Baseball Tryout Evaluation Form

Hand every evaluator a stack of these, one per player. Besides the usual details, the header asks you for four things the rows depend on. Fill in Division / League first. It tells you whether the lead clauses under Base Running count. Then add how the player bats and throws, a second position, and a home-to-first time from the last swing of the hitting round.

For a PDF, print the sheet to Save as PDF. Copy as Table hands you ten empty player rows for a spreadsheet, with the level wording beneath them.

Adding up every evaluator's scores by hand? The €19 Tryout Decision Kit marks who's on the bubble and drafts a message to every family ↓

The sheet above tells you who looked best on one afternoon. Over a season, you want to know who is getting better, and six numbers per player are too coarse to show you. If you set up your account with baseball and start from its starter content, Striveon gives you the same game broken into 36 sub-skills over six areas, each marked 1 to 10 by default and marked again as the season goes.

You can rename, add, or remove any area or sub-skill in the app so the list matches how your program plays. A new sub-skill stays unrated until you score it, and a player's overall rating counts only the sub-skills you rated, so adding one changes nobody's rating.

Delete with care. Removing a sub-skill also removes every rating it already holds, and removing an area takes its ratings, its own criteria, and any season plan that uses only that area. Goals that target a removed sub-skill or area lose their target.

Score a Player on the Framework

Pick an area and give each sub-skill a mark from 1 to 10. You'll see the whole-player profile under the scorer fill in as you go. Nothing is saved between visits, so before you close the tab, paste the scores into your own sheet or download the profile as a picture.

Ten Written Levels Behind the Numbers

The scorer's marks have no words attached. Baseball's starter content, if you start from it, also adds ten criteria levels shared by all of your organization's skills. Level 1 is "No Experience" and level 10 "Master level, teaches others." Level 4, for example, reads "Aware of the game situation (count, runners) in practice and occasionally reacts correctly." For words that apply to one area alone, each skill set's card on the Skill Sets page carries an Evaluation Criteria button. Those levels start empty, so your pitching coach can write the words for Pitching.

From Tryout Baseline to End-of-Season Evaluation

Once the season is under way, you rate the same sub-skills a few more times. The last round doubles as the end-of-season evaluation you go through with each player.

Tryout day itself belongs on paper. After the cut, a single coach enters the baseline for every rostered player. The Evaluate players button, which sits over the player list, starts it. Rate each sub-skill with a whole number, on a scale that runs 1 to 10 unless your organization changed it, with the panel's tryout sheets beside you. One tryout row covers several sub-skills, so pick the number for each sub-skill that you would defend to the player.

• One coach, one evaluation. Every published evaluation is its own point on a player's Progression chart. If every panel member published a baseline, their disagreement would chart as a rise and fall that never happened.
• Publish evaluations is final. Publishing sends an email to every other coach with full access and to each rated player who has a login. You don't get a copy yourself. Anyone who has switched off Evaluations under Content Changes in their Email Notifications settings gets nothing. Publish once the players know who made the team.

This section follows Little League's divisions and MLB's Pitch Smart guidelines. High school baseball plays with leads. The NFHS notes that the pitcher taking the sign "establishes when an offensive base runner(s) can take a lead-off"(opens in new tab), so at high school every "Leads allowed" clause counts. A travel team checks its own league's rule.

No Lead-Offs in the Major Division and Below

Little League's help center(opens in new tab) explains why no balk is called in the Major Division and below. A base runner in those divisions "is unable to lead off a base." Intermediate 50/70, which Little League's divisions page(opens in new tab) lists for league ages 11 to 13, uses Junior League rules "such as runners being permitted to lead off bases," and the balk rule applies from there up.

For a Major Division player, skip the "Leads allowed" clauses and score how the runner gets out of the box, turns at first, and reads a ball in play. The framework's Lead-offs and Reading Pitchers sub-skills wait for the move up.

Fastballs and Changeups Through Age 12

Pitch Smart's guidelines for ages 9 to 12(opens in new tab) include a line that belongs on any tryout sheet. "Avoid throwing pitches other than fastballs and changeups." Its page for ages 13 and 14(opens in new tab) says players "can begin using breaking pitches after developing consistent fastball and changeup."

The pitching sheet follows that order and applies the 9-to-12 line to 8U as well, so Breaking Ball is N/A for every pitcher 12 or under. Give your attention to the Changeup row instead. It is the only second pitch the 9 to 12 guideline names.

Rest Days by Pitch Count

For pitchers 14 and under, Little League's regular-season pitching rules(opens in new tab) and Pitch Smart's 9-12 and 13-14 tables give the same bands. Throwing 1 to 20 pitches needs no days of rest, and 21 to 35 means one day. Little League lets 15- and 16-year-olds throw up to 30 with no rest.

Pitch Smart's table is written for pitches in a game. A tryout bullpen is not one. Keep the script at 20 anyway, and your tryout asks no more of an arm than an outing that needs no rest. A high school program also answers to its state association, which NFHS rules require to set a pitching restriction(opens in new tab) based on pitches thrown. When the season starts, the pitch count tracker counts one pitcher's outing against the Pitch Smart or Little League limits and shows the rest days the count calls for.

Diamond Size by Division

A home-to-first time and a pitcher's command only compare between players who play on the same diamond.

Source: Little League, Field Specifications(opens in new tab). It lists the Intermediate dimensions as a local option for regular-season play and lets Junior League shorten the mound to 54 feet and the bases to 75.

