The Pac-12 Baseball Tournament will have a different format in Year 2.
The conference announced Tuesday that it will expand the field from eight to nine teams and will implement pool play. The 2023 event is scheduled for May 23-27 at Scottsdale Stadium.
The new tournament format will feature three pools of three teams, similar to what the ACC runs. The winner of each pool will advance to the single-elimination semifinals, along with one wild card.
The tournament will feature no more than three games per day, and each team is guaranteed at least one day off.
Last year’s tournament featured four games on each of the first two days, and that created a backlog. The Cal-UCLA game, for instance, started at 10:18 p.m. The Cal-Oregon State game the next night started at 10:15.
"Even with the great success of the inaugural Pac-12 Baseball Tournament, we feel like these adjustments will make the event even better for both our student-athletes and our fans," Pac-12 deputy commissioner Teresa Gould said in a news release. "The move to a maximum of three games per day will allow start times to be staggered. ... Adding a ninth team to the tournament also expands the postseason experience for another university while also giving that team potential access to an NCAA Tournament berth.”
Pool play will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with three games per day. Each pool will play a round-robin format.
The wild card will be determined by the best record of the non-advancing teams. Any tiebreaker will be awarded to the highest-seeded team.
Pool A will consist of seeds 1, 6 and 9; Pool B will consist of seeds 2, 5 and 8; and Pool C will consist of seeds 3, 4 and 7.
The Pac-12’s agreement with Scottsdale runs through 2024 – also the last year UCLA and USC will be in the conference. Once they leave, barring expansion, the league will have nine schools that play baseball.
Stanford won the first Pac-12 Tournament last year. Arizona won two games but was swept and eliminated by the Cardinal, who would go on to represent the Pac-12 in the College World Series.
