How Good Is My Son at Baseball? Try This Ranking Exercise First

My freshman year, my college coach had the whole roster do something I’ve never forgotten. He had every position player rank every other position player, 1 through 20. Including yourself. Where do you actually sit on this team?

Then he met with each of us, one at a time. He told us where he had us ranked. We told him where we’d ranked ourselves. And then we talked about the gap.

It was uncomfortable. It was also the most honest hour of baseball I had that year.

Parents ask me how good is my son at baseball as if there is a magic sentence that settles it. There isn’t. There is a ranking against the kids he sees every day, and there is a set of numbers against the level he says he wants. Most families skip the first one because it is personal, and they skip the second one because a ranking service already sold them a story.

Why ranking him against his own team works

Most self-evaluation is soft. “I think I had a good season.” “I’m one of the better hitters on the team.” None of that holds up to a number, and none of it changes anything, because there is nothing to push against.

You’ve probably heard the term 5-tool player — power, hit for average, run, arm, defense. Somebody, at some point, is going to size him up against those five things whether you ask them to or not. Ranking yourself against the exact players you practice with every day forces that same evaluation, except you do it first, honestly, before a coach or a recruiter does it for you.

You have to look at the third baseman next to you and decide — am I better than him right now, or not? That’s a real question with a real answer, and you already know it, even if you don’t want to say it out loud.

The second part is what makes it useful instead of just uncomfortable: hearing where a coach who watches him actually has him. If your number and his number match, you’ve got a clear read. If they don’t, that gap is the most useful information you’ll get all season. Either he’s seeing something you’re missing, or you’re not showing him what you’ve got. Both are worth knowing.

How to rank your baseball player at home

You don’t need a college coach and a 20-man roster for this to work. Have him rank himself honestly against his own team, position by position. Then ask someone who watches him play regularly — a coach, an assistant, someone with no reason to flatter him — where they’d put him. Compare the two lists together, out loud.

Don’t rescue him from a hard answer, and don’t let him rescue himself. The value is in sitting in the gap, not smoothing it over. Your job is to sit next to him while he looks at it. Not to talk him into a higher number because he’s your kid.

Ranking vs. the numbers — you want both

A ranking tells you where he sits against his own team. It doesn’t tell you where he sits against the level he’s chasing. That’s a different question, and it takes different information. The 60, the arm, and the exit velo are how you stop arguing with the bleachers. How to Honestly Evaluate Your Son’s Baseball Tools is that version, and you can put the numbers into the Free Objective Evaluation if you want the grade in your inbox.

One tells you how he compares to who’s next to him. The other tells you how he compares to who he wants to play against. You want both answers, not just one. If you only do the ranking, you’ll stay trapped in a 13U pecking order. If you only chase a radar number, you’ll miss the kid who thinks he’s a 2 when the coach has him as an 8 — or the other way around.