Author Archives: sfybl

Play-Off Rules

The play-offs are set to begin in full force this Saturday, May 18. The brackets are locked, so please do not ask for any more schedule changes.

We want to make sure all teams are aware of a few things some of which are play-off specific and some of which we have seen a notable amount of violations of throughout the season:

1) Game time is forfeit time. If either team does not have at least eight players present, suited up, and ready to play by the scheduled game start time…they forfeit the game.

2) The higher seeded team is always the home team throughout the play-offs.

3) There are no ties in post-season play. Games will be played until there is a winner.

4) Time limits are in effect. This means the inning the game is in at the 2hr mark for Mustang and 2hr 15min mark for Bronco and Pony is the final inning. The only exception is if the game is a tie (see 3 above)

5) Coaches are allowed to visit the pitchers mound once per inning. Upon a second visit, the pitcher must be withdrawn from the position.

6) In the Mustang division, three innings is the maximum a pitcher is allowed to pitch. There is no pitching maximum in the Bronco and Pony divisions, but we hope coaches use good judgment.

7) Mustang only: the Mustang stealing rule modification remains intact: a) there is no stealing home (except on a passed ball) and b) a team must stop stealing any time they have a 10-run lead.

8) COACHES: PLEASE REPORT GAME SCORES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UPON COMPLETION OF YOUR GAME

Play-Off Bracket Changes

There have been changes to some times, locations, and match-ups in some play-off brackets. Coaches, please reference the email sent to you on this and make sure to check the brackets Thursday (May 15) AM for any final changes. Also, please make sure your players’ families know about any changes impacting your team.

Play-Offs Schedule and Brackets

Now that all the regular season games in the Mustang, Bronco, and Pony divisions have been played, the scores reported, and the final standings calculated; we have scheduled the play-off games. See:

http://www.sfybl.com/playoffs/default.htm

As previously mentioned, we are restructuring a few divisions (Mustang & Pony) to make them more evenly balanced and competitive for post-season play.

This is our structure:

Pony
The 11-team regular season division will be broken down into two sub-divisions:

1) Willie Mays – Top six finishing teams. In the first round, the top two finishing teams will have byes; 3 will play 6 and 4 will play 5

2) Joe DiMaggio – The bottom five finishing teams. 4 and 5 (formerly 10 and 11) will first have a play-in game; 1 will play the winner of the 4/5 play-in; 2 will play 3

Bronco
The regular season divisions will be kept intact. In each of those divisions, the match-ups will be 1/8, 2/7, 3/6, and 4/5.

Mustang
Big changes here. The 12-team Willie Mays and 13-team Joe DiMaggion (JD) divisions will be broken down into three divisions:

Willie Mays (WM) – top 4 from regular season WM and top 4 from regular season JD

McCovey – 5-8 from both the WM and JD regular season division

Joe DiMaggio – 9-12 and 9-13 from the regular season WM and JD divisions. 12/13 will have a play-in game. The WM-originating teams will be the higher seed. Using McCovey as an example: WM 5, 6, 7, and 8 will becomes McCovey 1, 2, 3, and 4…while JD 5, 6, 7, and 8 will become McCovey 5, 6, 7, and 8.

In all three post-season Mustang divisions the format will be 1/8, 2/7, 3/6, and 4/5.

We have published the working brackets/schedule. There may be a few time/location changes over the next few days, so you are STRONGLY RECOMMENDED TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE AGAIN ON MAY 14. We expect the schedule as is to remain largely intact…so we’re putting this out there now to give you something to develop preliminary plans around.

Play-Offs – preliminary info

To answer some questions related to play-offs which have been asked of us:

1) all teams in the Mustang, Bronco, and Pony divisions will be in the play-offs

2) there will be some restructuring of the in-season divisions for post-season play to better balance out the play-offs and make the games as competitive as possible

3) the play-off dates are set and are published on our calendar within the “League Calendar” section of our web site.

We will announce the play-off structure as well as publish brackets and pairings this Saturday evening or Sunday before noon…after the final regular season games have been played and we have scores for them. This is the only level of detail we are making public at this moment.

