We went through something similar...

My son was probably 9 or 10 and we were really fed up with the coaches...we had voiced our displeasure before which of course was the kiss of death but with two tournaments remaining in the season, the coach called me and said that we weren't going to be brought back the following year. Funny thing was, that earlier that day I had an hour-long conversation with the coach of another team that sounded like a great fit (and was). My immediate reaction was that we were not going to play the final two tournaments...I wasn't going to let them hurt my son any more than they already did (two of the coaches are, and still are total dicks...the head coach was fine). The head coach understood and we tried out later that week for a budding organization that ended up 3 years later being the best team in our region and the coaches were fantastic to my son and our family even if he wasn't always the best player. He was one of the best when we joined (about a .500 team) and then we steadily got better to the point where my son was one of the weakest hitters but the coaches always told him he had a spot as long as we wanted. We eventually made the family decision to stop travel baseball but remain close with the coaches and parents.

On the topic of guest players...that's a horribly shitty thing no matter what the situation is. Sometimes, you have injuries or missing players and you have to sub in but those players NEVER should take the regular spot of someone who paid the money and put in the time. If you want to cut a kid at the end of the year, that's fine (I still don't like it) and then you can replace him with one of the guest players then. I always hated when teams would bring in ringers and it's just not fair to the everyday players...winning games just doesn't matter that much and kids will always remember these dickhead coaches.

The timing of tryouts has also always been bad...you should not have tryouts until the end of the season but too often they're earlier than they should be and then "fall ball" is a factor too. Most of the teams around here are now done by the end of June and then tryouts are after...that's been a nice change. We've had years where we play all season with people and then new players are suddenly on the team for some fall tournaments...that needs to go.