I just wanted to let you know that the Spring League that is being organized is something that we didn't want to do.
Here are reasons why we did it.....
*California budget cuts, it looks like that there will be a good chance for 2010 spring seasont that we will no longer have Freshman & JV Baseball. They will be cut do to the economic situation we are going through. Starting in May there are some school districts will not be paid for work but by IOU's. This is because the state has run out of money. The teachers will be paid when the state gets enough money. Some districts will be using reserves to pay their teachers until money comes in. So it is always the athletic budgets that get cut.
*There have been several players that play baseball that have been cut from high school programs. So a void is needed.
*Schools are charging high amounts for money to play baseball for the school programs. I know of one school that has charged their players $1,500.00 to play for the spring season. That didn't include the fund raising that they have been involved in through the past year. Which I was informed they they were required to get sponsors of a minimum of $500 on top of the $1,500. The average amount for fees to play high school in our area is at around $600 to $800 on average.
*Some schools have let it be known that they will no longer be allowed to play with club teams during the off season, not allowed to attend showcases, attend college camps and as well as play for MLB Scout teams in the Fall. This is something that has happened due to the Association Rule that was past this past year.
*There have been several club programs that have shut down with the new rule change. Our program has continued to grow as a few others. This has only been this way because of the 6 to 10 players that were left without teams need a place to play during the summer/fall.
*There was a player that was a UC Riverside commit dropped to the JV team because he attended a PG Showcase event.
*Another player cut from a high school because he didn't meet the minumum amount of games during the Fall and was let go. This was due to that he was on a scout team.
*A RHP was cut as a Senior this year because he didn't go to the off season program that the high school coach wanted him to attend. He was attending a different speed training program.
*There are many JC players who are redshirting and don't have a place to play games. This offers a way for them to play during the Spring season until the summer comes up.
We are not looking to replace high schools. But through the years here in So Cal, there has been a situation with high schools that worked well with the club teams during the off season. We rather of that continued, but we feel we wanted to protect the club teams to continue to play for the summer/fall season. We feel that high school has a place and dont' want anything to happen to the high schools. But the fact is that we have a very large population base of baseball players here in So Cal with some schools having a large amount of players on their rosters.
Since the economy has become a problem, what would happen is that players here in So Cal would just pick up and move and change their residence to become elgible to play. But since the economy is the way it is, that is almost impossible except for the people that have the resources to do so.
There are some very good high school programs here and I have good relationships with them. They don't see this as an assault on them, but have supported what we are doing. We have set up games at some high schools that are here in our area. There have been several schools sending players our way. One school in particular had to cut some players because they have so many players going to school there that they didn't have enough room for them. They are players that should be able to play college, but because they have 2 to 3 games a week. That would leave them without enough playing time. It is a school that is private and is very good to begin with.
I know of a high profile high school here that is private that were only going to keep 15 Freshman. 9 Freshman were players that were scholarshiped. That mean't they only kept 6 Freshman players that were not scholarshiped. We had several of the Freshman players come out for a workout that were cut. The ones that came out were pretty good and one of them we were able to place on a scout team for this Fall and he was a player that was cut.
I know from what I have read that there are some upset people and without really knowing what is happening here you should learn of what is exactly happening first with how things are here.