Season of Success: One by One by One
August 13, 2023 - New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL)
Sanford Mainers News Release
SANFORD, Maine - When the 2023 Sanford Mainers came together for the first time this summer on Monday, June 5, third-year manager Nic Lops gave two requirements to his team: have fun and stay healthy.
The reigning Joel Cooney Manager of the Year notably left wins off his list of requirements and the reason was simple: If the 2023 Sanford Mainers stayed on track with those two goals, the wins would come on their own.
Two months to the date of that original meeting, the product of Lops' formula was seen on full display with 29 of the 35 players that donned the green and yellow throughout the season taking one final bus ride down to Bristol, Connecticut as Sanford's first season above .500 since 2018 ended in the semifinals of the 2023 New England League Postseason.
That tight-knit group of players assembled by general manager Aaron Izaryk from as close as the University of Southern Maine to as far away as Loyola Marymount University saw their chapter in Sanford history close on that night in August, but that final sentence was only a small portion of a success story told by consistency, character and culture.
Those three traits were known from the get-go as a group of eight players led by Kevin Skagerlind (UMass Amherst), who was the recipient of this year's Neil Olson General Manager's Award given annually to the player who best exemplifies the spirit of the organization, returned to the locker room across from Goodall Park; Bryce Afthim (Southern Maine), Devan Bade (Binghamton), Zack Given (UMass Amherst), Cal Hewett (Vanderbilt), Jack Mullen (Bowdoin), Jake Poindexter (Lipscomb) and Matt Polk (Vanderbilt).
Albeit just three days between its first practice and first game, that octet paved the way for an unwavering team chemistry built on bus ride games, Moose on the Mic moments, a pink cowboy hat and most importantly an unyielding support in times of struggle. That chemistry led to the squad counting on one another to take things one by one by one en route to a 24-19 regular season record and a quarterfinal sweep over Mystic.
Counting on one another started each day with putting trust in one of the five mainstays of a starting rotation, which was the team's focal point. Those five starters, Seamus Barrett (Loyola Marymount), Cody Bowker (Georgetown), Ryan Dee (Binghamton) and Justin Honeycutt (UNC Asheville), combined for a 2.10 ERA over their 34 starts with Bowker, Dee and Honeycutt all finishing with sub-1.50 ERAs.
The latter two ranked second and third in the league in ERA, respectively, but all three members of the trio went lengthy distances without yielding an earned run. Honeycutt, who served as the opening day starter, made it into his fifth appearance before allowing an earned run, while Bowker went 21.1 innings of scoreless baseball from June 12 through July 26, and Dee started the season with three scoreless appearances, including six-innings of shutout baseball in game two of a seven-inning doubleheader against Danbury.
Barrett and Mullen finished with 3.40 ERAs, which due to qualifying innings only ranked Barrett ninth in the league, and gave the Mainers a chance to win time and time again. Barrett led the league with 58 strikeouts, one shy of the single-season record for Sanford, while making five appearances of six or more innings in June and July. The Kennebunk, Maine native is etched forever in Mainers lore due to a gusty 118-pitch outing in which he stifled the league's best Newport Gulls with ten strikeouts.
Honeycutt, Barrett, Dee and Mullen received starting nods in the postseason, and they kept their regular season domination going, combining to allow just five earned runs over 25.1 innings. Bowker, whose first appearance of the season was an opening day win out of the bullpen, watched his season come full circle as he returned to the bullpen for two scoreless outings, including the save that sealed the series against Mystic.
Although the starters seemingly breezed through their starts, except for a few here and there, Lops and assistant Tim Moreau saw the opposite from their bullpen as only Michael Simes (UMass Lowell), Zach Johnston (Wake Forest) and Afthim pitched completely clean final frames when the Mainers were leading heading into the ninth. While on the surface that does not seem like a recipe for success, the relief arms had a bend but don't break mentality that saw them lose just one game when they had the lead into the final inning.
