It’s time for experiments in main class, the Dutch top league in baseball. In recent days, in fact, the KNBSB (Royal Netherlands Softball Baseball Federation), following the decision to block promotions and relegations, announced a change to the league structure for the 2022 season, which will start from Thursday 7 April 2022. Teams will go from eight to new, with the Silicon Storks, relegated last year, which will therefore remain in the top flight.
The regular season will therefore consist of a single group of nine teams involved in eight days for a total of 24 games each. At the end of the regular season, the championship will be divided into two sections: the first four teams (elite) will play a total of 18 games among themselves, at the end of which the first two classified will play a series of best of three games to establish the seeding playoff; the last five (second tier) will compete in a single group of 12 games at the end of which the first two classified will compete in a series of the best of three games to determine the entry positions in the wild card group. The winner will face the fourth classified of the elite group, the loser will instead clash with the third classified.
The winning teams of the wild card will qualify for the playoff semi-finals played in the best of five games. The two winning teams will finally face off in the Holland Series (game 1 Thursday 15 September) which will be played for the best of seven games and will serve to crown the champion team of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The Federal Council of the KNBSB stresses that the introduction of the new format for the Hoofdklasse is the first step towards a multi-year development process. The goal of the new Hoofdklasse, which will be evaluated at the end of the 2022 season with the aim of launching a definitive version for the 2023 season, is to increase the number of games of interest for the championship and generate greater attraction towards fans and average.
In the cover photo (by Henk Seppen / amsterdampirates.nl) the players of the L&D Amsterdam Pirates celebrate the 2021 title won in game 7 against Curaçao Neptunus.