Summer 2013 Junior Giants – May 11 Registration

The Junior Giants is a FREE non-competitive summer baseball opportunity for youths between the ages of 5-13 throughout northern and central California. It is funded by the SF Giants Community Fund.

The SF Recreation and Parks department (an SFYBL partner) has run the Jr. Giants program in San Francisco since 1989.

Practices are one day a week with games on Saturdays throughout June and July. Teams practice and compete on SF Rec & Park fields throughout the city of San Francisco.

At the end of the season all players get free tickets to an SF Giants baseball game as well as hot dogs and drinks.

Sign-ups for Jr. Giants open Saturday, May 11 and are done online at:

https://sfrg-sanfranrecnpark.sportssignup.com

SF Rec & Park staff will also be on hand May 11th at St. Mary’s Rec Center
for walk-in computer access and assistance.

PONY Day Fun

What a day. A Q&A with Brandon Crawford, George Kontos, and Shawon Dunston; a PONY League parade on the field including 1,600 SFYBL players, coaches, and family members stretching from one end of the field to the next; followed by a great game on a beautiful day and evening.

Here are some pictures we took with our phone. If you have pictures to share (especially of the Q&A) please let us know, and we will include them.

http://www.sfybl.com/picures/PONY_Day_2013/index.html

PONY Day Itinerary

[revised 2013.04.19, 2:10pm]

Your World Champion San Francisco Giants will be hosting their annual PONY Baseball League Day at AT&T Park this Saturday, April 20.

We realize many teams and kids were unable to get tickets for this event before they were gobbled up. Unfortunately, we could get only just under 1,600 tickets, but the demand far exceeded that. Hopefully, we will be able to get at least 2,000 tickets next year. Those teams who are receiving tickets have already been contacted with the logistics of where and when to purchase and pick them up.

For those of you fortunate enough to get tickets, here is the itinerary:

1:00pm – meet outside the Lefty O’Doul Gate.

1:30pm – Lefty O’Doul Gates open for Pony League Day Participants

2:15-3:00pm – Q&A session with Giants players and coaches

3:00-4:00pm – All guests have the opportunity to remain in the ballpark to watch team batting practice. Anyone who wishes to participate in the on-field banner parade should exit the park during this time frame to form a line along the Port walk Area. Please exit ballpark through Marina Gate and have your ticket stamped for re-entry.

3:45pm – SFYBL players and coaches meet up on the north end of the port walk area outside the stadium (roughly behind center field).

4:00-4:40pm – All groups gather on Port walk area for Banner Parade*

4:45-5:30pm – On-Field Banner Parade (all uniformed Pony League players/coaches allowed on field). Parade participants will enter field via the Port walk in the right field corner, and will exit via the left field corner gate.

5:35pm – Guests will be directed towards the 2nd & King ramp to access their seats for the game

6:05pm – San Francisco Giants vs. San Diego Padres Game Time

*Post Q&A: All participants in the Banner Parade MUST retain game ticket and get hand stamped while exiting out of the Marina Gate for re-entry into the ballpark.

**No cleats allowed on warning track or field.

Don’t forget to wear your Pony League uniforms!

—-

This chronology starts about one hour earlier than we previously thought. This is due to the Giants deciding on having pre-game batting practice (they usually don’t on PONY Day). The upside is that you will have the opportunity to watch Giants BP as well.

With about 4,000 PONY Baseball-affiliated people attending this event (1,600 of them from SFYBL), we expect the scene outside Lefty O’Doul Gate between 12:30-1:30PM to be nothing short of semi-controlled chaos. All SFYBL commissioners will be in attendance and identifiable by their black SFYBL commissioner jackets and caps to try to make it as smooth an evolution as possible.

Players and coaches: please wear your SFYBL team jerseys and caps to this event. This will help us identify you in the sea of kids and fans plus give you and your team a chance to strut your colors in front of tens of thousands of fans as you parade in the stadium.

Post Season Play – tentative dates

As in years past, the SFYBL will have play-offs and championship games for its competitive divisions (Mustang, Bronco, and Pony).

