The Draft…All Year Long

Drafting Teams The great thing about Major League Wiffleball is that every day is draft day. It’s not limited to a weekend, like the NFL Draft. MLW teams are constantly changing based on the player rankings. It helps keep things fresh and fun all year long.

Say you have eight players for a game day. The highest ranked player is named captain of one team, and the second-highest ranked player gets to be captain of the other team.

However, instead of captains picking their teams, like back in our playground days, captains are assigned teams. Captains are responsible for determining their team’s starting lineup though.

So Team #1 would consist of the players ranked 1, 4, 5, and 8. Team #2 would have the 2, 3, 6, and 7 players in the standings. (We’ll explain the ranking system in a future article, but it’s similar to rotisserie-scoring in a 5X5 fantasy baseball league.)

This ‘draft’ method has worked extremely well for us. Occasionally, we’ll get a lopsided score, but that’s why we use the 10-run mercy rule. For the most part, we get a lot of 9-8 or 8-6 games. Some games even go into extra innings.

The teams for the first game of each day should be selected this way. But if you’re playing a doubleheader, or even a tripleheader, it can be difficult to update the rankings quickly between each game. In these situations, picking teams is encouraged.

For example, if a player goes 6-for-6 in one game, you may want to attempt to even out his stats by having him face tougher pitching in the next game. Or if someone goes 0-6 with 6 strikeouts, let them be a captain and give them the first pick for the next game.

At the end of the regular season, the top 8 players make the playoffs, and once again, the teams are determined by the player rankings. These teams stay the same for the duration of the playoffs.

So our draft is literally held all year long. Just about every game has different players making up each team throughout the season, and only the best players get ‘drafted’ to a playoff team.