18U AA

18U AA is the House League for Vancouver Community Baseball's 18U age group.  New players are welcome to join up, even if you've never played baseball before!

Vancouver Community Baseball's 18U AA Spring season division consists of 10-11 teams, depending on the number of players registered.  There are 13-15 players per team.

• mid February: assessments are done for all players who did not play 18U AA with VCB in the previous year.  Returning players are placed onto the same team they played on the previous year.
• You may begin pre-season practicing in mid-March.
• mid-April: season begins
• mid-June: regular season ends.
• late June: playoffs end.

Fields

18U AA games are played primarily at Hillcrest and Trafalgar Park in Vancouver.  Practices will mostly take place at Trafalgar Park.

Game Information

Each team will play 14 games during the regular season, so most weeks each team will play two games, one on a weeknight and one on a weekend.  There may be some variance of this, depending on how many teams there are.

At the conclusion of the regular season, there is a double-elimination playoff to determine a season champion team.

Rules

18U AA is a "bat through the order" division.  There is no limit to the number of defensive substitutions, except for the pitcher: after a pitcher is removed from the mound, he or she cannot pitch again for the rest of the game.  They can play any other position ( including catcher), however.

Equipment and Uniforms

All players are to provide their own batting helmets and grey baseball pants. Caps, belts, and dri-fits are provided by the league.  These are yours to keep following the season.

Summer Season

For interested players, there is a second baseball season which follows the spring season.  The summer season is managed by BC Minor Baseball.  Each BC Minor Baseball Association can enter one or more teams into the league (most just enter one team).

The summer season runs from late June until the Monday of the BC Day long weekend in August.  During that weekend, a provincial tournament is held to determine a Provincial 18U AA Champion team.

There are other open tournaments during July that summer teams may enter as well.

In late April or early May, players will be asked to submit applications to play on the VCB summer team.  The roster is usually 13 players, so if more players want to try out, the head coach will conduct a try-out to select the most capable players.

BC Minor Baseball rules require that players play a minimum number of games in their association's spring house league to be eligible to play on a summer team.

Returning 18U AA player policy

At Vancouver Community Baseball, we have a policy of placing returning 18U AA players on the team the played for the previous year. This policy has some benefits, such as players get to know each other better, which may allow them to form better bonds & friendships with each other, and coaches can develop players over a multi-year time span.

However, this policy also has negative consequences, mainly that competitive imbalance among the teams may persist for consecutive years.  The only way to mitigate competitive imbalance is through the draft, so teams with strong returning rosters have to wait until later rounds to start drafting new players.  This allows teams with weaker returning rosters to select more players from higher rounds.

However, due to coach pairings, siblings, and players' ages, it may happen that some teams have very few (or even no) draft picks, and therefore no ability to become stronger or weaker for the next season.

A team that drafts well can expect to be strong for multiple years, while a team that drafts poorly should expect to underperform for multiple years.

Standings will be determined using the following set of rules:

1. Winning percentage.
2. Head to head results
3. Fewest runs against for the entire season
4. Most runs scored for the entire season
5. Run differential in the head-to-head games
6. Coin flip

All teams are encouraged to play their full schedule of games, even if it may be detrimental to their standing at the end of the season.