Nick Thompson (Colby College) and Chris Gallagher (Wright State) became the most relied upon arms in the later innings. Thompson allowed just one run during his 11 relief appearances, and Gallagher was known for his heroics, including a six-inning relief appearance that led to a walk-off win against the Vermont Mountaineers when the division was still in reach.
The two newcomers may have gotten the most usage out of the bullpen, but three returners in Given, Poindexter and Afthim were vital to holding leads as well. Given earned himself high-leverage situations as he lowered his ERA from 10.12 in 2022 to 3.48 over the same number of appearances, nine, in 2023, Poindexter also pitched nine times in the regular season in which he pitched to a 3.00 ERA and locked down two saves. Despite a new role for the 2022 Robin Roberts Top Starting Pitcher of the Year, Afthim went 3-1 with a 1.86 ERA while making eight appearances, including a gusty two-innings outing that helped secure Barrett's win over the Gulls.
Not to be outdone but some late-inning drama from the relievers, the green and yellow bats tended to deliver in dramatic fashion late in games, including six walk-off wins and two ninth-inning road comebacks.
Drama might even be an understatement at times like when a dropped third strike in game one of the aforementioned doubleheader against Danbury gave way to Simmi Whitehill (Hartford Community College) and Matt Miceli (Stony Brook) scoring the tying and winning runs for the last-chance victory. A day later the unconventional winning ways continued as an error and a couple of wild pitches helped the Mainers put a four-spot on the board in the ninth to beat Mystic 7-5 on the road. Not even a week later, an infield single by Bade was aided by two errors as the base hit turned into a two-run, walk-off Little League home run against the Bristol Blues.
Sanford treated its fans to four more walk-offs, though much more conventional, including three against North Division rivals with the exception of a Skagerlind sacrifice fly to beat North Shore on July 3. Jack Toomey (Holy Cross) had a walk-off sacrifice fly and Bade had a single after Gallagher's heroics that both bested the Mountaineers, while Cam Johnson (UNC Asheville) delivered a base hit ending game one of a doubleheader against Upper Valley.
Johnson's walk-off, which was part of a season-ending 10-game winning streak against the North Division, was not his only clutch moment of the summer. While down to the final strike against North Adams in game six of their season, Johnson worked a walk to set up Jeremiah Jenkins' (Maine) go-ahead two-run blast in the top of the ninth. That blast was one of five for Jenkins, who represented the Mainers in the 2023 NECBL Home Run Derby and finished just one short of the champion Anthony Steele (Danbury/Penn State).
Consistency in the clutch department would have dominated the story of the Mainers offense if it was not for a stark improvement between June and July. Led by four hitters who hit over .300 in July, Polk, Logan Poteet (Vanderbilt), Nick Roselli (Binghamton) and Eddie Eisert (Virginia Tech), along with improved contributions from guys like Jenkins and Devin Russell (Maryland), Sanford hit .251 in the second month of the season after hitting .216 in June. That offensive outburst contributed to a 15-9 record in the second month of the season after a 9-10 start.
Poteet, who hit .398 in July, including a week where he was named Player of the Week during an 11-game hitting streak in which he hit .500 (19-38) with two home runs and 12 RBIs, paced the league with a .347 batting average. To no surprise, he found himself amongst the rest of the NECBL's best at Fraser Field for the 2023 NECBL All-Star Game, Presented by Metro Credit Union.
Bade joined the Poteet on the trip to Lynn, Mass. as the Bearcat infielder reached base in 36-of-37 regular season games he played en route to a .279 batting average. The second-year Mainer tied Poteet for the team lead with 25 runs batted in as he improved upon his first season in which he drove in 11.
Two of Bade's other teammates from a summer prior, Skagerlind and Hewett, also saw newfound success. The former of the two lifted his batting average from .125 to .255, while the latter jumped his from .235 to .282 and led the league with 27 stolen bases.
Sanford's season ended prematurely with a loss to the Bristol Blues as its offense cooled down, but success is not always measured in wins and losses as the team did what it set out to do and more. The 2023 Mainers left an impact far beyond the field one by one by one.
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New England Collegiate Baseball League Stories from August 13, 2023
- Season of Success: One by One by One - Sanford Mainers
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