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Discussion: Player Reclassification

How does an individual player get reclassified?

Our team, in my opinion, was unfairly re-classed to Major on June 29th. The "move-up" letter stated the following: “**Based on performance of +5.5 runs per game in 12 games against AAA, your team has been moved to Major. “ The SSUSA findings are completely in error. Based on SSUSA own “ratings guidelines” we do not meet any other criteria that necessitates a move-up. We did not finish in the top level of any Worlds or other major tourney’s.

Our team has since disbanded because we are in no way a Major team! Rather than breaking apart our team, adding new players and trying to compete in majors, we decided to disband completely. It did not make sense to spend thousands of dollars to travel to Vegas. There are no other AAA travel teams in our state of Massachusetts and none in RI or CT that play travel ball….it appears that for the time being I no longer have the opportunity to play tourney ball until I am able to get re-classed back down.

A list of our last four tournament scores against AAA teams was compiled and we scored 254 runs and gave up 241 runs. That is a plus .80 runs on average per game (point 8 runs…rounded up that’s a 1 run average advantage per game). That is hardly +5.5 runs which the letter states. In the letter we received from SSUSA it stated that if we thought there was a mathematical error to contact George Moreno by email. The compiled spreadsheet was sent to Mr. Moreno along with a letter seeking additional reasoning as to why we were moved up. To the best on my knowledge, Mr. Moreno has never responded. As a paying customer of SSUSA I would think we would at least be entitled to a verbal or written response, that did not happen! To the best of my knowledge based on a phone call made by our manager to SSUSA the only response we received was “we will tell you when you are moved back down.” Furthermore at about that same time the Bad Seeds from California were re-classed to Major. Someone from the Bad Seeds posted a message on the board asking why they were re-classed and someone from SSUSA responded on the message board with an answer. Shortly thereafter someone from our team posted a similar question and we did not get any sort of response. The next day SSUSA deleted their response to the Bad Seeds. I find that to be inappropriate on the part of SSUSA.

Once again, I could understand if we finished high in the worlds and we were re-classed or we were winning lots of tourneys in our class or beating teams by the “so-called” plus 5.5 run margin. If that were the case I would have no issues with the move-up. However, that is not the case. Prior to the move up our team has won 1 local AAA tourney in 3 years of being together AND we get moved up for that?

I apologize for the rant but as the World Tournament approaches I am disappointed that I and many of my teammates have no place to play and for some reason it appears that we have been unfairly singled out by SSUSA.

Brian LaSalle
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I believe you have to play in your new division and allow them SSUSA to re evaluate your team. Yes traveling from MA to LV would be expensive.
As an individual "Major" player you can play on a "AAA" team as long as that team does not have more then a total of 3 Major players on it's roster. I'm not sure on this part, but I believe that you would need to play 2 years with a new "AAA" team to get yourself reclassified as a "AAA" player.
MudDawg - I agree that there are not many travel teams at all in the Northeast period. Lots of quality leagues with some good teams in those states. Trouble is most teams don't want any part of travel ball - even in their own state.Money isn't the issue either. Not sure what is. But the same thing happened to one of our teams that happened to your team a couple of years back. They were a regular league team that won a SSUSA tourney with 3 teams in it. They won the "if" game over two other local teams. They were later notified they could not play AAA anymore and were being bumped. In all their games they never put up over 15 runs. That was the first and last last tourny they ever played in and just play league now.
How do find out if your on the major player list??
SSUSA does NOT maintain an "impact player" list
I understand that a Major team can have 3 AAA rated players on a team but the problem is that there are no teams to play on up here in New England. Maybe Sobs3 is onto something when he said his team was forced up after one tourney. How do you force up a team before they accomplish or win anything? In the case of our team... "numbers don't lie". I still don't understand the move-up. Maybe USSSA is shooting themselves in the foot in terms of getting more interest from teams in New England to play travel. Throughout the entire country the Travel team numbers seems to grow every year. Maybe based on that SSUSA could less about generating more interest from New England teams. They continue to "hit the numbers" and that's all that matters. That's just speculation on may part. Bottom line, we have players on our team that can't play travel ball because we are tagged as "major" players even though we are truly not "major" players.
I am soon to be 52 and still in good shape and I still have a lot of competitive juices flowing but I am stuck in "no-man's" land. I realize SSUSA is doing the best job they can but in my opinion they missed the mark. SSUSA staff please free to comment with any suggestions that I could follow.
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