Here's a scenario for you coaches to comment on:

Background - You have midweek and Friday league games. Both are against strong teams that you've lost to once already. If you lose both games your chances of making the playoffs are not gone but they are slim. You have a strong midweek starter and a strong Friday starter. Your Saturday starter has come on strong lately but is inexperienced in league. Your relievers have not done that well the last couple games. They both rely on breaking balls as their go to pitches and the Wednesday team has shown the ability to jump on breaking balls. The Friday team jumps all over fastballs. Your Saturday starter did do well against the team you are playing on Friday after the Friday starter was blown out, but it was not a pressure situation at all. Your Saturday game is pool play in a tournament and you've already got your seeding in the tournament playoffs locked up.

Your Friday starter has had some recent discipline issues and although there's some grey areas involved he typically wouldn't be allowed to play in the midweek game. He's just "signed" D1 and has felt mistreated in the past and may be acting up as a result. Unfortunately, you typically use him as your midweek closer in addition to being your Friday starter.

1. Do you sit the Friday starter for the midweek game or go to the grey area defense and use him if you need him to close? Your chances of winning this game are better than on Friday and you have a chance of passing this team in the playoff race and no real chance of catching Friday's team.

2. Do you go with the Saturday starter on Friday?

Nobody else has replied so here goes. Keep it simple. Do whatever you need to do to put your team in a position to win and advance to the playoffs. Don't do anybody else any favors.

Donughtman,
So the heck with team rules?

Maybe not as far as breaking team rules. But what specifically are they? I had never heard of a kid only able to play on the weekends. If he is allowed to play at all he should be allowed to play whenever the the team plays. If it is a written rule that has been broken, bench the kid or kick him off or do whatever the penalty is supposed to be. I am not a fan of arbitrary punishments. Do the crime, do the time. Kids make mistakes and should be punished, then forgiven. I doubt if anybody was an angel as a kid, and if they say they were then they are a liar as an adult.

If the player is a member of the team then let him be a member of the team. If he isn't then move on to the next kid.

So, is the kid on the team or not? Is he suspended or not? If he is on the team and not suspended then let him close.

Dman,
I thought he had broken a team rule that says that he wouldn't be able to play the next game. It turns out he hadn't broken any rule with that penalty so the question was moot. He did close, blew the save and got the win when they went ahead in the bottom of the 7th. He threw quite a few pitches so my guess is he may not start on Friday.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Glad it is the coach's decision and not mine.

They did start the Saturday starter and he got hit hard. The Friday starter didn't pitch. Don't know if he'll start on Saturday as it means nothing or not.