2024 Season

Mavericks Season Review

2024 saw the Mavericks have a number of changes in personnel from the season before. Ben Stobart returned as manager with Kiwi Helps and Will Frawley alongside, and with the club dropping from 3 teams to 2, it meant a much larger squad than in previous seasons. The season itself had vastly contrasting weather from week to week, but further development of the new facility at Kings College which included the construction of 2 new batting cages, helped tremendously with pre-game preparation.

Overall a competitive season, as the team ended with a 13-15 record. However what that doesn’t show is that the team went into the final weekend of the season still with a shot at the play-offs, and needing to sweep the league leaders, Bristol. However a loss in game 1, ended those hopes. It was an especially tough end to the season, as only the week before the Mavericks had been in pole position to claim the play-off spot. However a Bristol forfeit at Bournemouth, allowed the latter back into the race. But this shouldn’t be used as an excuse. The squad lost out, as it let go of the tiebreaker, due to a forfeit earlier the in the season. With a much larger squad than in 2023, forfeiting games should never have come into play. For various reasons, the Mavericks struggled with numbers across the season, but the 12 players that were committed must be commended for taking the season down to the wire, and Ben did a sterling job, managing these sparse resources. Much of this success was on the shoulders of the 4 main pitchers (Oliver, Jack, Hamish and Kimi), all of whom were under 21, which although not good with the new rules (which doesn’t encourage a reliance on junior pitchers), is good with regards the longer term development credentials of the club.

The season had started with a series of splits in the opening DH’s of the season, with 5 of the first 7 being split, and only a sweep of Oxford and the forfeit in a game at Bristol not following this pattern. This was the pattern for much of the season, with 4 teams who were not vastly different in abilities. Often the availability of certain players were the difference makers on a particular weekend, and also the travel which is part and parcel of higher division baseball in the UK, also had some impact. But it should also be noted that having DH’s and the pitching rules does lead to a lot of parity, as it can be hard to dominate DH’s without 4 competent pitchers every week.

As the season progressed, there were notable performances from within the Mavericks squad. Eventual MVP Rolyn Perez was Mr Dependable both with the bat and on the infield, closely followed by Will Frawley. He was also able to contribute mop up duties on the mound, as the season wore on. The teams most improved player, Oliver Perez (yes, related), made outstanding progress for someone who had only started the game 18 months previously. He covered acres of ground in CF, and was an ideal lead off bat, hitting for average and with speed on the bases. Behind the dish, Kiwi also drove in the most runs, whilst Ben Stobart and Jack Burdett, lead the team in OBP and OPS respectively. On the defensive side of the ball, pitching was a strength, if somewhat handicapped by pitch limits, with at least 25 K’s for the 4 starting rotation and a K:BB >1, with Oliver having a high of 68 (1.5 per inning pitched).

So despite missing the play-offs, there is plenty of optimism for 2025, but we shouldn’t finish the season’s recap, without giving thanks to those Millers who played up for the occasional game to make up for the lack of numbers on more occasions that should have been the case.

Millers Season Review

The Millers will remember 2024 as the season they broke through and made the play-offs, which was a first for just about every member of the squad. A strong regular season, saw the Millers finish just behind eventual Single-A champions Bracknell, and edge past both Croydon and Cambridge in the play-offs, before bowing out in the quarter finals to the nemesis from Bracknell.

Not only did the season see a large number of debuts from new players coming into the squad and juniors moving up, the the way the squad gelled under Chris Locke’s management and the coaching of Ben Burgess and Pascal Baras, meant the spirit and atmosphere at all games, went a lot way to contributing to the success the team had. As with the Mavericks, the Millers also had an inflated squad compered to the previous year, often taking 20+ players to games. In fact at times it because a challenge to get all players playing time, and Chris must be commended on the way he managed all of this.

Pitching, which at this level is always the key to success, was split mostly between Jordi, Ben, Mo and Reuben, and frequently gave the team a big advantage over the opposition in games, despite their lack of years and experience.