Welcome To The Draft Era
We're entering our sixth season and although the league has seen it's share of changes, I still have those same butterflies in my stomach just before the season begins. This year we embark on yet another strange voyage by entertaining a dream of mine for a few years now: the draft. Although I'm not the commissioner anymore (nor am I on the organizing committee), I'm pleased to see that the new leaders of this league are stepping up and trying one of the more controversial and rare types of team construction among wiffleball leagues. It's a ballsy move, one that I've been waiting for this league to experiment with for far too long.
Through the many changes in this league's history, there's been one thing that has occurred every year. It's also something that I believe has stunted the growth of the league. I'm speaking of the formation of super teams, of course. We all know what I'm talking about. We would have one or two top teams that whipped up on everyone and one or two teams that couldn't find a win if their life depended on it, and the rest of the teams were average but would never really compete for a title. It was the same song and dance each year and I believe this discouraged many players from returning or building their own teams only to have the good ones swayed to join better teams the following year. With the draft, we need not concern ourselves with that problem. Welcome to the draft era.
On Monday, April 17th, we will be having a player draft at 7:00pm that will steam live on the league Facebook page as around 30 players are selected for the five or six teams that have been created this year. To say that this will be a historic day for the league would be a vast understatement. A little more than half of the players are return players while the rest are rookies. The rookie class will be an interesting one as they'll be selected bases on very little information about their potential talent. Team rosters will be set for the entire season and captains will need to choose wisely since we are not only playing fast-pitch style this year but alternating to slow-pitch every other month. And we've seen that players that are good in one format may struggle in the other. The picks will be very interesting to witness.
There are a lot of changes beyond the draft for this season and many of them will be announced publicly on the upcoming Episode 23 of the HWL Podcast as I grill Jeremy Ray and interview Brice Clark. Also, a collaborative pre-draft player rankings article is expected to hit the site as well before draft night and another podcast will be released before the season starts with the first Fast-Pitch tournament of the year on April 22nd. The short span of time from draft day to opening day will undoubtedly be interesting for the sheer fact that this could be the first time many of these teammates will have met one another, proving that although 2016 was far different from previous seasons...2017 will be an even further departure from our past. And I think that's a good thing.
See you fools on draft day.
