In 2017, the USSSA sent some shockwaves through the youth baseball circuit when it banned several versions of the 2017 CF Zen. This had been one of the hottest new bats on the market and was being utilized by thousands of players across the state and the country. When the USSSA determined via routine audit the certain models of the 2017 CF Zen did meet the 1.15 BPF standard, Demarini offered replacement re-tooled versions, or a voucher for purchase of another Wilson/Louisville Slugger/Demarini product.

There were some big games played this past weekend at the Border Wars as well as some of the other sites. We’ve tried to provide some reasoning for the bigger moves in the rankings this week, so let us know if you disagree.

This past weekend saw some big upsets as well as some strong performances across multiple age groups. We’ve focused this week’s rationale on the major movers. Please refer back to the previous rationale posts here and here for more details about why some of the teams who haven’t moved much are ranked where they are. Overall, we had #1’s go down in the 10u and 13u age groups, but elected not to move them because of their overall impressive seasons thus far. Several new teams hit the tops 20s this week, so read on to find out why we ranked teams the way we did. 

  8u We increased the rankings from 10 to 15 teams in […]

We put together a slightly shorter version of the Rationale this week. We spent a fair bit of time explaining each team’s ranking last week, so this week we’ll focus on the big movers within each group. We’re getting to the meat of the spring schedule over the next several weeks so we expect to see lots of flux in the rankings as teams battle for positions.

We had a #1 go down in the 11u ranking and a tough decision to make regarding their position. In the end, SBA Canes – Ross will be in contention for the #1 spot nearly every week if they continue to play like they have been, but for now we gave the #1 spot to the Blue Sox after their defeat of the Canes. We also moved Minion into the #1 spot in the 12u rankings. They’ve just been to good this spring to keep out of that spot. Hopefully we’ll see more head-to-head match-ups amongst the top teams in that age group. Here’s a rundown of our thought process this week. 

We’re going to break down the rankings rationale into two parts this week because there was a lot of movement this week. We’ll start with 8u-10u. No changes in the top teams in these age groups, although as detailed below, that may soon be changing in the 8u age group. 9u #1 Park Sharon Nationals and 10u #1 Canes NC – Gilchrist continue to appear like the dominate teams in their respective age groups. Check out our rationale for where we are ranking teams and let us know if you disagree.

There was lots of poor weather across the state this past weekend. This meant that while many of the top teams were in scheduled to be in action, not many games were played across the state. We did make some changes to the rankings, but this was not as busy of a week as usual. The upcoming Easter weekend is also a down weekend for activity, but things really pick up after that as events like the USSSA Beast of East Select 30 Super NIT (BoE) begin to take place.

We’re going to try and provide some rationale for our rankings each week. We can’t promise we’ll always have time to do this, but as people are interested in rankings like this, we want to maintain some level of transparency about how we think about these rankings and how we approach where to slot teams. We’ve also included other teams who we’ve considered. This is not an exhaustive list of all teams considered and is only meant to try and bring some notoriety to other teams who are doing a great job in the travel season but who might just fall outside our rankings. As always, if you see something you disagree with in our rankings or our rationale, let us know. We’re the first to admit we’re not the expert on every team at every age group and getting the coaches, players, and fans’ opinions on who the best teams you’ve seen or played is always helpful for us.