By BY BRUCE HIXON – SPORTS EDITOR
It comes a couple of months too late to help the T.R. Miller Tigers baseball team this year. The W.S. Neal Blue Eagles would have liked to see the new change in place last year.
Starting next year, the Alabama High School Athletic Association state baseball playoffs will use a best-of-three format in each round.
The state has slowly worked in that direction over the years. At one time, the playoffs were single elimination for the first three rounds before play shifted to a best-of-three format in the semifinals and championship series. The AHSAA then made the third round a best-of-three series and two years ago it made the second round a best-of-three format.
T.R. Miller coach Jim Hart, whose team was knocked out of the playoffs this year in the opening round by St. James, is also in favor of the switch.
It also prevents from possibly one bad inning knocking you out.”
While the AHSAA has not officially announced how it will schedule the new format, it is expected the state will play one round each week. The current format played the single elimination round on Tuesday followed by the second-round, best-of-three-series on Friday
and Saturday of that week. One round was then played each of the next three weeks on Fridays and Saturdays.
get rained out a couple of days.”
The fact the AHSAA has reduced the number of playing dates from 20 to 18 is a good indication the state will bump the playoffs up a week with the extra best-of-three series.
The last week of the regular season from a local standpoint has been reserved for the Escambia County Tournament. That tournament is expected move to the start of the season next year.