League News

ENYTB Is Back For It's 22nd Season!

I'm in the process of coming out of my off-season slumber. The website has been re-initialized for 2017 and I am ready to take club/team activation calls for the 2017 spring/summer season.

This email will briefly cover several of the changes planned for 2017, including how to contact me, as well as our meeting schedule and instructions for activating your club and teams.


NEW INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTACTING ME:

1 - Henceforth, please use my cell phone for all telephone contacts re: baseball.

518-542-8498

2 - Henceforth, please use the ENYTB HelpDesk (green box in upper right hand corner of all website pages) for all email contacts with me concerning ENYTB.

NOTE: My old email address has been discontinued.


2017 INSTRUCTIONS FOR CLUB ACTIVATION:

To activate your club/teams, one call per club please, from the club GM or owner. Teams can be modified, deleted or added w/o penalty through our registration deadlines: MAR 15 at ages 12u and under and APR 15 at ages 13U and older.

ADVISORY: By league rule, after JAN 31, any registered team from last year that failed to activate for the new season, shall be declared dead and all players on its roster shall be made UFA. Thus, to maintain continuous roster protection, returning teams must be activated by JAN 31. (Dead teams can be brought back to life after Feb 1 but no guarantees re: players still remaining on your roster.) Because of these rules, it is advisable that no team use an RFA credit to acquire a player from the roster of another ENYTB team till that team is either activated or Feb 1, whichever comes first. New teams have till MAR15/APR 15 to activate/register/pay.


ENYTB MEETING SCHEDULE

All of the changes for 2017 will be presented and further discussed at our Annual Kick-Off Meeting which shall be held on Sunday, JAN 29 at 1:30PM at Waterford Halfmoon High School. (This is the Sunday before the Super Bowl.) The league's annual orientation meeting for people new to the league or wishing a better understanding of league processes will be held on Sunday, FEB 12 at 1:30PM at the same location.

CHANGES PLANNED FOR 2017:

Some of the league changes for 2017 are listed below:

1 - Players added to a team roster on a secondary basis shall be cut at the start of every new league year.

All such players are eligible to be re-added as secondary in the current season provided they meet the eligibility requirements for secondary rostering i.e., they are classified as ACTIVE on the roster of an ACTIVE ENYTB team in a different age division. Beginning this year, if a player is INACTIVE on his PRIMARY team (e.g., DNR, on his primary team's roster), the website will not allow the player to be added to any team on a secondary basis. Of course, such players can be acquired by another team on a primary basis but that transaction will require the availability/use of RFA credits and cap space to do so.

2 - NWP (non-weather postponements) - will be back in modified form by popular demand.

3 - RFA Player Movement System - Some tweaks (see ENYTB's News Announcement (on website homepage).

4 - Self-Scheduling (SS) - Will be re-instituted by popular demand on a voluntary basis. It will be limited to clubs with three or more teams that wish to SS all their teams.

Priority Scheduling:

A - Non-local teams (home and away) and teams with must fill field schedules (home games only). These games will be scheduled by me;
B - Teams owned by clubs that wish to SS will schedule next (home games only); and,
C - All remaining games will be scheduled by me.

So even those clubs that elect to SS, will have A priority games already scheduled for them by me before they begin their SS. Also, the league reserves the right to change the scheduling of up to 3 games for each SS team, if necessary. I am anticipating only 4 or 5 large clubs electing to SS.

5 - POSTSEASON REGISTRATION

Last year we experimented with mandatory sign-up for certain sanctioned tournaments. In the end, when we awarded these tournament berths, most teams declined them. Thus, that experiment has been discontinued and we will be moving in the opposite direction this year i.e., more free entry and DBI tournaments.

Perhaps the biggest change this year pertains to how postseason events are offered for sign-up and how much you pay for those sign-ups. The new method will greatly expand upon on what we started last year - free tournaments. In addition, other than free signups for competitive berths for PONY and NABF tournament berths, all sanctioned tournament berths will be available on a DBI basis only and the DBI fees will be greatly reduced as a result. For example, a DBI berth to an AABC sanctioned tournament will be priced at $350 instead of $500.

Last year we added the SUPER 8 tournament for ages 13U thru 18U. We offered it free of charge. The June Madness tournaments for ages 9u-12U were also offered free of charge. We will continue that practice in 2017. We also plan to expand the player awards for the Super 8 to include the runner-up teams and we are working on a really special addition for the Super 8 (to be announced at the meeting). In addition, we will be offering free PONY tournament eligibility at all ages through 23 and free NABF tournament eligibility at ages 9U through 22U.

Why are we greatly expanding the number of free tournament options?

The trend of recent years has been for fewer and fewer teams to sign up for sanctioned tournaments. The problem with that is that for teams that don't sign up for tournaments, their regular season games don't "count" for anything i.e., they are just exhibition games. That does not seem like a healthy trend for the league. So to counter this trend, we are making even more tournament options FREE. Moreover, we are making DBI berths to sanctioned tournament as cheap as absolutely possible. We hope this encourages more teams to sign-up for those tournament options as well.

How can ENYTB afford to give us so much of the so-called FREE stuff?

Well, you will recall last year we said we would use the money collected from fines to co-fund the FREE June Madness and Super 8 tournaments. We will be spending many times more this year on FREE stuff as well as on lower fees for DBI berths to sanctioned tournaments. To underwrite this additional cost, we have added an optional postseason fee to team registration. Here's how it will work: Except for Open tournaments such as Last Man Standing, teams will have to pay the general postseason fee to sign up for any ENYTB hosted tournament (FREE) or sanctioned tournament (free competitive or for-fee DBI).

NOTE: Teams that don't want any postseason tournament eligibility can avoid paying this fee altogether.

For example, a 14U team may select FREE eligibility for any or all of the Super 8 tournament, the PONY sanctioned national championship tournament series and the NABF sanctioned national championship tournament series, for a single fee of $100. In addition, your team will be able to select DBI berths to various sanctioned tournament series (PONY, AABC or NABF) at greatly reduced prices.

Elite teams can register for the Super 8 and for DBI sanctioned tournaments but not for competitive sanctioned tournament berths.

Beginning this year, low silver teams will be eligible for the same postseason options as Gold and HiSilver teams.

So registering for FREE tournaments will work as follows:

1 - Check the check-box for postseason fee (this will make all tournament options appear that your team is eligible to sign-up for);
2 - Select any free postseason event you are interested in registering for; and,
3 - select any non-free (but discounted) DBI berth to any sanctioned tournament series you are interested in.

If after checking the postseason fee box you decide you are not interested in registering for any postseason events, you simply uncheck the postseason fee box and any tournament registrations you may have chosen will be deleted. You will be charged nothing extra.

So, this is a way of sharing a portion of the costs of the FREE tournament options among the teams interested in participating in those tournaments w/o making those with no interest in postseason events pay anything. It also greatly discounts the price of DBI berths to sanctioned tournament series. So we think we have made everyone better off with this new pricing methodology and the postseason will help pay for all the new FREE stuff. In the process we think this pricing methodology will lead to more teams registering for more postseason play which is a plus for the teams, their players and the league. It will also mean our regular season league games will count something for teams trying to earn berths and/or better seeding, which we think is important to the health of the league. All in all, we are hoping this change in the pricing methodology for postseason tournaments is a win-win for the league and its members.

I hope to have the software changes for this pricing methodology completed before our end of month meeting. Until then, the registration page is blocked from view. However, a summary of the available postseason options and their prices can be found by clicking here.

See you all at the Kick-Off Meeting and until then, I look forward to your calls to activate your club/teams.

Happy New Year To All!

Ed Frye
ENYTB President