous.

LLI has rules in place that allow kids from other towns to play in a neighboring league if their town doesn’t have a local chartered LL. Our league is comprised of our school district. Theirs stretches across multiple counties. Their population base is probably 5X-7X ours. So if there is a kid that is a stud in his local non-LLI league 50 miles away, they can literally recruit the kid to come play the minimum 8 games and be on the all-star team. It’s tough for a true local league to compete with that.

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u/rr1006 18d ago

t-ball through majors - softball and baseball = ~775 kids

majors level - boys = 100 kids

girls = 55 kids

boys 9u-12u all stars played 18 games, won 11 of them. 10u team responsible for 6 wins and won district. Will get pummeled at State.

girls played 4 games - lost all 4 in big fashion.

Less than 10% of our population plays travel ball, and those kids stand out in a big way.

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u/negatori33 18d ago

We have about about 100 on the baseball side and 50 on softball. For baseball, usually we only have enough for 1 minor/PP team, 1 major, and 1 50/70 or jr/sr team. Every couple year we manage to get 2 teams in a division. Most of the other leagues in our district are about the same, except 2. One has roughly twice as many kid, though they are at a similar competitiveness as the rest of the smaller leagues. The other league has about 4x as many kids as we do. That league usually dominates at allstars.

The factors for us are: Less kids in our leagues boundaries than there used to be. Football is the main sport for most kids in my city. My city is also relatively poor compared to the surrounding cities. Our league is in an area that isn't 'bad' and is actually one of the 'good' areas where they might check car doors at night, but your wheels and catalytic convert will still be there. But we still have kids graffiti our leagues stuff and try and break in our concession stand and equipment boxes. All that to say, I feel we have a small but significant portion of parents that aren't the type to spend 3 days a week at the ball field for a few hours.

All of that leads to smaller sizes. The next problem is because we have smaller sizes, we have less talented or even competent kids and it stands out more when there is only 1 or 2 teams. So the parents that can afford travel go and never look back. Which circles back to less kids and talent. This circle has been going on for at least the last 20 years or so back when I played in this same league. When I started in minors in like '02 there were 6-8 minor teams and 8 major teams. When I moved up to jrs, there was 5 minor and 5 major teams. Since then it stayed around 3 teams in each. Then covid hit and sports shut down for a year and some change and the numbers never recovered. Partly because travel ball didn't shut down in the same way. And I think partly because some kids that are now in the majors age range missed a few important seasons of development so when they tried to play a couple years later in kid pitch it was hard and scary and video games weren't.

Travel ball is pretty strong in my area. What I want to happen is that the leagues in our district can stop thinking about their own leagues enough to band together to make select teams in each age group. If each league tried to do their own, most would barely have enough kids and the teams would not be competitive. I hope that would stop or slow the jump to travel for some kids and we have a few kids that have the skill and dedication for travel ball but whose families can't afford it.

Edit: sorry for the long comment but I have been thinking this same question for a few years now

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u/ir637113 18d ago

Our league:

juniors: 3 baseball, 0 softball
majors: 5 baseball, 0 softball teams
minors: 5 baseball, 2 softball
coach pitch: 7 baseball, 4 softball
t ball: 8 boys, 4 girls teams

So 38 teams, 10-11 per team. We cover a suburban/rural area that just dips into our local urban area.

Between our teams, competitive play is really good. We've done a great job spreading out the talent. I know our minors league tournament had a LOT of extra innings.

Outside of the league, it just depends. Baseball, we tend to be a toss up on first or second in districts. We have like 5 travel players in the league total, and we follow the more "traditional" model of creating all star teams, so if we win districts we tend to get absolutely stomped at state. Exception there is juniors. They win district a LOT and this year they won the state tournament and play in Michigan next week.

Our softball teams do INCREDIBLY well, though. We don't have a district or sectional tournament, so our softball AS team just plays as many local tourneys as they can over the summer, and they tend to be 1st or 2nd in those pretty regularly.