A tryout bullpen has 20 pitches to spend, the most a pitcher 14 or under can throw and owe no rest. The script below spends them in blocks of five, and each block feeds the rows named beside it in the table. Every Group D pitcher throws it once during the hitting rounds. The two bullpen evaluators score pitcher and catcher from the same pitches, on the sheet at the end of this section.

The 20-Pitch Script, Block by Block

The order never changes. Pitches 16 to 20 are the ones to compare between pitchers. They come from the stretch at called counts, after fifteen pitches with a warm arm, and every pitcher meets the same counts in the same order.

A 15- or 16-year-old can add a block of ten fastballs and changeups to called spots and still stay inside Little League's 30-pitch zero-rest band. Fastball top (mph) on the header is for teams with a radar gun. No row scores velocity.

Pop Time Comes from the Diamond

The script feeds three of the catcher's four rows. Pop and Throw waits until the catchers come out for battery defense, where each one makes two timed throws to second and the quicker time goes on the header as pop time.

The baseball player profile template has lines for a catcher's pop time and a pitcher's pitch types, so you can carry these numbers straight onto it. The pitching drills and catching drills guides have the work that moves each row after the cut.

Little League names defense, offense, and speed as the three tryout skills worth rating(opens in new tab). Of speed it says, "It can't be taught, but it can be the difference between a hit and an out." The youth sheet scores those three, then adds a row for knowing where the play is and one for effort. Each row is worth the same 5 points, so the total runs to 25.

The same article asks evaluators to look past the body. Consider "your impression of the player's personality," it says, and "watch how he/she reacts to their performance." It goes on, "So often, a Little Leaguer's willingness to have fun and be a good teammate will far exceed physical talent." Write what you see in Notes.

When the Tryout Is a Draft

Some leagues use tryout day to spread players across teams rather than pick one roster. Seat the managers who will draft as the panel, each scoring all five rows for every player, and the averaged sheet gives every manager the same list to pick from. Does your league weight some rows more than others? Then write the weights on the sheet's header before the first player comes through, so nobody adjusts them after seeing the totals.

This plan fits 36 players into 165 minutes on one diamond, with two batting cages and a two-mound bullpen. That suits a 13U travel roster of about a dozen. A high school program keeping more players can run the same day and draw its line further down the list. A pitching machine feeds the hitting rounds and a coach throws the live situations, so you never add to a tryout pitcher's count after the script. The baseball tryout drills guide has the drills for each block and what each one shows.

One Panel Watching Every Rep

The four panel members move as one group, to the first-base side of home for the hitting rounds, where the swing and the run to first are both in view, then down the first-base line for defense and live play. Each one scores every main-sheet row for all 36 players from the same swing, ground ball, or turn at first.

A station tryout with one coach per drill finishes sooner. What the panel buys you is four scores per row that describe the same rep.

Give each evaluator their own clipboard, and keep numbers unspoken until the sheets are in. Talk about what a swing or a throw did, never about what it scored.

Use the warm-up to line up the panel's reading of the rubric. During the throwing progression, every panel member scores the same three throwers on Throwing without talking, then you compare. If any thrower gets marks two points apart, read the Throwing levels aloud together before the first hitter steps in.

Five helpers free the panel to watch.

• A machine feeder for the hitting rounds, who also calls the line for each bunt
• A timer with a stopwatch at first base, also during the hitting rounds
• A fungo hitter for the defense block
• A coach to throw the live situations
• A base coach in the third-base box for the live situations

A shortstop or outfielder who also pitches throws a script during the defense block, after their own turn in the field, and the bullpen evaluators score it.

A 36-player tryout leaves you 144 main sheets, 18 pitcher-catcher sheets from Group D, and 216 rows that each need a trimmed average. Copy as Table on the compile sheet moves the grid into Google Sheets or Excel, where the averaging can happen. In four empty cells beside the pasted grid, such as N3 to Q3, type one row's four scores, and =(SUM(N3:Q3)-MAX(N3:Q3)-MIN(N3:Q3))/2 gives that row's trimmed average.

1. Check every row for a two-point gap. Read the four scores on each row before any formula sees them. When they sit two points or more apart, such as a 2 against a 4, write the row in the Spread column, and have the panel reread that row's levels and name the rep behind each score. Anyone may then change their own mark. If the gap survives, the row keeps its Spread mark and the player goes to the meeting whatever the total says.
2. Trim each row. Of the four panel scores on a row, cross out the highest and the lowest and average the two that remain. One generous or one harsh evaluator can no longer move a player alone.
3. Add it up. The six trimmed averages make the Total out of 30. For Group D, the Battery column is the bullpen evaluators' mean across the rows they scored on the pitcher-catcher sheet, on the same 1 to 5 scale.
4. Fill the arms first. Count your roster spots, take the pitchers and catchers you need by Battery, and fill the rest by Total. A two-way player sits on both lists, Battery for the arm and Total for everything else. Anyone within 1.5 points of the last spot goes to the meeting with their notes and Spread rows. One evaluator reading three rows a level differently can move a trimmed total by up to 1.5 points, so the band holds the players a single reading could have flipped.

Telling players is its own job, and making tryout cuts walks through the conversation. A player who missed the cut can still leave with numbers to chase, a home-to-first time or, for a catcher, a pop time to beat next spring. With the roster final, the baseball roster template is where the final names and positions go.