Following approval by the PONY Baseball Rules Committee and the International Board of Directors, two baseball rules have been updated for the 2018 season. For the first time, PONY Baseball will be following a pitch count instead of an innings limit, as recommended by MLB Pitch Smart Guidelines, and, in conjunction with USA Baseball and its other participating National Member Organizations, PONY Baseball has adopted the new USA Baseball Bat Standard (USABat).

Pitch Count

As will be stated in Section 10 “Pitching Rules” and T-8 “Tournament Pitching,” any team member may pitch, subject to the restrictions of the pitch count, as recommended by MLB Pitch Smart Guidelines, for age divisions Pinto 8U, Mustang 10U, Bronco 12U, Pony 14U, Colt 16U, Palomino 18U and Thorobred 23U. Players in the Shetland 6U age division are not permitted to pitch. Pitchers are to adhere to the chart below for league and sanction tournament play.

 

Pitchers reaching their maximum number of pitches in a day, while pitching to a batter, may finish pitching to that batter before being removed. A pitcher is charged with the number of pitches in the specific calendar day and week in which they are pitched, regardless of whether they are local organization league games, the playoff of postponed games or suspended games, tie games, or exhibition games.

Rest is calculated as per calendar day. No pitcher shall appear in a game as a pitcher for three consecutive days, regardless of pitch count.

The league should assign an official scorekeeper for each game to track pitch counts.  In the absence of an official scorekeeper, the home team book shall be the official record of games statistics including pitch count. Electronic scoring devices are recommended at all levels of tournament play in order to ensure accurate pitch count.