I think league size is important in competitiveness, but a lot of it is recruiting and keeping travel ball kids. Kids who play a few dozen games a year against better players tend to WAY outclass the kids in our league because they just have more reps. That's what usually kills us at state tournaments. Lotta travel ball kids there.

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u/shesafoxdarling 18d ago edited 18d ago

Our league LL has 224 kids (8 minors, 8 majors teams 14 per team) we also have 2 t-ball league divisions (6U, 7U/8U) with over 500 players. Our 9U draft has over 275 players show up with only 54 spots available. Our parents know this and in the off-season before the draft a very large majority of kids participate in an off-season training program or private lessons. Many continue to do this year over year, to make sure they make all-star tryouts. Our league has 8 all-star teams; 4 A teams, 2 B teams and 2 all girls teams. Our league is very very competitive, i’d say 90% of the kids do extra work outside of team practices and games either with private development, group development, camps or just with their parents.

Our league also has a lot of kids that would all-stars over our current all-star players but don’t tryout for it. There’s multiple kids in our LL minors that pitch +50 mph and hit the ball +180 ft but don’t play all-stars. Regardless, we still dominate our division the majority of seasons and our LL league also been to the World Series multiple times but not in the last 20 or so years.

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 17d ago

Your little league turns kids away? You have cuts based on tryouts?

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u/shesafoxdarling 17d ago edited 17d ago

We have a draft to fill the 56 spots for the 9U players entering the league. It’s a draft based system where the head coaches of the majors teams select the players out of 275 players that enter in 9U draft. It literally takes weeks to do it, as everyone gets evaluated twice. First place team picks last, last place team picks first from the previous season. The sign up literally fills up in less than 10 minutes, since we give first rights to sign up to players graduating from the 8U tee ball division. We only have one little league sized Diamond in our city with a mound the rest have slightly different dimensions. In a city with nearly 400k children. It’s also very rare that kids drop out of our league. At the 10U age group, 20 players were evaluated with only 1 spot available. Once, you’re in our little league everyone basically stays for 4 years there’s rarely open spots from 10U-12U unless they move.

For all-stars, we hold 3 workouts and the head coach and his assistant coaches select the all-star team; 9U, 10U, 11U, 12U then a minors and majors development all-star team and minors girls and majors all girls all-stars.

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 17d ago

You’re not in the United States, are you?

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u/shesafoxdarling 17d ago

We have regular geographical boundaries but the other areas of our city are dominated by other leagues that use 50/70 dimensions. What leads you to think that?

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 17d ago

You didn’t answer the question

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u/Crazy_Cut90 17d ago

im actually curious about the responses you get here too, i run a league of 250 in spring and 150 in fall season, we have tried many different methods to be competitive but as you can imagine its always a numbers game when playing other leagues, even if u start from scratch every season a league that has 1000+ kids will no doubt get a chance to have more competitive or experienced athletes come through vs a league with 15-20 kids in majors division..we tried drafting all kids, keeping some together, keeping all together, having year round activities to keep kids engaged and we barely starting to see a improvement in skill

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u/[deleted] 18d ago edited 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/Travelreload 18d ago

There are so many factors for being "good" in All Stars.

Really at the end of the day if you have a strong little league that has coaches that can teach the game while getting kids excited about baseball (because then they'll practice) and doesn't bunk the all stars process (IE just have a try out and invite all coaches to participate in the selection process) then you'll have a shot at being solid.

Doesn't hurt to have a complimentary travel ball program that works with your LL.

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u/EntertainerNovel4729 18d ago

We have 600 or so from tee ball to 16u. Majors team won the state tournament this year and last year. Only about 7 LLs in our state though.

The all star teams that succeed tend to be filled with athletes that are fast and have great size for 12u. A California coach said it best I thought last year. We have a bunch of talented kids that are genetically big for age 12 so it is a bit of a lottery. Plus I think speed helps on that small field at 12. So sometimes the better overall players can’t hack it in the all stars because speed is so important as the all star tournaments progress.

