The Shark Tank in Martha’s Vineyard, MA – Logan Chambers (Tennessee) hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning to lift the #4 seed Martha’s Vineyard Sharks to a 7-6 victory over the #1 Vermont Mountaineers. The Sharks sweep the 2022 New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) Championship Series and earn their first Fay Vincent Cup as league champions in franchise history.
Sharks’ infielder Michael Snyder (Washington), who won the regular season batting title (.406), had two hits and drove in four runs in the victory.
The Sharks finished the NECBL postseason with a perfect 5-0 record. As the #4 seed and the second Wild Card team, they defeated Mystic in extra innings to reach the semifinals, and then swept the top two teams in the league, Vermont and Bristol, who had each tied the league record for most wins in a season. Vineyard averaged more than 10 runs per game over the postseason.
Hoping to force a winner-take-all Game 3, the top-seeded Mountaineers took a 6-5 lead with a run in the top of the eighth, but Chambers’s third home run of the postseason and second of this Championship Series shifted the momentum to the home team and would ultimately prove to be the difference.
The Mountaineers struck first in the third inning after a Nic Notarangelo (Endicott) RBI. The Sharks immediately responded in the bottom of the inning, scoring three times to take the lead. Snyder’s two-run single gave Vineyard a 2-1 lead. Snyder reached third on a passed ball before scoring off a Marcus Franco (Nova Southeastern) single.
Vermont hit back in the top of the fourth, adding two runs to tie things up at three. Christian Pregent (Stetson) came up with the bases loaded and walked, plating the Mountaineers’ second run of the game. Tyler Cox (Dartmouth) batted with one out, and the bases still loaded, and drove in the tying run on a sacrifice fly.
Snyder gave Martha’s Vineyard the lead back when he smacked a two-run single into the outfield to make it 5-3, but the Mountaineers didn’t bat an eye, scoring two in the fifth to tie the game again. A Matthew Venuto (Fairfield) double and Tom Ruscitti (Farleigh Dickinson) groundout made it 5-5.
The score stayed level until the eighth. Tyler Wells (New Haven) led the inning off for the Mountaineers with a walk. He advanced to second on a wild pitch, setting himself up in scoring position for Pregent, who singled to give Vermont the one-run lead with six outs needed to keep their season alive.
Martha’s Vineyard’s Jadyn Jackson (Georgia Tech) led off the bottom of the eighth with a single and Chambers crushed a two-run bomb to put the home team on top.
All-Star closer Camron Hill (Georgia Tech) got the side in order in the ninth. Hill tossed two innings to earn the victory.
Founded in 2011, the Sharks spent eight years in the Futures League before joining the NECBL in 2019. They reached the championship series in their first season in New England, falling to the Keene SwampBats.
This marks the second straight year that the NECBL has crowned a first-time champion. The Danbury Westerners won their first title last year.
The NECBL Championship trophy is named after former commissioner of Major League Baseball Fay Vincent, who served as the president of the NECBL from 1998 to 2004.
