Travel Director and Umpire Assignor Meeting Review

Happy (almost) March!

As you might have seen over our social media, we’ve been very busy with preparation work here in the office, with highlights including our annual Travel Director meeting, and meeting a few of our umpire assignors. Here are some of the key topics that were brought up

Arm Care

Metro Baseball League has invested heavily in safety, and arm care is paramount to ensuring player safety. Countless hours have been spent on effective arm care strategies, and one of which is rest days. This year, teams are required to incorporate rest days into their weekly MBL pitch count: 1 day of rest after throwing 26-50 pitches, and 2 days of rest after throwing 41 or more. Pitch counts maximums have also been altered for both MBL and MBT – for MBL games, 9-12U has a daily limit of 50 and a weekly limit of 65, and for 13-15U MBL games, those numbers are 65 and 85, respectively. At MBT, pitch counts have been reduced by 25 at 9-13U tournaments, and 15 at 14/15U tournaments.

We have also partnered with researchers at Mayo Clinic for an arm care study. More information to follow, but for teams in or near Rochester – or teams that will play games there – keep an eye for more information!

Umpire Updates

When it comes to umpire rosters, we’ve come a long way in three years. We were very happy to hear from umpire assignors that they're growing - there are lots of opportunities for young umpires – if you or your child is interested in being an umpire, head over to the Contact Us page on our website and select “interested in becoming an umpire” as the subject.

Scheduling

We continue to make strides in scheduling. This year, our process will be the same as last year. Schedules are set to be released on Wednesday, April 2nd, giving you enough time to schedule some games earlier in the season. We will also be scheduling more cross-region games where possible – based on feedback, this was well received by many coaches.

We also want to remind everyone to schedule games in May – this allows for flexibility, especially if we have another rain-filled summer. It is also equally important to schedule your playoff games, to give umpire assignors enough time for scheduling.

Events

This year, we hope to host more player and coach events for you to participate it. We have already hosted two coaching clinics, a Zoom session with Kris Goodman, a mental performance coach from the Tampa Bay Rays, and a player clinic as well. In addition to this, seven of our communities hosted Brian Raabe Clinics – these clinics, provided by the Minnesota Twins Community Fund – are great

A huge thank you to everyone involved in putting on these events – a special thank you to Kris, Jake Devney and the staff at Redline Athletics in Woodbury and Weston Lombard from Team Mustard. We will continue to get more events on the calendar for you!

2nd Annual Coaching Clinic

We are excited to host another coaching clinic this year! This year’s event will be bigger and better than last year. Why? For two main reasons: we will have two clinicians speaking every hour, and, in partnership with a handful of sponsors, partners and local vendors, a mini-trade show will take place in the common area! The event will occur on April 5th, with the first session starting at 9am. This event is open to anyone that is interested in coaching! Registration for this event is required – please register using this link.