Baseball Playoff Travel Mileage

[tarheelg]

It is possible that I missed a couple but I have perused the baseball playoff brackets and done a couple of searches on google maps and just for grins (and eye rolls and head shakes and awkward grimaces) wanted to share what appear to be the longest roadtrips in the 1st Rd of the 2017 Baseball playoffs:

And of course, keep in mind that the estimated travel times listed on google maps or mapquest assume that you're traveling in a car and can do 65 or 70 mph on interstate style highways, and most of these teams travel on activity buses going more like 55, but for this reason, I will do the rankings below based on one-way mileage, not estimated travel time (though I will list estimated travel time in parentheses)

#1-1A West: Roxboro Community @ Murphy: 337 miles (5:32)
#2-1A East: Cape Hatteras @ Whiteville: 332 miles (5:36)
#3-2A East: First Flight @ East Bladen: 282 miles (4:29)
#4-1A West: Hayesville @ Uwharrie Charter: 273 miles (4:29)
#5-1A West: Swain Co. @ Chatham Charter: 264 miles (4:03)
#6-1A West: Andrews @ Walkertown: 247 miles (4:01)
#7-2A East: South Stokes @ North Brunswick: 244 miles (3:50)
#8-1A West: Blue Ridge EC @ East Surry: 239 miles (3:51)
#9-2A East: Wheatmore @ John A. Holmes: 236 miles (3:39)
#10-3A East: Western Alamance @ West Brunswick: 227 miles (3:31)

Others over 200 miles or projected over 3 hours in a car
-Lakewood @ Camden (1A East)
-Northeastern @ St. Pauls (2A East)
-NC Sch of Sci & Math @ Currituck (2A East)
-Eastern Guilford @ Topsail (3A East)
-Rosman @ South Stanly (1A West)
-Granville Central @ Manteo (1A East)
-Mattamuskeet @ Voyager Acad. (1A East)
-North Moore @ Mitchell Co. (1A West)
-West Columbus @ Cherryville (1A West)
-Eastern Alamance @ West Carteret (3A East)
-McMichael @ Pisgah (3A West)
-Croatan @ South Granville (2A East)
-Union @ Perquimans Co. (1A East)
-New Bern @ Pinecrest (4A East)

 

[thekidd12]

tarheelg as usual great job.

On a side note you sir are a bigger numbers geek than I am. Wow.

Anyway this has got to be addressed in my opinion.

Talked to a parent last night whose team had traveled about 3 hours on bus for 1st round game. Today his son was going to take the AP English exam. My son took the same exam however he was in bed by 10:00. Even with moving the game to 6PM start time it was at least after 1 before the visitors arrived back home.

Last year, as I have said several times, ER went to First Flight for 1st round game. It started at 7. My family got home at 2:00 in the morning. Bus with other players was even later. Guess what school is still going on during the playoffs.

Somehow travel must be cut down. Early rounds need to be more regional. An hour and a half is far enough on a weekday.

 

[tarheelg]

Previous post completed in less than 20 minutes thanks to google maps....20 years ago that would have taken 2-3 hours with a folding map and a ruler, technology is great when it works

 

[mbdfan]

It was definitely a long ride for Roxboro, they came out and put up four runs in the 1st inning, but were shutout there after. I'm not sure how much the long ride effected them, but I will say their four runs were largely the result of walks and errors, as opposed to great hitting.

 

[thekidd12]

I think sometimes it definitely has an effect on the players. If they make it to the 2nd round some will have to make similar trips again in the same week.

I know people are trying to get playoffs as fair as possible but hauling athletes all across the state in the middle of the week just seems unnecessary.

Most of the extremely long rides appear to be in 2A and 1A. NCHSAA has already divided the state into 4 pods consisting of 16 teams in each. Logistically it would make more sense to me to play within your pod the first 2 rounds. A lot of the travel comes from teams from MW and ME playing way down on coast or deep into the mountains(and vice versa). Once you get down to 16 many of the teams that have a slim chance of advancing have been eliminated without having to make a 4 hour trip to find out.

I know, I know there are wholes in my plan too, like possibly playing conference teams early.

But dang old people get tired driving around and sometimes 17 year olds do too

As I have said before with my son, living in the center of state is great until HS playoff time.

