NEWS

Links: 2015 NECBL Composite Schedule

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Commissioner Sean McGrath announced the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) 2015 composite schedule today. The New England League starts its 22nd baseball season on Thursday June 4, with a four-game slate exclusively featuring division rivals.

For the second straight summer, the 2015 season will feature six teams in two divisions. The North Division will once again be comprised of the Valley Blue Sox, the Keene Swamp Bats, the Laconia Muskrats, the North Adams SteepleCats, the Sanford Mainers and the Vermont Mountaineers.  

Meanwhile, the six-team South Division features the Danbury Westerners, the Mystic Schooners, the New Bedford Bay Sox, the Newport Gulls, the Ocean State Waves and the Plymouth Pilgrims.

The New England League will once again employ a balanced schedule format that includes 42 regular-season games overall. Each team will face a divisional rival six times (three home and three road games), and all teams will have the opportunity to play each team from the other division twice (1 home, 1 road).

Danbury and New Bedford are slated to play a home-and-home doubleheader series over the course of the season, as well, marking the only two scheduled doubleheaders on the docket this summer.

The 2015 NECBL All-Star Game will be hosted by the Sanford Mainers at historic Goodall Park on Sunday, July 19, while players will also receive the following Monday off as part of the All-Star Break.  

After that, each of the league’s 12 teams will race to the finish over the last two weeks of the regular season with hopes of lucking one of eight spots in the 2015 NECBL Playoffs. The top-four teams from each division qualify for the postseason, and once again, the league’s playoff tournament format will feature three separate rounds of best-of-three series to determine the winner of the Fay Vincent Cup.

The final games of the regular season will be held on Saturday, Aug. 1, with the following day (Aug. 2) open should teams need participate in tiebreaker/play-in games to qualify for the playoffs, which officially begin the following Monday, Aug. 3.

Last season, the No. 2 South Division seed Newport Gulls defeated the No. 2 North Division seed Sanford in two games to claim the franchise’s league-high sixth Fay Vincent Sr. Cup. The Gulls will begin their defense of the league crown on Thursday, June 4, at newly anointed rival Plymouth, which was the story of the summer in 2014 after winning its first-ever South Division crown and finishing with a league-most 31 regular-season wins in just the franchise’s second year of existence. The Gulls will raise their latest banner a day later when they welcome Mystic to town on June 5 for their home opener.

Other opening-night affairs include Laconia hosting North Adams and Keene visiting Valley in the North Division, while the Ocean State Waves entertain the New Bedford Bay Sox in addition to the aforementioned Newport-Plymouth matchup, as well.

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The New England Collegiate Baseball League is a wooden bat college summer league that fields teams in all six New England states. Partially funded by Major League Baseball, the NECBL started play in 1994 and has sent over 100 alumni to the Major Leagues. For continuing coverage of the NECBL, visit NECBL.com and follow the league on Twitter and on Facebook