Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball
The Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball, commonly known as the Can-Am League, was a professional, independent baseball league with teams in the Northeast United States and Eastern Canada, founded in 2005 as a reorganization of its predecessor, the Northeast League. The Can-Am League operated in cities not directly served by Major or Minor League teams and was not affiliated with either. The league office was in Dayton, Ohio. Though a separate entity, the league shared a commissioner, president, and director of umpires with the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball.
This article is about the modern "Can-Am League". For the original league 1936–1951, see Canadian–American League.Sport
The Can-Am League ceased operations after the 2019 season, with five of the six league teams joining the independent Frontier League.
Policies and practices[edit]
Playoff format[edit]
In its inaugural season, the Can-Am League kept the two-division setup and half-season format that the Northeast League had. The two teams that were leading their respective divisions, designated North and South, at the end of the first half of the season automatically qualified for the playoffs. Two additional playoff spots would be made available. Once again, these went to division winners if the first half champions failed to repeat. Otherwise, one or more wild card spots would be given based on the team's overall record in both halves. If absolutely necessary, a one-game playoff would be played in case of a tie.
Beginning in 2006, the league abandoned divisional play. The first half-season leader automatically qualified for the playoffs, as did the second half-season leader if there was a second. To round the field out at four, two or more wild-card spots were given to teams with the best overall season record.
The four qualifiers for the playoffs would meet in two separate best of five series with the winners advancing to the League Championship Series, which was also best of five.
Beginning in 2012, the league stopped using the half-season format. From 2012 through 2014, the teams with the two best records in the league advanced to the League Championship Series. The series was expanded from a best of five to a best of seven. This changed in 2015 when Ottawa and Sussex County joined the league, which enabled it to have enough teams to return to its previous playoff format. From this point until its merger with the Frontier League, the league awarded playoff spots to the teams with the four best records at the end of the regular season.
Roster policies[edit]
The league salary cap was a maximum amount that could be spent on the entire player roster. Teams could apportion it among players as they saw fit. Certain players were given coaching duties to earn additional pay. The maximum salary cap for a rostered player was about US$4,000 every one to two months, depending on the roster size. However most players made about $2–3,000 every month. There were some rostered players that made the maximum every two months. There were no players in the league that made more than $4,000 per month. Rosters were limited to 23 players once the regular season began. An additional two players could be on the disabled list (which was referred to on some published rosters as the disabled/inactive list, and was sometimes used to ensure that a player under contract that a team does not wish to use was unavailable to opponents).
League roster rules gave each player an LS (Length of Service) rating, based on the number of full years the player had played professionally: Rookie, LS-1 through LS-5, and Veteran. Teams could carry at most four veterans and were required to carry at least five rookies. Some published rosters stated the LS rating of each player.[8]
Scheduling[edit]
Since 2005, the Can-Am League regular season schedule varied in length from 92 to 102 games.
In 2019, the league scheduled a 95-game regular season.[9]
In years when one of the teams was a league-operated traveling team, the franchises played an increased number of home games to keep the total length of the regular season constant. All games a franchise played against the traveling team were played at the franchise's ballpark. However, half of those games were designated "home games" for the traveling team, which took the field first and batted last as though the game were played at the traveling team's "home."
Opponents played a series of from three to five games on consecutive days. Occasionally, for clubs near to one another, the original schedule did not put all the games of a series at the same ballpark. For example, the teams could travel to the visitors' ballpark for the middle game of a series.
Tiebreakers[edit]
In 2014, the Can-Am League adopted the IBAF's international tiebreaker rule. If a game went beyond the tenth inning, each half-inning began with a runner on second base. The runner was the batter who made the last out in the team's previous turn at bat, or the batter immediately preceding the leadoff man for the inning if that player had been substituted out. Play continued as normal otherwise. If the game remained tied, the process repeated until one team won. The first use of the rule came on June 2, 2014, in an interleague matchup between the St. Paul Saints and the Quebec Capitales, and the American Association has also adopted the rule.