[baseballfanmas]

2019 USBL Tournament Seeds

Regular Season Champion Tiebreakers

This isn't perfect, by any means, but this is how I am seeding the regular season champions.

1- League Playoff Finish
2- Regular Season Record

I think teams that do the double (regular season and tourney champs) deserve the highest seeds, and I think all regular season champs deserve the highest seeds, because they did it all season, not just in a 5 game series.

Tournament Champion Tiebreakers

This one may get revised a little bit, I wasn't sure of the best format for this one, but this is what I'm going with for the inaugural USBL Tournament. If anybody thinks revisions need to be made, let me know.

1- Regular season finish
2- League Tournament Finish
3- Regular Season Record

This is where the controversy comes in. I still think that performance in the regular season should take more precedence over getting lucky in a couple 5 game series'. But with Paterson winning the NJBL Tournament, some feel that should be recognized more. I disagree, but I'm willing to take opinions. As it stands, these are the seeds for the Inaugural (2019) USBL Tournament.

#1- Covington, Kentucky Cubs- KYBL Regular Season and Tournament Champs, 59-25 record.
#2- Grand Junction, Colorado Corkers- CBL Regular Season and Tournament Champs, 58-26 record.
#3- Martinsville, Virginia Checkers- VBL Regular Season and Tournament Champs, 55-29 record.
#4- St. Louis, Missouri Perfectos- MBL Regular Season and Tournament Champs, 53-31 record.
#5- Salina, Kansas Blue Jays- KSBL Regular Season Champs, Lost in KBL Semifinals, 58-26 record.
#6- Princeton, New Jersey Phantoms- NJBL Regular Season Champs, Lost in KBL Semifinals, 52-32 record.
#7- Topeka, Kansas Golden Giants- 2nd place in KSBL Regular Season, Won KSBL Tournament, 53-31 record.
#8- Hazard, Kentucky Moonshiners- 2nd place in KYBL Regular Season, Lost in KYBL Finals, 49-35 record.
#9- Columbia, Missouri Tigers- 2nd place in MBL Regular Season, Lost in MBL Finals, 49-35 record.
#10- Colorado Springs, Colorado Chill- 2nd place in CBL Regular Season, Lost in CBL Finals, 42-42 record.
#11- Fredricksburg, Virginia Generals- 3rd place in VBL Regular Season, Lost in VBL Finals, 48-36 record.
#12- Paterson, New Jersey Bats- 4th place in NJBL Regular Season, NJBL Tournament Champs, 44-40 record.

A coin flip was used to determine seed 8 and 9, as they had the same identifying factors. In most cases, I try to set it up so that teams from the same state won't meet before the semifinals, but there was no way around it at this point. We may have teams from the same state meeting in the quarterfinals. Here's the matchups:

(9) Columbia, MO vs. (8) Hazard, KY - winner plays (1) Covington, KY in Quarterfinals
(12) Paterson, NJ vs. (5) Salina, KS - winner plays (4) St. Louis, MO in Quarterfinals
(11) Fredricksburg, VA vs. (6) Princeton, NJ - winner plays (3) Martinsville, VA in Quarterfinals
(10) Colorado Springs, CO vs. (7) Topeka, KS- winner plays (2) Grand Junction, CO in Quarterfinals

So we could have Colorado, Virginia, and Kentucky seeing their teams play each other in the Quarterfinals. Unfortunately, no way around it. Wasn't enough tie to separate the teams. Again, I'm open to suggestions on how to fix this moving forward. Here's a look at the bracket, and I will try to run the playoffs on Friday.