Oakland Ballers Jeter Ybarra won the knock out round against the Red Pocket Mobiles sending the Ballers dugout onto the field to celebrate at Raimondi Park in Oakland on Sat Aug 2, 2026 (photo by Oakland Ballers)
By Lewis Rubman
OAKLAND–For all the on field sound and fury of this week in Oakland Ballers baseball, the most significant event may have occurred behind closed doors. On the Pioneer Baseball League’s players’ Monday day off, its owners got together and voted to place a new team in Irvine, CA in 2027. Ballers co-founder and CEO Paul Freedman announced the decision on the team’s You Tube channel during the team’s You Tube broadcast of the Wednesday game. The following is the text of the statement the circuit released on its website the following day:
The Pioneer Baseball League, a Major League Baseball Partner League, is coming to Orange County. The Irvine City Council voted Tuesday to approve a five-year agreement with Innovation Baseball Partners (IBP), clearing the way for a yet-to-be-named Pioneer Baseball League club to begin play at Great Park Baseball Stadium in the summer of 2027.
The agreement gives IBP the rights to operate the ballclub at the Great Park facility, including branding and advertising inside and outside the stadium, and calls for upgrades to the ballpark’s food and entertainment offerings.
“We’re thrilled to bring a new baseball team to Orange County. Innovation Baseball Partners takes pride in tailoring our teams to the communities we represent,” said IBP co-founder Paul Freedman. “Irvine is a hub for innovation with a diverse and growing population, and we know we can build something special out of Great Park.”
Under the terms of the deal, IBP will provide a minimum of $25,000 annually in community benefit programming. City officials project the partnership will generate approximately $368,000 in annual revenue for the Great Park Facility.
Central to the club’s plan is a ballpark experience drawing on the stadium cultures of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan and the Korea Baseball Organization in South Korea. Fans can expect coordinated crowd participation, energetic in-game entertainment, and a menu blending iconic Asian street foods and local craft beverages with traditional ballpark fare.
“IBP is designing a premium ballpark experience from the ground up, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome them to the Great Park,” said Irvine Councilmember William Go, Chair of the Great Park Board. “This partnership will bring elite entertainment to our City without the elite price tag, tailored for the people who live here.”
IBP also owns and operates two existing PBL clubs, the Long Beach Coast and Yuba-Sutter Freebirds. The group has built its model around affordable, family-oriented ballpark experiences.
Founded in 1939, the Pioneer Baseball League is an MLB Partner League , with player eligibility limited to those with no more than two years of professional experience. Great Park Baseball Stadium, which has hosted collegiate and amateur events in the past, will now serve as the home of the region’s newest professional club.
Details on the club’s official branding, final venue agreements, and player signings will be released in the coming months. Fans can follow updates and join the priority ticket waitlist at www.ocbaseballclub.com.
Many aspects of this document puzzled me. As I have pointed out several times in my contributions to Sports Radio Service, the Pioneer League was founded in 1939, but the Pioneer Baseball League’s first season was considerably later. MLB’s website does little to clarify this muddle, stating in its definition of partner leagues, “Since 1939, the Pioneer Baseball League had operated in the Mountain West region as an MLB-affiliated league. Beginning in 2021, the Pioneer League became a Partner League with clubs in Montana, Idaho, Utah Colorado and California
There are two problems with that quoted assertion. The first is that the Ballers and the Yolo Highwheelers were the first California based teams in the circuit, and their initial season was 2024. The second is that the Pioneer Baseball League definitely is not “now in its 87th year.” During 1993, I attended Pioneer League— not Pioneer Baseball League—games in Billings, Medicine Hat, and Idaho Falls. Take a look at these images from the Billings Mustangs’ program of that season.
What is the precise relationship between Mr. Freedman, the league, the Ballers, the new team in Irvine, and the Yolo Highwheelers, for that matter. I’m not impugning anyone’s integrity, nor do I have any serious legal knowledge of what constitutes criminal conflict of interest. Clearly, I need some clarification, and I think I share that need with my readers.
From what I can gather from a few online searches, it seems as though conflict of interest is endemic among MLB Partner Leagues. I found an article by Casey Dills, “The Rise of MLB Partner Leagues: Creation, Importance, and Impact on Professional Baseball,’” published on LinkedIn, that outlines the problem. The Ballers’ recent stock offering, also gives me pause. If, however, we recognize that the PBL is a training league, a three month try out camp in which players can hone and showcase their skills, the appearance of conflict of interest disappears.
