End of the Year Commissioner’s Address. And just like that, another KWL season has come and gone.  Summer evenings at the Oshtemo parks are over, but certainly not forgotten.  Congratulations on the three-peat to the Belly Itchers.  Just when we thought you guys had maxed out, you go and put together you best season to date.  Many teams have a lot of work do to this offseason in an attempt to de-thrown the KWL champs. Now that the season is over, we can really get down to business on the 2010 season! The 2009 season marked our 4th season and our largest season to date, featuring 14 teams and nearly 70 players. The year that I like to think of as the break out season. In the past we have always seemed to have 2 -3 dominate teams in each division.  The race for the playoffs never really seemed to be all that exciting, as most of the time it was a matter of who was ranked 1 thru 3 and not a matter of someone missing the cut on the last week of the schedule.  In 2009, we finally broke that trend!  In fact, in the American League the 3rd seed had an opportunity to tie for 1st with 3 wins on the final week.   The 4th place team in the AL missed the playoffs by half game and was only 2.5 games out of 1st place. The same thing happened in the NL when the Diablos lost 4 games in the final week, which dropped them a half game out of the playoffs. Top to bottom, this season offered the most parody between teams then any season prior.  One of the biggest differences that could be partially credited for the parody was the need to develop a 3rd pitcher that was required in the playoffs. A total 65 people pitch this season, up from 51 in 2008 and 39 in 2007.

Another difference that could be credited to this season’s success was the re-integration of Inter-League matchups.  In order for this to work, we had to add the 3rd night (Tuesday) and we needed teams to be willing to flex off their normal scheduled nights 2 times this season.  We did have some grumbling, but in the end, most teams really enjoyed the diversity added to their schedules. The largest success of this year’s season was the extension of friendships.  For the most part, players went out of their way to make friends with other players throughout the entire league.  We had many players come out on their off nights to cheer on other teams and hang out.  The American League really stepped up their game off the field with post game gathers at several local establishments, a lead followed by many in the National League later in the season. As Amber Hutson stated in her Most Mermorable Moments column, the Post-Allstar gather was EPIC! This past winter we decided to re-arrange the Allstar schedule to bring more competition to the AllStar game, but keep from taking anything away from the FunStars. The new times for these events really made this years AllStar Saturday the best one yet! I know that I personally felt honored to be part of such a great event. Unfortunatly, I forgot to publish an article from after the AllStar game, but you can read it here: My Random Thoughts on AllStar Saturday. Even though the season seemed to workout pretty seamlessly, we still have to pull out our magnifying glass and really analyze the season to see if there is anything that could make our league better for 2010.

What possible changes could we make for 2010 you ask?  Well, currently we have 4 main topics that will help shape next year’s season.  These three topics will be “the” topics of this year’s offseason and they should certainly bring for much discussion.

Extending the length of the season. I was shocked at how many players expressed their interest in extending the regular season.  This year’s schedule went back to 24 games for the first time since 2007, but still left a lot of people wanting more!  I would like to discuss extending the season to 30 games (3 more weeks) which would allow the league to start a couple weeks earlier and make for a much more dynamic season. 3-man Pitching Rotation. This would go hand and hand with extending the season to 30 games.  Almost every team in the entire league pitched more then 2 pitchers on a regular basis throughout the regular season.  So this will once again be a very hot topic this offseason as 2010 may be the year for this to finally be implied. Expanding? Will we stay with 14 teams for another season or add on 2 more slots pushing our league to 16 teams.  This will really depend on how many teams stay and how many teams go!  With all the media we have received this season, we already have 2 teams waiting in the wings to jump into the mix for 2010. Divisional breakdowns. If the league expands to 16 teams (8 in each division) we will have to decside wether or not we will split the divisions into East and West divisions. This would/could have a HUGE impact on the playoff race and should certainly be discussed in full.

No matter how these four things work out, we will still have some lesser changes to make as well, such as; adjusting the Mercy Rule (again), Foul/Dud zone, Field improvements/repair and a few more. Even though the topics we have to discuss are much more defined and might be easier decisions then years past, they still play a huge part in the continued success of the KWL.  As we did in 2008, we will have a winter meeting at Gallagher’s Pub on Wednesday December 9th (mark your calenders!).  Until then, we ask that you would take a minute to fill out the “End of Year” player survey. We received a lot of incite from players last season and we are looking to have that once again. Fill out Survey here