V’cats schedule revealed

Frontier League baseball team will play all 15 league opponents next season

The Tri-city Valleycats will get to play the entire Frontier League in 2022.

After travel was restricted by COVID -19 in their independent-league debut last year, the Valleycats will face all of the other 15 teams under next year’s schedule released Monday afternoon.

Tri-city will open its 96-game schedule against three opponents it never faced last season. The Valleycats will travel to the Florence (Ky.) Y’alls May 12-14 and return to Joseph L. Bruno Stadium for a six-game homestand against the Lake Erie Crushers May 17-19 and the Windy City Thunderbolts May 20-22.

“Overall, I think it’s a decent schedule,” Valleycats general manager Matt Callahan said. “It’s definitely nice that we’re going to have a little more variety in who we play and where we go this year, so I think that will be good for us. That will be good for the players on the field, good for the fans to see some new teams come through as well. I think anytime you have a footprint like our league, you’re going to have some challenging travel, but I think overall, the league did a pretty good job managing the trips.”

Last season, the Valleycats played only five other opponents because of the pandemic. They faced the Sussex County Miners 31 times, which could have led to some bad blood between the teams, who had repeated run-ins on the field.

This season, the Valleycats are playing Sussex County just nine times, including six games at Bruno Stadium.

“I think having gone through a season in the midst of the pandemic and having a better understanding for the way things went and some of the protocols that can be effective, yeah, they decided to open up the schedule to make sure everybody was playing each other and I think that’s beneficial to the overall health of the league,” Callahan said.

Led by manager Pete Incaviglia, the Valleycats are scheduled to play 53 home games, including 12 against the Frontier Greys, a travel team that for next season is replacing the Southern Illinois Miners, whose owners retired from baseball after last season. Tricity wraps up the regular season against the Greys from Sept. 2-4 in Troy.

The Frontier League will be separated into two eight-team conferences next season, the Can-am and the Midwestern, as opposed to the four divisions of last season. The Valleycats will belong to the Can-am. Three teams from each conference will qualify for the playoffs.

The Frontier League will have an All-star Game next season after abandoning the concept last year. It will be held July 20 at a site to be announced.