NEWS

Links: 2017 Composite Schedule

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Commissioner Sean McGrath announced the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) 2017 composite schedule today. The New England League starts its 24th baseball season on Tuesday, June 6, when the defending champion Mystic Schooners host the Winnipesaukee Muskrats to kick off the summer as part of a five-game slate on the eve of the year.

For the third time in league history and second straight year, the 2017 season will feature seven teams in the North Division and six teams in the South Division. Both divisional alignments remain the same; the North Division is comprised of the Keene Swamp Bats, the North Adams SteepleCats, the Sanford Mainers, the Upper Valley Nighthawks, the Valley Blue Sox, the Vermont Mountaineers and the Winnepsaukee Muskrats. The six-team South Division contains 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 employ a balanced/unbalanced schedule format depending on the division, and all teams will play 44 regular season games overall. Teams in the South Division will face each divisional rival six times (three home and three road games), and will play each team from the North Division twice (one home, one road). Each team in the North Division will play two other in-division teams six times, and the remaining four teams five times, for a total of 32 games, plus the two games against each of the six South Division teams (12 games – one home, one road vs. each team) for a total of 44 games.

The 2017 NECBL All-Star Game will be hosted by the North Adams SteepleCats at Joe Wolfe Field on Sunday, July 30, while players will also receive the following Monday off as part of the All-Star Break. The New England League’s version of the Midsummer Classic will be played a week later than in previous seasons and returns to the Berkshires for the first time since 2007, when Washington Nationals ace and Torrington Twisters alum Stephen Strasburg ’07 was a member of the league.

After that, each of the league’s 13 teams will play one final day of the regular season with hopes of qualifying for the 2017 NECBL Playoffs. But a new playoff format has been announced for the 2017 campaign, one that emphasizes the importance of winning either division.

Six teams total will qualify for the postseason – down from the eight that had qualified in from 2002-16 – with the winners of both the North and South Divisions each earning first-round byes. The No. 2 and No. 3 seeds from each division will square off in a winner-take-all NECBL Wildcard Game; the victors will take on the No. 1 seeds in the best-of-three NECBL Divisional Finals before the last two teams standing face off in the NECBL Championship Series in another best-of-three format that will determine the winner of the Fay Vincent Cup.

The final games of the regular season will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 1, with the following day (Aug. 2) open for makeup games before the postseason begins on Thursday, Aug. 3.

Last season, the No. 1 South Division seed Mystic Schooners defeated the No. 1 North Division seed Sanford to win the franchise’s first Fay Vincent Cup since moving to Mystic in 2011.

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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