CPBL playoff baseball to get underway Thursday

By: Alexis Brudnicki

Canadian Baseball Network

Canadian Premier Baseball League playoffs are set to get underway, with the 18U teams playing their post-season games between Dorchester and St. Marys, and the 16U squads hosted in North York and Aurora.

Pool play games on Thursday and Friday will be seven-inning contests, with bracket play on Saturday and Sunday to be scheduled for nine innings. There will be no time restraints on any of the matchups and no scoring limitations. Should any games be rained out, Monday will be used as a makeup date.

With nine teams in the 16U division, two pools have been arranged with four games in each pool before the semi-finals and the championship matchup. The pool with fewer squads will play two contests against one team based on seeding and an advantage for finishing in first place. The semi-final round will feature crossover between pools.

Teams will be seeded once pool play is completed, first taking into account the records of each of the squads, then the runs allowed and finally the runs they’ve scored.

At the 18U level, Pool 1 will be home to the Ontario Blue Jays, the Great Lake Canadians 17U team, the Ontario Nationals and Team Ontario, and will see their first round of games take place in St. Marys at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. The second pool hosts both the 17U and 18U Toronto Mets squads, the 18U Great Lake Canadians, and the Fieldhouse Pirates, with Thursday and Friday games in Dorchester at the Field of Dreams.

The nine-inning games to follow on the weekend will be played in a single-elimination format, with three matchups at each diamond on Saturday and the 18U championship game at one o’clock on Sunday afternoon at the Field of Dreams.

In the 16U division, the first pool will be home to the Ontario Blue Jays Travers squad, the Ontario Nationals White team, the Toronto Mets Blue team, and the Fieldhouse Pirates, with the first round of games to take place in North York at Bond Park. In Pool 2, matchups will take place at Stewart Burnett Park in Aurora and host the Great Lake Canadians, the Toronto Mets Orange squad, Team Ontario, the Ontario Blue Jays Roumel team, and the Ontario Nationals Red squad.