WPEBL prospers despite less teams

Tri-State Sports & News Service

Over the past few years, the Western Pennsylvania Elite Baseball League had built itself into one of the best proving grounds for young talent in the region.

Its teams competed against each other and also traveled for showcase events that allowed players to take the field against some of the better programs from around the country.

Only some teams took it a little bit too far.

“There were some teams in the league that were just consumed with being tournament teams and using our league to kind of fill in between tournaments,” Steel City Wildcats coach and league cofounder Mark Saghy said. “That’s not what we wanted our league to fall into.”

With that in mind, the WPEBL decided that it was time to do a little bit of addition by subtraction.

After fielding a 10-team league comprised of some of the top players from the WPIAL, District 6, District 10 and even a smattering of athletes from West Virginia and Ohio, the league slashed four programs and has played this season with only six squads.

“A lot of times, they were getting done with tournaments and then they would come in and play us and they didn’t have their top pitchers available because they just played in a tournament or they had kids that were really tired and they didn’t all show up,” Saghy said. “There’s a lot of reasons, but we weren’t playing the best teams on the field in league games because of all the travel and all the tournaments they were playing.”

Because certain teams were unable to use their top two or even three pitchers in league games, it became a field day for top-shelf hitters accustomed to seeing the best arms in the area. Having pedestrian pitchers serving up center-cut marginal fastballs wasn’t what the league founders had in mind when they formed the WPEBL in 2006.