09/10' KWL Winter Meeting Recap 12/10/2009 For the second consecutive year, Mother Nature rained (well actually, snowed) down it's fury on the night of our scheduled KWL Winter Meeting. But honestly, what could possibly make the Winter Meeting resemble its name sake then a wonderful Michigan Blizzard? But despite the frigid conditions, the meeting must go on and many faithful KWL patrons battled the blustery winter evening to make it out to the event. Field Crew. The meeting began a little behind schedule, but kicked off when Commissioner Meyers introducing Corey Henderson as the new Field Crew Chief. "Corey's intentions for the upcoming season are to assembly a team of volunteers that can rotate on a monthly schedule to keep our fields trimmed and tidy." said Meyers, as he continued to say "Corey also has a few work days scheduled for the upcoming spring to do fence and field repairs." More information to come in the spring. League Dues. The next item on the agenda was to discuss the league dues for 2010. In the past the dues were handled individually and were collected by Amber Hutson. Unfortunately she spends much time chasing down players all the way up until the AllStar break. To relieve this from being such a pain for Amber, the fee's will now be collected as a Team Fee from the team captains. The team fee for 2010 is $210. These dues will be due before the end of week 1; dues received after week 1 will become $240 per team. Expansion teams’ dues will become due before March 1st. Dues Break Downs: 6-man team = $35 per player ($1.25 per game) 5-man team = $42 per player ($1.50 per game) League Expansion. The KWL will be expanding for the 4th straight season, now to 16 total teams. Three new teams were introduced; John Liberty's team, Brian Lewis' team and John Prihoda's team. The league currently has 15 team slots filled with one team slot remaining on Thursday night. Divisional Break Down. With the addition of the new teams, the American and National league will be breaking down into to two divisions (North and South). With this change, the new playoff format was explained; the two division leaders (1 seed and 2 seed) and two wild cards (can come out of either division) for a total of four teams in each league advancing to the playoffs for 2010. 1 Seed vs. 4 Seed, 2 Seed vs. 3 Seed.

After discussing the new division layout, a blind draw was had to develop the new divisions and is as follows: AL North NL North Industrials Belly Itchers SnowSuit Diablos Chuckers Lemons Sittin' Ducks Open Slot AL South NL South Fightin' Roo's Monday Night 40s Gentlemen Loose Nuts Prihoda's team Lewis' team Liberty's team The Cure Season Length. After many players asking for the upcoming season to be longer, the next discussion was to figure out how long we wanted the season to run for 2010. After much discussion, we landed at 28 games for 2010, up from 24 in 2009. This would be adding 2 weeks to the season, which will mostly likely be added to the beginning of the season. We will also be bringing back the AllStar break as we had in 2008, which adds 3 total extra weeks to the regular season. The extra games that were available in the past have been axed, so each team will only be playing 28 regular season games in 2010. Spring Training. Because of the additional weeks of the regular season, spring training will be offered at an additional cost (Location and cost TBD) starting in March. We will only have two weeks of outdoor spring training, which will be mandatory for the new expansion teams. AllStar Saturday. Mark your Calendars! June 12th (So Lukas Pederson can make it this year!).

3-Man Rotation. The biggest change for the 2010 season was unanimously passed at the Winter Meeting; 3-man pitching rotation. We used this format in the playoffs with great results and it quickly gathered support making it a reality for the upcoming season. A pitcher will only be allowed 6 innings every 3 games. They may only start once every 3 games. Teams will be allowed to reset there rotations after the AllStar Break and before the playoffs begin. This rule forces the "best" overall teams to rise to the top and should bring much parody to each division. The incorporation of this rule requires teams to manage their pitching and their team to team matchups.

Dud Zone. Any batted ball that hits the batting area carpet will be considered a foul ball. This includes balls that hit the plate. Mercy Rule Adjustment. 10 runs after 4 complete innings. If home team is up by 10, they would not bat their bottom half of the 4th inning. The Dutchmen rule has been removed. Switch hitting rule has also been removed, but we do encourage teams to switch hit when beating a bad team. Excessive scoring/Stat padding. If excessive scoring (example 24-3) the stat keepers can use desecration on validity and excesses will be demoted to your regular season averages in order to keep league stats balanced. (example, don't hit 5 HR's a game vs. the worst team in the league). Thanks to all that came out for the Winter Meeting and thanks for your input! We are half way through the offseason and should be wiffling again in short order! Keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming February tournament.