Teams -
Congratulations on another fun summer of baseball! The weather finally calmed down in July, so it has been great to see so many makeup games getting played. Thanks for staying diligent on remakes -- our standings and season could have been put in jeopardy had that effort not been made by everyone. Please continue to let myself, Lars (website) and Marc (umpires) know of any final remakes you have.
Below are some updates on playoffs:
1. Playoff Brackets -- Attached are the 2014 playoff brackets -- the 18+ is the first tab at the bottom and the 28+ is the second tab. The 28+ bracket is our traditional 16-team setup with the top 8 teams in each division qualifying. In the 18+ bracket, the top 6 teams advance in each division (12 teams total). The #1 and #2 seeds get byes the first round (Saturday). The #3/6 game is played first on Saturday and that result will determine the matchups for the second round (Sunday), with the #1 seed getting the lowest possible seeded opponent remaining after Day 1.
2. 18+ Playoff Fields -- 18+ playoff fields are set -- we have Van Cleve and NEAF in Minneapolis for the first weekend and Round Lake Stadium in Eden Prairie for the semis and championship. Thanks to Ryan Lutzka, Matt Stengel and myself for securing those sites.
3. 28+ Playoff Fields -- In the 28+, Bryan Kelly was able to land us the newly revamped Castle Field in Anoka. We have NO playoff fields yet for the first weekend of the 28+ playoffs. We need volunteers to get 3-4 sites for this ASAP. If you have a home field that would be good for playoffs, let me know and if you can book it for the entire day, we will make sure to schedule your team for one of the games there -- that way you can ensure the field is opened, closed and properly taken care of. Given that our 28+ playoff fields are still in flux -- the times of games are still TBD for the first round (Saturday). We have a lot of the same guys who always volunteer, so it would be nice if others in the 28+ would step up and take care of this.
4. Eligibility -- Please remember that to be eligible for playoffs, players need to have participated in 8 games in the 18+ division and 5 games in the 28+ division. A game played means an AB, pitching appearance or defensive appearance. Defensive appearances need to be clearly recorded in your opponents scorebooks, I-Pads, etc. We will not collect playoff rosters this year -- instead, Tom Genrich will circulate playoff rosters by email for you to confirm based on a software he developed.
5. Tiebreakers -- For seeding, league rules for tiebreakers are as follows: (1) Head to Head, (2) Head to Head, Fewest runs allowed, (3) Winning percentage within division, (4) Few runs-allowed league-wide, and (5) Most runs scored league-wide.
6. Playoff Rules -- All games in both the 18+ and 28+ are 9 innings. The mercy rule is 15 runs after 7 innings. The home team in the championship games will be determined by a pre-game umpire coin flip. All other rules remain the same.
7. Umpires; Baseballs -- Your league fees pay for playoff umpires (2-men crews for each game), so DO NOT cut checks to umpires as the league will have already prepaid Marc for this. Baseballs will be delivered each morning by a league officer or director to a playoff site. Please leave any extra baseballs for the games following yours that day.
8. Field Invoices -- Please continue to send your field invoices to our treasurer Frank Volkers (frank.volkers@genmills.com) -- he will mail a league check to the cities/schools. If you paid for fields directly, please obtain a receipt showing payment and submit it to Frank -- he will then mail your team a reimbursement check. If you had remake games, please ask for credits/refunds so we are not double paying for dates that were not used due to rain. Most cities/schools are good about honoring this -- any refund checks should be made out to the "TCMABL" and delivered to Frank.
Good luck!
John Remakel
President
TCMABL
