World Baseball Association 2010

How the drop down format works`...

The WBA World Series will again feature our drop-down format during the 2010 Open World Series. This format insures that teams from all levels of play, from the strongest travel team to the mid-level recreational team, have a chance to be crowned National Champions.

We do not pre-qualify teams by forcing teams to play in "qualifying" tournaments; instead all teams are free to register regardless of your win/loss record and regardless to your National affiliation. Our drop down format will "qualify" teams into 3-5 levels of play during the initial round of play. You will be ranked by the results on the field in round one. If teams aren't playing the same schedule during the spring and summer it is virtually impossible to rank them into a balanced system that would allow teams to participate against teams of equal playing abilities. We feel our drop down format corrects that problem.

While many National organizations host World Series events for individual classifications of play (Major, Minor, AA, AAA, Elite, American, National, etc), we still feel there is a problem with most of these events. First, unless you play the same schedule, simply having similar records doesn't equate into parity among those teams. Second and most important is the politics that always seem to find their way into determining team’s levels of play. All too often strong teams seem to find their way into a lower level tournament which takes away any chance the teams that are legitimate within that classification have to win a World Series title.

Our format corrects the above problems. In round one there will be a few lopsided games. However, after round one based on the results on the field all teams are re-bracketed (depending on the number of teams), into three to five different brackets of play. These brackets are very balanced and every team within that bracket has an equal chance to win a World Series title. This format has been very, very well received by our teams.

Teams are bracketed geographically which simply means we try to keep teams away from each other in the initial round that may be from the same area back home. After round one seeding, all teams will be bracketed from number one to the last team based on the results on the field from the round one seeding games. Using a field of 32 teams as an example ... the top sixteen teams will play a one game playoff based on your seed to determine which eight teams will enter the top level of play (Platinum) and which eight will play in the second level of play (Gold). This is done to insure the top seeds weren't benefited by an easy round one pool or that the lower seeds weren’t hurt by a stronger than normal round one pool.

We do the exact same for the 17th-32nd teams with the top eight moving into the Silver level of play and the bottom eight entering into the Bronze level.

Once the teams have been placed into the appropriate brackets (Platinum, Gold, Silver, & Bronze) we will play bracket play to determine a champion in each level of play. At the completion of bracket play not only do we have a defined champion but all teams will be playing for a final place (ie: 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc).

The above example was based on 32 teams per age, the actual number of teams may vary but the format will run close to what was described above.