The flip side to that is that wins and loses lose much of their importance and become part of the spectators’ entertainment experience, an emotional stadium giveaway. Teamwork and winning are, after all, marketable skills that the players can use if and when they advance to affiliated teams.
It’s not just for players for which the PCL serves as a try out camp. The league also tests new rules there. The Knock Out Round is one example; the pitch call challenge is another. Although that rule has some advantages, reading Dale Zimmerman, Chenyang Li, and Riley Post’s study, “On the Association of Umpire Performance with
Age and Experience in MLB,” in the Spring 2026 issue of Baseball Research Journal gave me pause. Although I’m no statistician—indeed, I wasn’t able to finish reading the piece—I believe that these two sentences cast serious doubt on the value of current ABS (Automatic Balls and Strikes):”[A] pitch is determined to be incorrectly called if 1) the probability that the pitch was in fact a strike is over 90% and the umpire called it a ball or 2) the probability that that pitch was is fact a ball is over 90% and the umpire called it a strike.” A margin of error that large strikes me as outweighing the costs of change a real life game into a video game. I’d welcome feedback from any of my statistical savvy readers, the Pioneer Baseball League, or the Ballers.
When we get to my report on the Ballers-Mobiles game of Sunday, August 2, we’ll get an idea of how casually those who execute the cyberfication of the game take these statistical ground rules.
One thing is clear; I can’t offer any informed speculations about the I impact of the forthcoming Irvine franchise on the PBL’s financial stability, its effect on the Ballers’ level of play, or the permanence of the Ballers in Oakland.
Writing that last sentence sent a chill down my spine, not just for the legitimate reason that the Baller franchise is premised on the promise never to leave The Town, but also because on Sunday, July 26, the Ballers had celebrated Halloween in July at Raimondi Field (remember that baseball is a sport rife with superstition). But it was on Tuesday the 28th at Marysville’s Bryant Field that the real horror story unfolded.
Blowing an early two run lead is no nightmare on Elm Street. Indeed, squandering leads early and often is part of the PBL’s DNA. But going on to lose, 20-10, with after the sun has set and the temperature is in the 90s to a team that took the field at 18-42 for the season might very well qualify as a nocturnal panic. And that’s what happened to the Ballers as they started their three night, three game series against the erstwhile Yolo Highwheelers, now known as the Yuba-Sutter Freebirds.
T GREAT SPORTS BUSINESS
After bringing home Oakland’s first pro baseball championship in three-plus decades, the Oakland Ballers are expanding beyond the diamond. With a 10-year license in place at historic Raimondi Park and owners like Billie Joe Armstrong and to turning Oakland’s only pro sports team into a year-round business.
Oakland Ballers (4-9,26-35) 200 100 124 10 13 2
Yolo-Sutter Freebirds (4-9,19-42) 10 15 031 00x 20 22 2
Winning pitcher: Isaiah Williams Losing pitcher: Reed Butz (0-1,11.57)
The only bright spots in the evening’s debacle were that after falling behind 19-4, the B’s outscored the F-Bids, 6-2 and that Tremayne Cobb was in uniform and off the injured list. He didn’t see any action but did warm up with the team and would return to the lineup the next evening, Wednesday July 29.
Even that bounce back 9-4 victory left some doubt about whether or not the nightmare was over; the Freebirds outscored the B’s, 2-1, from the fifth through the ninth frame.
Oakland Ballers (5-9,27-35) 050 300 100 9 13 0
Yolo-Sutter Freebirds (4-10,19-43) 020 001 100 4 8 1
Winning pitcher: Christian Díaz (1-0, 2.35) Losing pitcher: Mark López ((0-3)
Cobb went only one for five on his return to action, but that included a run producing double to right center in the second. Oakland’s dynamic shortstop went 0-2 as a substitute DH on the 30th and hasn’t played since then.
His status remains a serious concern. In short, the doubt about the B’s ability to consolidate their winning trend turned out to be justified.
That Thursday defeat at the hands of lowly Freebirds was the type of sobering experience that could drive you to drink.
