I guess it is also up to the individual clubs to suggest what teams they enter their teams into also to make the divisions as even as possible.

Richmond, Croydon, Southampton and Bracknell in the South

Manchester, Liverpool, Harrogate and Menwith Hill in the North

Each team would play their division rivals twice and the opposite division once – all double headers – thats 6 + 8 = 28 games over 14 weekends.

Playoffs could either be MLB style division winners + wildcard with best of 3s over 2 weekends, or let 8 teams qualify for a double eliminator weekend at Croydon narrowing it down to a final two – followed by a best of 3 final the following weekend.

The lower divisions will be AAA, AA and A in the south, combined with the AAA/AA standard of the Midlands and the AA/A standard of the remaining teams in the North.

I see no reason why we shouldn’t allow 8 teams in each level to qualify for the playoffs either over two weekends or one big weekend. That would really test the pitching depth of the teams.

More work this year needs to be done on accurately assessing the relative strengths of the divisions. Last year there were a few mismatches.

I wonder whether the NBL south will be broken into 2 “pools”, with the 4 most southern teams in one and the remaining 4 in the other?

Another alternative would be to schedule games on a neutral ground to reduce travelling distance/time?

Also, I prefer the playoff format with two teams playing in a series like the MLB.

Even so, in previous seasons the finale has still been held relatively early (the first weekend of Sept). Perhaps this was to allow subsequent time for a reschedule if the Final 4 was rained-out. Or maybe it was about venue availability. Other than that I don’t see why we couldn’t extend the season through to the end of September if a longer playoff scheme was devised.

In 2010 the GB team will take part in the European Championship from July 23 – August 1 so it may be that the BBF builds in a mid-season break in the league as John suggests.

What’s better to decide a championship, Tournament or Playoff format?

So competing in Playoff baseball and Tournament baseball are very different styles in terms of pitcher use, who you matchup against and player availability on a certain weekend which I think we saw a couple of teams in a few levels miss some key players at the ‘09 Final4. Basically, if you want to play in a tournament format then that what the London tourney is for but real baseball is played over more then 1 weekend or 2-3 games in a couple of days to decide a season. Its easy to set-up and run from an administration point of view but teams don’t deserve to play 25+ games to lose 1 or 2 with a ‘B’ squad and your season is finished with nothing to show for it.

The other question is that with more teams does it equal more games? How many times do teams play each other? Will it be a balanced fixture? Is having 8 teams in the South and 4 in the North going to have any problems?

Will be interesting which teams are set-up in which divisions or even what kind of overall set-up is proposed for the NBL North & South. So it looks like there will be a 4 team North and an 8 team south which is great that there are more teams. The balance of the schedule will be the biggest hurdle I think for teams this this year with travel and who plays what teams how many times.

Lets look at the regular season and take the current system, 8 team South. First it will be tough to keep everyone happy I’m sure in terms of how many games played, travel, player availability, how many weeks in a row a team plays and ground availability. This will obviously affect how strong the NBL can become.

Here are a few options as to what could be a possible regular season set-up

#1
With 8 teams if all the teams play each other home and away with a double-header each time that would equal 28 games over 14 weekends.

In 2009, 5 teams played each other 6 times for a total of 24 games over 12 weekends. If the North were then to play on this system they would play a total of 18 games or 8 times for 24 games. But with the proposed two-tier conference for the North next season something else will have to be worked out. Does anyone know how the 2 tier system will work? And how many games will they play?

So even with the added teams it looks like there could be about the same amount of regular season games.

#2
Another option could be to have 3 sub-divisions of the NBL consisting of 4 teams in each. There could be a North and 2 South divisions. Using the double-headers during the regular season effectively all teams could play each other at least once during the season. You would then play the teams in your division twice.
Total games would come to 28 over 14 weekends and you play every team in the NBL. The biggest drawback would be the travel for all teams so I can’t see this happening. Though it would probably be the best indication as to who the better teams were across the country for the season.

I think the BBF & BSUK could come up with something close to the first option which is just about the same games as last season an hopefully a longer post season.

Tim brings up a good point about the timing of the season and totally agree that a later finish could be on the cards for this season. The scheduling towards the end of the season will have to be well planned as the youth finals are also happening around the same time period. Should there be a mid-season break instead of random weeks off? How many rain dates?

If you break the season up into 3 there is time off and all teams could go deep into August.
Possible start dates of the 2010 season;
Sun April 18 – Sun June 6 (7 weekends with 1 spare rain date June 6)

Sun Jul 4 – Aug 22 (7 weekends with 1 spare rain date Jul 25)

Aug 29 – Sep 19 (4 week playoff series)

Lots of options there. More ideas the better I think and

I just hope this isn’t going to be another brief peak in the size and quality of the top division before another dip in a year or two when the squad on one or more clubs disperses and they have to drop out of the division due to lack of players, or throw together a team which is unable to compete with others at that level. All of which defeats the original aims of the NBL which was to establish sustainable clubs and continually improve the quality of baseball on show in the country’s top division.

It will also be interesting to see how the pre-existing NBL clubs cope with the bigger range of locations and distances they need to cover over the season.

In terms of the playoff system, the BBF has to decide whether it wants to adopt a longer postseason schedule which involves more teams spread over more locations and ultimately rewards those which are stronger over the distance, or whether it prefers the current ‘Final 4′-style set-up which can take place in one weekend. As well as being more compact to organise, the latter is also perhaps better suited as a ’season finale’ event to promote baseball to the outside world if that is the aim… although they do still have a lot of work to do to create that ‘festival of baseball’ atmosphere.

A longer postseason might work if they extended the season beyond the usual finish in late August/early September so that teams which didn’t make the postseason didn’t find that their competitive season is over by the start of August in order to leave room for make-up games and playoff weekends. We tend to get our best weather in Sept/Oct these days!

and good for the Mustangs to take the jump. I’ve played against them several times and they’re a good team. I hear they were very pleased to beat Essex in the semi final this year!

I would be greatly in favour of an increased postseason (I’ve been saying this for a while) The playoffs are by far the best bit of the season, playing teams you actually match up well against. lets send 8 teams along in each division! This should be considerably easier to organise once Herts complete their second diamond.

I also agree with Matthew & John regarding the post season – a shorter regular season and longer playoff structure are needed imo.

Having a more compact regular season should hopefully avoid the many forfeits and incompleted games that we saw last year.

A longer post season, as you say perhaps over 3 weekends, would be ideal. The first two rounds of the playoffs could be played at the clubs own diamonds, with the final weekend held in a similar style to the existing “final four” format, at a single location.

Here’s hoping as many of the proposed new teams can get their rosters in order for the season start.