The Baseball Tryout Evaluation Form, Category by Category

At 9U and 10U, cut to six rows: athleticism, throwing, catching, infield, hitting, and coachability, and time a shorter sprint than the 60-yard dash, home to first is plenty. Most of the specialist rows are projection at that age anyway. By 13U the full nine categories apply, and the timed 60 becomes worth recording as a number, not a score. For high school and heavy travel tryouts, add measured rows where you have the tools: exit velocity off front toss, pop time for catchers, pitch velocity from a radar gun. Measurements travel across years; opinions don't.

Carry the form in one of two formats, or both. The per-player sheet is the format shown above: one page per player, categories as rows, an evidence note next to every score. It is the right tool for station evaluators and for any player you are close on. The compact roster sheet flips it: one row per player, the nine categories abbreviated across the top, a whole tryout group on a page or two. It is the right tool for scanning a 60-player field from one clipboard and comparing middle infielders side by side as they rotate through.

The roster sheet trades away the notes column, so pair it with a per-player sheet for bubble players, where "9 of 15 strikes" is the evidence you will want in February. The downloadable pack below includes both, plus a team sheet that totals each row automatically and a draft board that ranks the group from the scores.

The form is the easy half. At a travel or league tryout with 100-plus registrants and 15 coaches, the hard half is collecting hundreds of sheets and turning them into one defensible list before offers go out. On paper, that's a late night with a spreadsheet. Scored in Rizzler, every coach enters numbers at their station on a phone, the ranked board builds itself during the tryout, and offers go out and get tracked from the same place, no transcription step, no lost sheet from field three. The Team Tryouts workflow covers registration through offers for up to 300 players on the Club plan, with the baseball template pre-loaded and editable on Pro and Club. The baseball tryouts page shows the whole flow. And if you run softball too, the softball version of this form covers the fastpitch-specific rows.

Nine: athleticism, baseball IQ, throwing, catching, infield, outfield, hitting, plus pitching and catcher skills for players who try out for them. Score two or three observable skills inside each, and leave specialist rows blank for players who don't attempt them.

Use 1 to 5 on paper and 1 to 10 in an app, and define the middle before you start. The single most useful rule: attach one sentence of evidence to each score. "9 of 15 strikes" ranks players; "good control" starts arguments.

No. Use one form with pitching and catcher rows that only get filled in when attempted. One form keeps every player comparable on the shared rows, athleticism, hitting, and defense, while the specialist rows sort your staff. Separate forms make the final ranking a merge problem.

Anchor and calibrate. Write one sentence per number for the contested categories, then have pairs of coaches score the same players for the first ten minutes and reconcile gaps. At scale, also rotate evaluators across stations between sessions so no player's total depends on one coach's hard grading.