 

[thekidd12]

Previous post completed in less than 20 minutes thanks to google maps....20 years ago that would have taken 2-3 hours with a folding map and a ruler, technology is great when it works

My children would say "How in the world did you ever use one of those map things?"

 

[NWWatchdog]

I think sometimes it definitely has an effect on the players. If they make it to the 2nd round some will have to make similar trips again in the same week.

I know people are trying to get playoffs as fair as possible but hauling athletes all across the state in the middle of the week just seems unnecessary.

Most of the extremely long rides appear to be in 2A and 1A. NCHSAA has already divided the state into 4 pods consisting of 16 teams in each. Logistically it would make more sense to me to play within your pod the first 2 rounds. A lot of the travel comes from teams from MW and ME playing way down on coast or deep into the mountains(and vice versa). Once you get down to 16 many of the teams that have a slim chance of advancing have been eliminated without having to make a 4 hour trip to find out.

I know, I know there are wholes in my plan too, like possibly playing conference teams early.

But dang old people get tired driving around and sometimes 17 year olds do too

As I have said before with my son, living in the center of state is great until HS playoff time.

I agree that some of the travel times are difficult...of course, you can also argue that playing within your own pod is unfair (as some pods would be significantly more difficult than others).

This might not be as much of a problem next year when 1A drops down to 48 teams instead of 64 teams for playoffs.

 

[thekidd12]

I agree that some of the travel times are difficult...of course, you can also argue that playing within your own pod is unfair (as some pods would be significantly more difficult than others).

This might not be as much of a problem next year when 1A drops down to 48 teams instead of 64 teams for playoffs.

Yes sir I agree that 1A may sort some problems out just due to numbers being reduced.

However 2A will still face the same travel issues as they do now.

I have already stated in another thread that the east region is loaded for the baseball playoffs this spring in 2A. Many of the teams that people think have a chance at state title are already in one region. Not arguing with you but the only difference I can see is that playing within your pod might concentrate more quality teams in an area for just two rounds when high seeds would be playing lower seeds.

However if you limit this to first 2 rounds THEN play across pods in theory you would still wind up with the top four from each one playing against the top four from others.

It is just an idea to try and limit the need for passports to play in state playoffs.

 

[Sportsnut17]

With all this late arrivals back home, one must also consider they probably missed all or part of the school day on the day of the game. As I traveled west out of WS on I-40 yesterday I can't remember the number of activity buses traveling east. Plus the ones I past traveling west. It was a who's who of counties. Not only did you have baseball, but also softball and soccer all playing yesterday.

 

[thekidd12]

Many area schools left out from as early as 11AM.

Just think it is silly when you have 64 teams in the playoffs that you can't match up with another team in same time zone.

 

[NWWatchdog]

When it come to playoffs, I tend to side with rewarding the better teams. If that means giving them a favorable matchup against a weaker team who has to travel quite a bit - so be it. If the matchup happens to be more localized, that's ok...but I disagree with staying regional for the sole purpose of reducing travel (especially if it takes away favorable early matchups for higher ranked teams). Just my opinion though - I do understand the opposing view.

 

[thekidd12]

When it come to playoffs, I tend to side with rewarding the better teams. If that means giving them a favorable matchup against a weaker team who has to travel quite a bit - so be it. If the matchup happens to be more localized, that's ok...but I disagree with staying regional for the sole purpose of reducing travel (especially if it takes away favorable early matchups for higher ranked teams). Just my opinion though - I do understand the opposing view.

I agree wholeheartedly that better teams need to be rewarded. Again I am only saying that a little common sense should be used when scheduling a playoff game on a school night.

But what is the difference in playing a weaker team an hour away from you rather than one 4 hours away? Take the 2A baseball playoffs for example. The last 4 seeds in the east pod have winning percentages from.545 to .429. In the mid east pod the last 4 seeds go from .526 to .429.

The difference in the winning percentages of these teams is minimal.

If the pods had been played as separate entities the only conference match ups would have been East Duplin vs North Brunswick and Greene Central vs North Lenoir. As I said in earlier post that is the drawback in my "solution" but the top teams are still being rewarded by playing lower seeded teams. I do not see how it can hurt the higher ranked teams to play against competition with almost identical records as teams that have to travel quite a bit.

Also in the second round, if seeds held, the top teams would play against teams with comparable records if they still played across pods.

And everybody gets to bed at a reasonable time.