Big changes ahead for high school baseball

The Sac-Joaquin Section announced Thursday at its annual Media Day that there are big changes coming for the 2017-18 school year.

And none of it has to do with realignment, the section’s quadrennial plan to reshuffle league members to maintain competitive equity. That contentious issue was put to bed months ago, and doesn’t go into effect until the 2018-19 school year.

The big changes for this school year deal with baseball.

For the first time, the section’s baseball playoff format will be enrollment-based, meaning teams will be placed in playoff brackets according to the school’s student population. Until now, specific leagues were matched with specific playoff divisions.

“There’s no more North and South in Division I,” said assistant commissioner Will DeBoard. “And the format will be single elimination until four teams remain, then it will go to double elimination.”

In years past, the Division I baseball playoffs were split into two divisions – North and South, with the champion of each meeting for all the marbles. However, this hasn’t guaranteed that the section’s top two teams played for the title.

Also, the double-elimination aspect would prevent a mediocre squad, with just one superior pitcher, to snag the title from a more well-rounded club.

“It depends on who you are whether you’re going to like it or not,” said Central Valley athletic director Greg Magni. “Speaking from the WAC perspective, a team like Livingston would probably like it. They made the playoffs last year and were stuck playing teams significantly bigger than they were. Los Banos might get opponents that are more evenly matched. For us, we’re a big school, numbers-wise, but it doesn’t mean we’re a powerhouse. We’re big but still trying to find our identity.”

In other news to come out of Media Day:

• Competitive cheerleading (not to be confused with sideline cheerleading) will become a section-sanctioned sport for the coming school year.
• Foundation volleyball games will be contested Monday night. All proceeds go to the section’s Dale Lackey Scholarships.
• On the whole, the Sac-Joaquin Section’s playoff gate receipts were down across the board approximately 15 percent. Football was down nearly $55,000, but remained the top earner by far at $417,635.62. The next closest sport was basketball, totaling $101,326.24, down more than $56,000 from the previous season. Baseball was another big dropper. After earning nearly $40,000 in 2012-13, revenues were under $4,000 last season. Meanwhile, softball, for the fourth consecutive season, lost money, nearly $15,000 in the red.
• There is consideration of the section awarding a Commissioner’s Cup, which would give to the school with the best all-around athletic performance across the board. Based on an example from two seasons ago, Mariposa High would’ve shared the cup with Vista del Lago.
• Gregori High will be one of two sites for the section girls volleyball finals on Nov. 11
• The section will now use seven enrollment-based divisions for football. In the past, there were six enrollment-based divisions with a seventh for the smallest of the section’s 198 schools.
• There will be Northern California regional play for boys and girls soccer and water polo … unless the section’s board of managers votes to return boys soccer to the fall season and girls soccer to the spring, as it was in 2015-16. Last year, both boys and girls played in the winter to align with other sections in the state.
• Competitive equity will be utilized for the regional and state playoffs for basketball, volleyball and soccer. That means a Sac-Joaquin Section champion in Division IV could find itself playing in Division II, if the state determines that’s where the team best fits.
• The state is proposing a more uniformed sit-out policy for transfers. As it stands, students who transfer out until a certain date – in the fall, winter or spring – on the calendar before they’re allowed to play. That date however, eats up a greater percentage of the season for some sports and less of a percentage for others. The state is looking to make that percentage equal, which means one sport would have a different sit-out day than another.

This story was originally published August 24, 2017 at 3:08 PM with the headline "Big changes ahead for high school baseball."