Does the revolving door rosters and player borrowing get better or worse as they get older? As much as I love the discussion about elite teams, it is getting harder for me to give credit to "teams" when they borrow elite players for tournaments. One or two elite players can certainly impact the outcome of most of these tournaments. It seems that this is becoming more common place in all tournaments not just the big ones.
The one that bothered me the most was when a famous pitching coach's tournament (2nd year) was suppose to be "AAA" level and it was common for every other game to have a borrowed gun on at least one of the teams. It just happened that there was not a "major" tournament happening that weekend in the area.
therealist: I agree with you that there are more and more players being borrowed. I have played with it both ways getting beat by the borrowed player and winning with a borrowed player. In the elite travel ball world you learn quickly that you must do what you must do and that if you don't then the team you are playing will.
I think the one and only solution lies with the directors of the organizations as many coaches will play the right way but we all know that there is always that one that won't. We ask why they don't fix it but we knew the answer before we asked. Same ole, Same ole and that is money. If Team A has a player or two hurt and can't play that means the Director loses $400-$500 bucks. So they say bring em on and pay your fee. 4-5 teams in the same boat means $2500 bucks of lost revenue.
We have never picked up a player just to pick a player up. This week we used a good friend to fill in for one our catchers that was hurt and we announced early on last year that we would pick up 2 players for Cooperstown which we did and then ended up keeping them full time.
This is not the only problem with rosters. Every one is combining and picking up each others stud players to get stronger and that is just the way it is. I think we will see this to continue until something is done with the roster rules of the different organizations. I think a simple rule would be that you cannot be on two rosters at the same time in the same year which would force players to commit and stay committed and keep them from being borrowed for one tournament.
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Posted - 10/27/2009 : 09:25:28