Oakland Ballers (5-10,27-36) 100 002 101 5 9 1
Yuiba-Sutter Freebirds (5-10,20-43) 204 300 10x 10 10 1
Winning pitcher: Information not available. Losing pitcher: Griffin Smith (1-5)
Time: 2:39 Attendance: 403
I began this chronicle with some comments on the baleful effects of computer technology on the PBL, so it might be fitting for me to end my coverage of the games in Marysville, the most cyber dependent site in the league.Bryant Field
Is the only venue in the circuit that goes full ABS. The home plate umpire does not call balls and strikes, subject to challenges that are settled by ABS; he reads the ABS report on the scoreboard and calls out the result. Box scores from Marysville show up on the PBL’s website without the umpires’ last names, just their first name and initial, nor do they include who got the won, the lost, or the save. The failure of the reports isn’t necessarily the effect of the complete dependence on the ABS, but, as Thoreau said, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
The Ballers convincing win on returning home on the last day of July raises some troubling questions about both the nature of the PBL and the on field performance of the B’s..
RedPocket Mobiles (1-15,13-51) 000 001 100 2 3 0
Oakland Ballers (6-10,28-36) 100 102 03x 7 10 0
Winnng pitcher: Charlie Hurley (2-5) Losing pitcher: Blayne Huter (3-2)
Time; 2:50 Attendance: 3,012
The RedPocket Mobiles, the Ballers’ victim Friday evening are a barnstorming team. They have no home ballpark, nort even a temporary or rolling one. They have, in short, no community. What does that tell us about the league’s commitment to community development?
The final score was a comfortable 7-2 in favor of the home team, but it wasn’t all that easy a win. RedPocket closed the gap between the two outfits to 2-1 after five and a half frames. It took a three run explosion in the bottom of the eighth before the Ballers’ advantage could be considered moderately secure by PBL standards.
Another point of concern were newcomer Julio Rosario’s three walks to the five batters he faced in seventh, a disappointment mitigated by his having struck out the other two. The Ballers once more demonstrated their penchant for shooting themselves in the foot when Mitchell Sanford ran into a third out that ended the home second in his first game at Raimondi. He, too, mitigated his error by smacking a drive into the the Mobiles’ bullpen that accounted for the three crucial Baller runs in the eight.
On a more lighthearted note, it was Grateful Dead Night, and the Ballers adopted the ad hoc pseudonym and jersey of Oaksterdam Blazers. They sold the latter at $70 each. The event lifted the crowd’s spirits and gained the team reams of press coverage.
The Ballers began August by celebrating a different sort of trip; it was Public Transit Day at the ballpark.
RedPocket Mobiles (1-16,13-52) 002 042 001 9 12 2
Oakland Ballers (7-10,29-36) 050 024 20X 13 12 2
Winning pitcher: Brock Mayer (1-0) Losing pitcher: Phillip Sanders (1-1)
Time: 2:55 Attendance: 2,431
The Ballers jumped off to an early lead of 5-0 after two innings and, even against a placeholdere team like the Mobiles, found themselves on the short end of 6-5 contest in the middle of the fifth. Each time committed two errors, all of them charged to infielders, and several runners reached base on hits that could have been scored as errors. I chalked some, but not all, of those plays to the hard infield, baked dry by the current heat wave.
Oakland staged a 2025 comeback win over the Mobiles to close out the series on Sunday, August 2. Down biy the East Coast working person’s score of nine to five, Esai Santos worked a walk, and a glimmer of hope that all was not lost began to arise. But Jaden Collura smacked a grounder to RedPockets first sacker Jordan Harrison-Dudley, whose fielding deficits would make Moose Skowron look like Vic Power. For all his weaknesses as a fielder, Harrison-Dudley made an accurate throw to shortstop Spence Coffman at second. And Coffman dropped the ball! An Allgeyer singled clogged the basepaths. Jeter Ybarra, who already had a couple of roundtrippers to his credit for the afternoon, smoked the ball into the right center field batting cages. (Nice touch, that). It was his 29th four bagger of the year. It was only fitting that he should hit the deciding “home run”of the KO Inning. And he did.
RedPocket Mobiles (1-17,13-53) 005 100 111 9 13 1
Oakland Ballers (8-10,30-36) 001 001 013 9 13 1
There was no winning or losing pitcher. Oakland won in the first round of the Knock Out Inning, 1 (Jeter
Ybarra)-0 (Kishon Frett)
The manner in which the Ballers won the Shoot Out at the KO Corral is further evidence of the faults of that way of settling ties. The countdown clock on the score board hadn’t been reset when Kishon Frett began taking swings and the balls tossed his way. It was lucky for the B’s that RedPockets’ standard bearer’s five outs disqualified him. Otherwise, he would have had at least an extra minute left before the two minutes allotted knockout round batters would have expired.
The coming week will see three more games between the Mobiles and the Ballers, all starting at 6:35.Then it’s off to Marysville for three games robo-umped ball.
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