One by One by One, and Most Importantly as One
August 26, 2024 - New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL)
Sanford Mainers News Release
SANFORD, Maine - On June 2, Nic Lops assembled the 2024 Sanford Mainers at Goodall Park for the first time. Before a baseball was thrown or a bat was swung, the fourth-year manager gave his list of expectations to the team:
-Be a good human
-Stay healthy and stay here
-Get better
-Play baseball in the summer, not summer ball
Lops, who was named the NECBL's 2024 Joel Cooney Manager of the Year at the conclusion of the season, knew that if his team checked off those four bullets and did so one game, one inning, one batter and one pitch at a time, the wins would come.
Beginning with a 2-0 victory over the Vermont Mountaineers on Opening Day, the wins began to show up for Sanford. That initial victory, which came after six shutout innings by Connor Ball (Alabama) and a timely run-scoring triple by second-year Mainer Matt Miceli (Stony Brook), was the first of eight over the Mainers' first 13 games.
The green and gold's next seven wins came in a variety of different ways starting with an offensive outburst against Keene that saw C.J. Willis (Quinnipiac) hit for the first cycle in organizational history and Devan Bade (Binghamton) record the only multi-home run game of his three-year tenure with the Mainers.
From there, the offense had a couple of more outbursts including an eight-run performance, including a seven-run inning, against the Martha's Vineyard Sharks. Five days later, the Mainers matched that eight-run outburst with another one as they took down the SwampBats for the third time in the first 10 games of the season.
The third game of the season series against their North Division foe drew the first largest first-half crowd of the season at Goodall Park as Sanford native T.J. Curley (Stonehill College) took the mound as the starting pitcher.
Curley, who went three shutout innings on the same mound he grew up playing on, started his season by allowing one earned run over 12 innings for his hometown team. Five innings after Curley came off the mound, Jackson Walsh (Wheaton College) stranded the bases loaded in the top of the ninth inning.
Walsh's two-out save jumpstarted a 30.2-inning scoreless stretch for Sanford's pitching staff. Led by the starters in Colton Trisch (George Washington), Ryan Minckler (Arizona State) and Ball, the Mainers pitched three consecutive shutouts against Upper Valley, Danbury and Valley.
Those three starters were assisted by seven bullpen arms to keep the shutout streak intact. Second-year Mainer Chris Gallagher (Purdue) was joined by Daniel McAliney (Binghamton) and Bijan Anvar (Franklin & Marshall) as the three relief arms that went two or more innings to preserve the shutout efforts.
On the same day that the shutout streak ended, the Mainers' four-game winning streak came to a sudden end in a rain-shortened affair against the North Shore Navigators. That loss, the sixth of the season for Sanford, marked a temporary, yet lengthy end to Sanford's winning ways.
Over the next 25 days and 19 games, the Mainers fell from three games over .500 to two games under .500 as a 7-12 stretch of their schedule saw them move from the league's third-best team to the league's eighth-best team clinging to a playoff position by a few percentage points.
Despite the tough stretch, the Mainers made the most of their seven wins with one coming from a sparkling performance on the Fourth of July and two of them being late, come-from-behind wins over Keene.
Tommy Ellisen (UConn), who was a later addition to the Mainers and their starting rotation, made his first start of the season on the Fourth of July in North Adams. The Wisconsin native pitched six innings of 7-strikeout baseball while allowing just one hit and one walk.
The hard-throwing righty took a no-decision, but the Mainers took the win as Ray Velazquez (Vanderbilt), who had six tying or go-ahead hits throughout the season, came through with a three-run hit in the eighth inning. Ellisen was also on the mound when Sanford made the second of their two come-from-behind victories against Keene during the stretch.
Following Ellisen's 10-strikeout performance over six innings, the Mainers rallied from two runs down with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jared Davis (Virginia Tech), Jackson Tucker (St. John's), Bade, Willis and Colin Barczi (Vanderbilt) reached in consecutive plate appearances with Barczi's single serving as Sanford's lone walk-off hit of the season.
Two days after Barczi's walk-off on his birthday, the Mainers suffered a lopsided 11-4 loss against Vermont. That loss, which came on July 14, was Sanford's 17th of the season, but it also was their second to last of the regular season.
Following the loss, Lops' one by one by one formula took on a new dimension. It was no longer just taking things one game, one inning, one batter and one pitch at a time, but rather being engaged one game, one inning, one batter and one pitch at a time and doing it together as one.
Come their next game on July 16, Lops moved every bullpen pitcher into the dugout, bringing the entire team together on the top step of the dugout for every single pitch. That shift brought an already tight group of players even closer and created a stronger bond that took the NECBL by storm.
Starting with that game on June 16, which ended early due to the weather, the Mainers won 11 straight games, matching the Newport Gulls and Martha's Vineyard Sharks for the longest streak in the NECBL since 2002.
Although there were plenty of individual performances that were to note including Barczi's 14-game on-base streak to end the season, Bade and Caleb Shpur's (UConn) 13-game hitting streaks, Evin Sullivan's (Binghamton) 13 RBI in 12 games played, and plenty more, it was a full-team effort to finish the season.
Throughout the 11-game winning streak, which ended on the final day of the regular season, Sanford hit .298 with a .395 on-base percentage while also stealing 6.4 bases per game while combining for a 3.91 team ERA and a 2.75 bullpen ERA.
Those improved numbers allowed the Mainers to set the NECBL's all-time single-game record with 12 stolen bases against the North Adams SteepleCats, set the league's all-time single-season stolen base record with 144 and set team records for walks, 206, and runs, 235, in a season.
Despite the loss on the final day of the regular season, the Mainers entered the postseason as the hottest team in the league and had checked off each bullet of Lops' expectations when they first met in early June.
Having already accomplished what they wanted to, the Mainers went into the postseason playing for one another and trying to extend their time together one game, one inning, one batter and one pitch at a time.
Sanford did just that, winning its first five games of the postseason, which included sweeps of the Keene SwampBats and Vermont Mountaineers. But, after winning Game 1 of the NECBL Championship Series, the Mainers could not finish the job against the Newport Gulls, falling in the final two games on the final day of the season.
Although the team took off in different directions after the final play of the game, the 2024 Sanford Mainers will forever be together as a family, not a summer baseball team. They did it one game, one inning, one batter, one pitch at a time and together as one.
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New England Collegiate Baseball League Stories from August 26, 2024
- One by One by One, and Most Importantly as One - Sanford Mainers
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