Grueling schedule for boys of summer

Brown has been the Mountaineers manager for four summers now, and previously spent two years in Sanford.

If you look at the New England Collegiate Baseball League’s transaction logs, they’re crowded with releases and acquisitions as teams across the league are scrambling to fill rosters to make postseason runs. Top pitchers are shut down, and teams are left struggling to look for any talent they can. It’s a troubling trend across summer leagues, and no man is better suited to explain it than Vermont manager and SUNY-Cortland head coach Joe Brown, who’s in his fourth year with the Mountaineers and sixth in the league.

Having coached in 2006 and 2008 with the Sanford Mainers, Brown has seen plenty of change across the league, including a decrease in the pitching talent as well as the domino effect that a longer spring season, too many leagues and a lengthy summer schedule have caused.

“It’s two parts,” Brown said while sitting in his dugout a few hours before a game. “There’s too many leagues and too long a schedule. Twenty years ago, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Omaha (the D-I championship) was done at the start of June, and now they’re going to July.”

With some of the top talent playing with their college teams through the first half of the NECBL season, it’s hard to get some of the mid-level players that now spend extended time in the Cape Cod League that features elite college players. The Cape used to sign players to 10-day temporary contracts, then released them when players from the top Division I programs arrived. Now, however, they’re playing a month in the Cape and will often go home instead of joining a league like the NECBL.

Brown and Mountaineers general manager Brian Gallagher were able to secure four players from the Cape, a noticeable haul in a league that has had its fair share of problems with filling rosters over the past year. Keeping a close eye on the transactions log, the duo signed catcher Slade Heggen and All-Star outfielder Joe Tietjen a day apart midway through June. The Mountaineers added second basemen Trevor Ezell and right-hander Michael Fairchild at the end of the month. All four players have had played pivotal roles on the team, as the three position players are everyday starters and Fairchild went seven-plus innings in his last start.

Still, the change in the temporary contracts has been a big problem for NECBL teams, and it’s directly related to the college season. The D-I baseball tournament ended June 30 this year, compared to 15 years ago when the final was played June 16. That two-week difference is huge for summer collegiate leagues, and it’s made it hard for leagues like the NECBL to find players. For Brown, it’s frustrating as the league has yet to address the problem.

“What’s the No. 1 resource for the league?” Brown asked rhetorically, then answered emphatically. “Players. The No. 1 resource is players, and if you have constant turnover with the roster, then that’s an issue. Address it. You either solve the problem or continually have the problem.”

Brown advocates for a shorter schedule, proposing that the league wrap up at the start of August instead of midway through the month. Cape players on temporary contracts are often just going home after a month because 20-plus games are enough for them, but the NECBL is still trying to play a 44-game schedule. For student-athletes from Southern areas whose schools start as early as Aug. 10th, it’s an easily noticeable problem.

“You have to take care of your vital resources,” Brown said. “You’re not coddling them, you’re adjusting based on the culture out there. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you’ve watched the league the last three or four years, that’s the issue. It’s the same thing.”

The Mountaineers went through almost 50 players last season, losing talent for a variety of reasons. The constant roster turnover is related to the schedule length, both in the spring and the summer, as well as the abundance of summer leagues. It’s grown from three or four to over 30 different leagues, resulting in a decrease in the talent pool. The decrease in pitching talent has been noticeable for Brown, who won a championship almost 10 years ago with the Sanford Mainers.

“There wasn’t a guy on my staff not throwing below 90 (miles per hour)”, Brown said. “That was because the college season wasn’t so long, so teams were sending out their best guys. You’re not getting all the best guys now, you’re getting redshirt freshmen who haven’t pitched much. Guys like Rayne Supple, (Christian) Isbell, and (Fitzpatrick) Stadler who need to develop after not logging many hours.”

Brown’s own pitchers at SUNY-Cortland have been in high demand. He received 10-plus phone calls and texts in the last week asking for pitchers on his staff, including inquiries from leagues such as the Valley League and Hamptons League. The same problem many NECBL teams face are abundant across the country, including in the Cape — the most well-known and established summer league in the country. Last summer, a few teams on the Cape in the playoff hunt had to resort to using pitchers in their starting batting order.

Facing this problem, Brown has managed his pitchers cautiously to ensure he’ll have enough pitchers down the stretch. If you look at how many innings his pitchers have thrown this summer, the highest is 29-plus and the lowest is 12-plus. He hasn’t leaned on one pitcher heavily and has been well aware of pitch counts and ensuring that nobody gets shut down early. Working with assistant coaches Keith Andrews and Austin Clock, Brown uses an Excel spreadsheet to map out his pitching moving forward, looking to match pitchers up with teams they haven’t faced yet to give them a slight edge. He cited the midway point of the season as when strategy truly comes into play, looking to find the little ways to gain an advantage.

And it’s worked, as Vermont entered Monday’s action with a pitching staff that leads the league in strikeout-to-walk ratio and FIP, or fielder-independent pitching, both categories that are darlings of the sabermetric crowd. With plenty of experience managing, Brown has been able to counter the pitching problems many teams have faced.

Division rival Keene saw staff ace Tommy Doyle, who started the NECBL All-Star Game, shut down for the rest of the season. They lost Doyle, who piled up 33 innings over five starts, and have since gone 1-4 and are currently in position to miss out on a playoff spot. A similar story has played out throughout the league, which is why Brown believes that anybody with rested arms will be able to win. Brown has worked to ensure he has rested pitching, using a different approach than a traditional rotation.

“A guy gets a start, then five days later he goes to the bullpen,” Brown said. “We made a commitment for guys to get starts and we’re honoring that, but not overworking anyone. That’s allowed kids like Joe Rocchietti and Jonathan Stiever to be healthy and strong now, otherwise they’d be going home two weeks ago.”

Brown’s Mountaineers are entering a pivotal stretch during the final week of the regular season as they cling to the fourth-and-final playoff berth in the Northern Division. Supported by pitching depth that many other teams lack, Vermont is in a position to make a run in the postseason. Following a final day off Wednesday, the Mountaineers are poised to make a final push in hopes of defending their 2015 title.

At the same time, other teams without much pitching continue to plummet.