What to know as North American Baseball Alliance season gets started
The North American Baseball Alliance begins its season Saturday, bringing summer collegiate baseball back to the region.
The Butler BlueSox are no longer part of the league, taking at least a yearlong hiatus as Michelle Krill Field at Historic Pullman Park is scheduled for renovation. NABA commissioner Shawn Manning and the eight-team grouping are forging ahead.
“It’s a highly competitive league that, being played at Pullman, it gives our community the opportunity to go see these guys play,” Manning said. “And a lot of these guys are from local high schools, local colleges (or) that played in the Little Leagues here.”
Before pitchers take the mound and hitters dig into the batter’s box, here are some things fans should know.
Less is more for the league, which has two fewer teams this season, but has consolidated with more well-rounded competition in mind.
“We don’t like to have teams not be able to compete, but, on the flip side of that, it filtered out,” Manning said. “A lot of those guys are still in our league with other teams. … When you get to his level, pitching is always a tricky issue, so if we can fill that with eight teams instead of 10, that makes the pitching staffs a little better from top to bottom.”
The Rust Belt Division consists of the newly-formed Allegheny A’s, Cumming Motors (Altoona), Kiski Valley Vikings and 3B Barons (New Castle). The Tri-State Division is made up of the defending NABA champion Butler Iron Bucks, Creekside Crocodiles (Youngstown), Pittsburgh Redbirds and Trafford Crazy Trains.
The Iron Bucks, Redbirds and Crazy Trains will play their home games at Pullman. The 3B Barons also have four home games scheduled there.
Each team will play 28 games of an unbalanced home-and-away schedule, due to obstacles such as field usage. Every team reaches the league’s playoffs, which are a single-elimination format that concludes with a title matchup at Pullman.
There is no admission fee for fans.
“The community can go and it provides an atmosphere for these guys that they might not be able to reach otherwise, not saying that their talent can’t do that,” Manning said. “But growing up, I played summer college baseball and we didn’t have an atmosphere like this, where kids can come and kind of just hang out by the fence, talk to these guys.”
The NABA will field its share of talented ballplayers.
“We have guys from Division I, Division II, Division III, JUCOs, across the board, and the talent in our region is worth watching,” Manning said. “We have hitters, pitchers, defensive players, and the cool thing that I like to see outside of the growth of the league, things like that, (is) we have guys that have signed contracts in other leagues this year.
“So they played in our league for two years — probably their freshman and sophomore year in college — and now they’re playing in the New York Collegiate (Baseball) League or the Prospect League.”
Rosters are somewhat fluid at the outset of the campaign, but the league eventually caps playoff rosters at a range of 25-28 players.
“Some pitchers have pitch limits, so we might have more guys at the beginning of the year than we do at the end,” Manning said. “Just kind of front-load that and they reach their pitch limit so now they’re done — or their innings limit. We have guys who they might only be able to play a certain number of games before they have to go back to school or summer classes.
“The goal is for these guys to get as many reps as they can or they want.”
