Baseball Depth Chart Template

The chart below arrives with the scorebook numbers already down its left edge and every name cell empty. Type into any cell. Extra rows are there when you need them, the DH line goes away with one click in leagues that play without it, and the column headers take whatever your program calls the strings. The last column is blank on purpose, for the reps a backup has actually taken at the spot.

One row is missing on purpose too. Pitcher is number 1 in the scorebook, and a lineup card gives it a fielding line like every other spot. On a depth chart it stops behaving like a position. You do not rank a staff first through third, you sort it by who starts, who follows, and who finishes, which is what the second chart on this page does.

Count the Names, Not the Rows

Twenty-seven name cells sit in that grid. Fill them honestly and you will use fewer players than you expect. A middle infielder covers 4 and 6. A corner outfielder covers 7 and 9. Your best athlete lands in more than one row.

That repetition is the reading. Count how many different players appear across the whole chart, then count how many carry the first-string column on their own. If the nine rows on this chart rest on eleven names, one bad flu week rearranges your entire infield, and you find that out on a Tuesday with no plan for it.

Catcher is where thin depth hurts first. The spot needs gear, blocking, a throw nobody else on the roster practices, and somebody willing to learn all three in March. A program with one catcher is not carrying depth at that row. It is carrying a hope.

The numbers down the left follow the standard fielding order. When the question runs the other way, meaning how to rotate the bodies you have through the spots across a game and where a weaker glove costs you least, our baseball position chart works the assignments out inning by inning.

A staff does not fit the grid above, and forcing it in there is where most downloadable charts go wrong. Fielding depth answers a question about where. Pitching depth answers a question about when. Your third-best arm might be the one you want in the sixth inning of a one-run game, which makes that pitcher neither a starter nor a backup.

The chart below ranks the staff by usage. Every role gets a first answer and a second one, because the whole reason to write a pitching chart is that the first answer keeps being unavailable. It takes typing the same way the fielding chart does, so rows you do not need come out and labels that do not fit get renamed.

Where These Role Names Come From

The labels are borrowed from the professional game, where one of them is written down. MLB awards a save, by its own definition(opens in new tab), to the relief pitcher who finishes a game for the winning team under a short list of conditions.

Below that level the same words describe usage, and nobody hands out the title. So fill in the rows your season actually produces. A program with fourteen arms uses all nine lines. A program with six deletes half of them and writes two names under Game 1. Rename anything that does not sound like your dugout, since Copy as Table takes your wording with it.

Availability Is Set Where You Play

One constraint sits under every row on that chart. The NFHS requires each member state association to build its own pitching restriction policy(opens in new tab) counted in pitches thrown, with a required rest period attached. The number of days your Friday starter owes before the next outing is a number your state association sets. No national table exists to look it up in.

That number belongs on the chart, not in your head. Write each arm's last outing and the date it comes back in the far column, and the ranking turns into an answer: on Thursday you can see who is available for Saturday without counting backwards from a scorebook.

Check your association's current policy before you plan a bracket around anybody. For the arithmetic that decides how many arms a program has to carry, our baseball roster template walks a two-game week through to the number of pitchers it takes. It runs that math on the published youth limits, because those are the ones written down nationally, so swap in your own state's numbers and the shape of the answer holds.

Both charts leave this page three ways, each one suited to a different job.

• Copy as Table is the exit to take when the chart still has moving parts. Your clipboard gets tab separated rows, any spreadsheet opens them as a proper grid, and from that point you work there and this page stops being involved.
• Download as Image is for the version that should hold still. A PNG of the chart as it stands on opening day goes in a coaches' email or a shared drive, and nobody quietly edits it before the next meeting.
• Ctrl+P is the binder copy. Two things happen at once: the editing buttons drop away, and the article prints along with your chart. Check the preview for the chart's page number, put it in the Pages box, and the sheet comes out on its own. The same dialog saves it as a PDF if that is what somebody upstairs wants.

You will notice there is no PDF button, which is on purpose. PDF is the format people mail around and then treat as settled, and a depth chart earns a new name in April.

What the Spreadsheet Version Adds

Paper cannot sort. Once the chart is in Sheets or Excel, sort by the first-string column and the duplicated names line up next to each other, which shows you at a glance how much of your season rests on three players.

Word is where the chart ends up when it goes into a season handbook. Paste the table, widen the position column, and it prints on whatever letterhead your athletic director wants.

Baseball keeps several season documents that look alike at a glance and answer completely different questions. This is where the lines fall.

Two more documents sit next to those three. A baseball lineup card is tonight's nine in batting order, with substitutes and a pitcher log. A batting order template handles the order itself, slot by slot. Neither one ranks anybody for the season, which is the job this page does.

The practical test is what happens when a name changes. Change the depth chart and you have made a decision about the next two months. Change the lineup card and you have made a decision about tonight.

Three strings is the default because three columns fit on one page. It is not a rule. How deep you go should follow the size of your roster and how much of your season gets played in brackets.

Work backward from your roster count. Eighteen players across the eight fielding spots and the DH looks like two deep everywhere. It is not, because a name filling two rows can still only stand in one of them at a time. A chart gets honest the moment you notice which of your backups are already starting somewhere else.

Where to Spend Your Depth

• Catcher: the row where the reps have to come in the gear, not just bullpen catching, before you can use the second name. Give your backup a full game behind the plate in the preseason and write the date in the last column.
• Up the middle: shortstop, second base, and center field cover the most ground and make the most decisions. Two real answers each, and the second one should have taken reps there, which is what that last column is for.
• Corners: first base, third base, and the corner outfield spots absorb a newer player faster than anywhere else on the field. Your third string can be somebody still learning.
• DH: the cheapest row to fill deep, because it asks for a bat and nothing else.

If your weekends are four-game brackets, you need a real third string, because somebody will be unavailable by Sunday morning. Play twice a week and second string covers most of what the season throws at you.

Programs with a JV carry part of their depth on another roster. Your third-string catcher may be a player who has never appeared on this chart. It helps when Striveon holds the JV and the varsity together, because then that bench is visible before the week you need it.

A preseason chart is a set of predictions, and plenty of them will be wrong by May. That is the chart doing its job.

So read it again on a schedule. After the last preseason scrimmage, after your first conference weekend, and the week before a bracket. One question each time: which of these predictions has the season already answered? A sophomore hits their way into the second-string outfield row. An arm that opened in long relief takes a start in April and never gives it back.

The staff half goes stale faster. A fielding row can sit untouched for a month, while the pitcher you wrote under Game 2 threw eighty pitches on Saturday and is not a Tuesday option, whatever the chart says. That is what the Updated field is for. A depth chart with no date on it makes a claim about a week nobody can identify.

Redrawing the order takes a minute. Reconstructing why March looked that way takes longer than you have in June, because the tryout scores behind it have usually gone missing. A rating you write in May does not overwrite the one from March, so Striveon keeps both ratings on that athlete's timeline and the case for a name is still readable after you have moved it twice.

The order itself has no field in Striveon, and that is the right split. Software is good at holding what happened. Deciding who is second at shortstop in the middle of April is yours, and it belongs in pencil, on the sheet you printed.