It was no vacation playing the Sanford Mainers this summer. The Mainers captured their third all-time NECBL championship and first since 2008, defeating the Danbury Westerners in a winner-take-all third title game before their home crowd at Goodall Park on August 12. Sanford went 6-2 overall and 5-0 at home during the playoff run and finished the season with 32 combined wins.
In the deciding game, Sanford snapped a 5-5 tie on catcher Brennan Staubley’s (Elon/Plainville, Conn.) RBI single in the fifth inning before exploding for a six-run seventh. Left-hander Gabriel Gifford (Southern Maine/Bradley, Maine) saved the victory for Dexter Southfield grad Andrew Middleton (Maryland/Canton, Mass.), pitching four innings of one-hit, shutout relief to finish the game and end his entire postseason run -- going 2-0 with one save and 16 strikeouts in 11 ⅔ innings -- without allowing an earned run.
Sanford was on the verge of sweeping the final series a night earlier in the Nutmeg State, but Danbury overcame a 7-2 deficit to force the deciding game after third baseman Ronan Donohue (Sacred Heart/Melrose, Mass.) and catcher Garrett McGovern (Longwood/Brookfield, Conn.) homered in the ninth inning for an 8-7, walk-off win.
Thanks in large part to a dominant pitching staff, which led the league with a 3.48 ERA during the regular season, the Mainers were the No. 2 overall seed in the NECBL after winning the North Division by 2 ½ games.
As a recap of the summer, below is a look at the best of the best from around the New England League in our annual All-NEBJ team format. Like all of our All-NEBJ rosters, the following players are New England natives and/or play their college baseball in the region.