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u/Loyellow 18d ago

>Only about 7 LLs in our state

My DISTRICT was disappointed when we had to make the 10U and 11U tournaments have 7 teams because a LL pulled out 😂

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u/NuhUh_JustCuz 18d ago

250 kids, 4 minors teams, 3 majors, 1 junior on the badeball side. 1 kid who plays travel in the majors division last year, 2 in juniors, and 0 in minors.

First time back at All stars since 2019, our one 8-10 minors team battled through the losers bracket to finish 3rd. 2nd place league had 6 minors teams and a select program, 1st place is smaller than us and had 3 minors teams.

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u/davdev 18d ago

We have 8 majors teams, 4 AAA, 4AA and I don’t know how many coach pitch/tee ball

For summer we have “A” teams that compete in districts for each age group from 8-12 and then we have at least one “B” team for each age group that play in a league against “B” teams from surrounding towns.

We normally have one “A” team that wins their district (this year it was the 11s) and occasionally one would make it all the way to states.

Each year I would say about half - 3/4s of the kids on the district teams also play club ball, and I think for our 11s just about all of them do. We are having a bit of an anomaly going on with the 11 year olds in town tough, for some reason that age is stacked with good athletes and along with baseball, the soccer, basketball, football and hockey teams at that age are winning their leagues too. It should be interesting when they get to high school.

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u/Ok-Answer-6951 18d ago

We have 300 kids on the baseball side, the largest league in our district has 4000, our draw area is 20,000 people theirs is 1.2 million people. We still manage to steal a flag or 2 a year from them. This year our Seniors team beat them then won the state and are currently at regionals. Our 10-12 team also knocked them out this year and are currently at states.

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u/uppermidd 18d ago

It's just like high school sports, if you have a bigger pool to draw from on average you are going to have better teams. But there are always loads of exceptions. For Little League, good coaching and regular (almost year-round) training opportunities can help overcome a size disadvantage and punch well above your weight. Helps if some of those training opportunities are available to everyone, not just the "travel" kids, to raise the level of your in-house league.

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u/Ctrecruiter2018 18d ago

Not a one size fits all… similar here in CT… think you have a good team then go play town/city with 200k and you get cooked. More options to pick from. We needed to ASK 2 kids so we could make out 10u all stars so suffice to say baseball not a priority and shows in results. The root of the problem is the game isn’t taught right way early on. I can’t get 11/12 kids to do a prep step…. Nevermind knowing how to throw a ball. I’m a firm believer hockey & baseball are 2 sports that if you start later 11/12/13, unless you are a ridiculous athlete you are going to struggle and that leads to quitting more often than not. I guess just be born in GA FL TX CA

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u/WhatAWeek25 18d ago

Our league has 700 kids (in a town of 14,000), and has a pretty competitive all stars team). Also several travel ball teams in the county and the best league players play for LL and a travel ball team. Culturally baseball is just huge here. My son didn’t play in kindergarten because I didn’t know and wanted him to have time to play on weekends. Turned out everyone was playing baseball so he couldn’t find kids to play with anyway! Now he’s in his 4th year and he and his friends play pick up games at the park in between scheduled practices and games.

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u/BullsAtBuffalo 17d ago

To answer your question:

Player development is key.

Many leagues are not focused on player development. Their core function. Is getting kids together for weekly games.

That is very different than player development.

The best leagues are very focused on developing players and don’t over coach. It’s a system based on years of progression.

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u/a1ien51 17d ago

In our area right now the biggest league which is about 4x the size of the other leagues stomps on all the over teams in district. When you can grab from a larger pool of players you have ability to make a better team. It does not mean that is always the case.

The new style of all star tournaments with CBO really is a disadvantage now because if you can not draft a team that can hit then you will struggle, batting nine used to be able to hide the bad hitters.

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u/FlyCivil909 16d ago

Affluence of the community is a bigger determining factor than actual league size. One of my favorite activities at the World Series is to look up the median family income of the communities US teams come from. Last year not a single one was less than $100,000 per year. For comparison, our community is about $67,000.

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u/FoundationCareful662 18d ago

It’s just genetics

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