Objective: To creates balanced teams & competitive leagues by distributing more skilled and less skilled players evenly across all teams.
All leagues & all teams: WMLL utilizes a player draft to establish all teams in all leagues for the spring / summer season.
Structure & oversight: Drafts are conducted by league as organized by the league coordinator for that particular league.
Player evaluation: 7-12 year-old baseball & softball players are evaluated at an annual Skills Session conducted each March or April. In addition, player evaluations prepared at the end of the prior season by the player’s coaches, are distributed to every coach before the draft for review. Players 13 and older are evaluated solely based on their player evaluations from prior seasons and do not attend the skills sessions.
Draft order: Team draft order is determined by random drawing with each round drafting in the reverse order (example: round 1 by teams 1 thru 10 and round two in the opposite order by teams 10 thru 1 and alternating each round until all players are selected). At times, special provisions are made for the last round of the draft.
Special provisions for coaches’ children: Coaches’ sons and daughters are placed in the appropriate round of each league draft based on relative skill level by the league coordinator with input from all coaches. This process attempts to ensure that all teams have an equal opportunity to draft a competitive, balanced team. (In Minor League softball all matched buddy pairs are also handled in this fashion.)