Parity in NECBL surprises

Managers exchange lineup cards before Vermont hosted Winnipesaukee. The Northern Division standings remain
incredibly close entering the All-Star Break.

This article originally appeared in the Wednesday, July 13th edition of the Times Argus. All numbers are as of Tuesday morning.

It’s the year of parity in the NECBL, when almost no one has managed to break away from the pack. Every team in the league entered Tuesday’s action with a record of .400 or better and the 13 teams are separated by a grand total of six games in the standings.

This sort of parity hasn’t been seen in years. Entering Tuesday in the Northern Division, three teams were within one game of first place with Winnipesaukee leading the division. North Adams trails by a half-game and Keene and Sanford are tied at one behind.

Over the past five years, dominant teams have run rampant.

Since 2011, the average distance between the first place team and the last place team in a division has been just over 15 games. Last year, it was the likes of Keene and Danbury, who both went 13-29 and finished 12.5 and 14 games out, respectively.

The Upper Valley Nighthawks find themselves in the basement right now during their inaugural season. Still, the Nighthawks, who have gone 3-7 in their last 10 games, remain just a half game back of the Mountaineers with a 10-15 record.

The clumping of teams is something Vermont Mountaineers general manager Brian Gallagher has been surprised with.

“Any team on any given night can beat anybody else,” he said. “It seems like all teams are struggling at certain times and then peaking, so nobody is running away with it. Everybody has similar records, and at some point something has to give.”

For Gallagher’s Mountaineers, it’s a welcome sight. After a shaky start that featured a seven-game losing streak, the closeness in the division standings have allowed his team to climb within striking distance. They sit just 3.5 games out of first, having used an impressive record at home to climb out of an early hole.

“It’s kept everybody in the playoff hunt, which is good,” Gallagher said of the closeness. “If you have four teams just running away with it, guys on the bottom teams that have no shot start to get tired or want to go home. It’s been great for us because the team is pulling together and (the players) have great chemistry now.”

Vermont has heated up and has one of the better chances at a top seed in the division, a remarkable feat considering Vermont’s poor start. The Mountaineers have the best ERA in the division thanks to a deep and balanced pitching staff. Timely hitting and an improved team defense have them in a good spot to vault into playoff position entering the All-Star break.

“I don’t know if I was necessarily positive,” Mountaineers manager Joe Brown said of the slow start. “They kept positive. These are good players and they had to get rolling. They hadn’t played in two or three weeks, some of them, and now they’re playing regularly so we’re finding a rhythm.”

Other teams have slowed as of late. Keene, which jumped out to an early lead in the division with an impressive 7-1 start, has dropped six of its last seven. The Swamp Bats have a negative-25 run differential, a troubling trend for a team that sits at just one game over .500. Valley, which seemed poised to pull away from the pack midway through June, has also plummeted, dropping five straight to fall below .500. North Adams, with a division-leading plus-22 run differential, has dropped six of 10.

The Mountaineers aren’t the only team trending upwards, though.

Sanford pieced together a five-game winning streak, while Winnipesaukee has been one of the hottest teams in the league. Winners of three straight, the Muskrats took sole possession of first place Monday night with a win over the Swamp Bats.

Still, there’s hardly a clear favorite. It’s been a constant shifting landscape in the North, and the same can be said about the South. When the season ends in just over two weeks, the NECBL could very well finish with some of its tightest standings ever.

The playoff setup — a trio of best-of-three series over the span of nine days — with this closeness in the standings will make it hard to simply predict the top seed to win it all.