Our tentative schedule has there being a Mustang play-in game on Wednesday, May 15 and round one of the play-offs for all competitive divisions taking place on Saturday, May 18. Championship games are scheduled for: Wednesday, May 29 for Mustang and Bronco and Thursday, May 30 for Pony.

All dates, as they are now, are viewable at any time within the League Calendar section of our site.

Summer all-star try-outs, which any 9-14U who competed in our league this season can participate in, are tentatively scheduled for May 13-16.

Details are still solidifying and are forthcoming.

SF Giants PONY Day – Tickets

All 1570 PONY Day tickets have been awarded on a first-come first-served basis. Unfortunately, demand significantly exceeded supply. This is a sold out game against a division rival, so we have not been able to purchase enough additional tickets to address the shortage. We hope that we will have at least 2,000 tickets available to us next season.

If you did not receive an email granting your request for tickets, then you will not be receiving tickets

If you did receive an email granting your request for tickets and you don’t want them, please let us know so we can allot them to a team(s) who did not receive tickets.

We will be distributing the tickets on Wednesday between 5:00 – 9:00 PM. We will email ticket recipients the location Monday (April 15) evening. Remember, please bring ONE (1) check or cash for the total cost of your tickets.

Mustang – Stealing & Pitching rules, Sportsmanship

Mustang coaches & managers:

We have noticed some confusion among coaches regarding stealing and pitching in the Mustang division. We would like to take this time to reiterate past communications on stealing; clarify/modify the confusingly worded pitching rules; and say a word or two about sportsmanship.

Stealing
We are not sure why some coaches believe otherwise, but SFYBL allows stealing in the Mustang and up divisions. We covered this in our pre-season coaches Q&A and training sessions, and it is in our rules as well.

There are only two restrictions with regard to stealing in the Mustang division:

1) a runner cannot steal home*

2) a team cannot steal if they have a 10-run lead. If their lead drops below 10 runs they can resume stealing. The team losing by 10-runs is still allowed to steal.

* a runner CAN run home on a passed ball

We realize some coaches or families don’t think kids should be stealing at 9-10 years of age. We and PONY Baseball believe that, although playing mistakes will be made as this is the first taste of “real baseball” for most of the kids in the division, kids should start stealing at this age.

Kids are resilient. They will rise to challenge and learn from their mistakes; they get better; and the coaches hopefully work with them on things like: catcher throw-downs; how to lead off; watching the pitcher’s feet/shoulders to know when to steal; how to slide; how to hold runners on; how to execute pick-offs; having fielders back up pick-off/throw-down attempts, etc. Stealing is part of baseball – a part kids love.

As they play more games they will get better at these baseball skills. They will also be better prepared for the Bronco (11-12U) division. Those kids in the Mustang division who go on to play on an SFYBL summer all-star team will definitely be competing in games with stealing.

Pitching
The rules on our web site were not worded such that it was not clear how many innings a kid can pitch in the Mustang division. The board has discussed this and has decided that effectively immediately, we are going to follow closely the official 2013 PONY League Baseball rules for determining maximum innings a kid can pitch.

Effectively immediately, the maximum innings a kid can pitch in a calendar day within regular season play of the Mustang division is three (3).

The rules on our site have been edited to reflect any changes. We will post it to our web site as well.

We hope that there is no further confusion or debate about stealing and pitching rules during the next sequence of Mustang games this Saturday.

Sportsmanship/Umpires
Lastly, if you disagree with a rule interpretation on the field; you are welcome to call a time out to discuss it calmly professionally with the umpire. We again remind coaches that it is recommended you have a copy of the rules (available on our site) with you at all times to assist you in making your case. Judgment calls are not subject to debate. If you have an issue with an umpire or his/her rulings please handle it through the SFYBL board. We can be reached at info@sfybl.com

What is not OK is yelling at, belittling, or becoming confrontational with an umpire. It sets a bad example for the kids and fans and is not good sportsmanship. We have zero tolerance for coaches being argumentative or confrontational with umpires or SFYBL personnel. Doing so could result in coach ejections or suspensions.