Weird Seeding Situation and Ruling

My DD's team hosted a 7 team tourney this weekend. There was a 3 game round robin followed by a knockout round.

Because of the uneven number of teams, my DD's team had to play a 4th RR courtesy game that would not count against their standings. This game would not count against my DD's team, but would be the 3rd game for their opponents.

Prior to this game we were 3-0 with a great plus/minus. Our opponents were 2-0. The first seed would get a buy for the initial round of playoffs.

For seeding purposes, the first tie-breaker was head-to-head.

The opposing team claimed that if they beat us and went to 3-0, they would get the first seed because they win the head-to-head. Our team claimed that we have already played our 3 RR games and that this was simply a courtesy game to us and that it should not have the head-to-head designation on it.

The tournament director talked (and argued) with both coaches for around 15 minutes before the game. It was decided that the game would count for the head-to-head seeding purposes.

Do you think that this was the correct ruling?

yes, I agree with that ruling.

its common for a host team to playan extra game to complete seeding.
even though the game didnt count toward your win/loss, the only reason you played that game was so the other team could complete THEIR seeding.
and if they beat you head to head and have same win/loss record, then yes, they receive the higher seed.

makes sense to me

We ended up winning the game 3-2, but we also had to expend our ace pitcher for 6 extra innings. This caught up to us in the finals.

Normally we would pitch #2 or #3 in a game like this.

I could go either way on the ruling, but I thought it was a unique situation that I've never come across.

Who cares? You're playing softball in a tournament that probably has no bearing on anything other than a trophy, t-shirt, medal or whatever.

The honorable thing to do would be for the host team to drop from the elimination field and permit the paying guests to compete among themselves.

The trick is to setup the rules before 1st ball is put in play.

I am OK with rulimg, save everyone a lot of aggregation if it is defined before hand.

the crap move I've seen a lot of host teams do in this situation (odd number of teams),
is to play the extra game, and then pick which of the 4 games they played to "throw out",
when determining their win/loss record for seeding...

To be more fair, host teams usually blind-draw a game out of a hat to throw out.
That usually sits better with the other teams...

Chaz McNulty said:

We ended up winning the game 3-2, but we also had to expend our ace pitcher for 6 extra innings. This caught up to us in the finals.
Normally we would pitch #2 or #3 in a game like this.
I could go either way on the ruling, but I thought it was a unique situation that I've never come across.

Click to expand...

Could have pitched #2 or #3 and saved the #1 for the elimination games. If you lose game #4 and don't get a bye, you'd be the #2 seed. As the #2 seed, the first game's against the last seed, probably a weak team, and you could use #3 pitcher. To pitch your #1 an extra game just to be the top seed and avoid playing the last seed is probably not the best approach vs balancing the use of pitching for the final day.

As for the rule, the extra game always ends up unfair to someone because it's not a one to one comparison of records and stats..