Tri-city set for earliest opener
Frontier League team will play home opener in May for first time
The Tri-city Valleycats will play the earliest home opener in franchise history when the Frontier League baseball team meets the Lake Erie Crushers at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium.
The Valleycats (2-1), who took two out of three at the Florence (Ky.) Y’alls to open the season, will take the field in May at “The Joe” for the first time in the franchise’s 20 seasons.
For the first 18 years, Tricity opened in mid-june as the short-season Class A affiliate of the Houston Astros right after the Major League Baseball draft. Last season, their first as an independent-league team, the Valleycats made their home debut on June 4.
“Obviously, one of the things we’re going to have to educate the market on is we’re starting earlier,” Valleycats president Rick Murphy said at the start of spring training. “We’re starting in May, and for 19 years, our fan base was used to making decisions about games in the middle of June. This is a full month before that. So it’s changing their buying habits, getting them to understand that the season’s longer. There’s 53 home games this year.”
There were 38 home games when the Valleycats were in the affiliated New York-penn League.
The Valleycats won’t have any of the home capacity restrictions that were in place at the start of last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tri-city was allowed a maximum of 2,500 fans for the 2021 home opener — which it filled — due to state guidelines and Bruno Stadium wasn’t available at its 4,500-seat full capacity until July 4.
“Last year we had the restrictions with COVID, not sure whether we could be open for fans, if we were, what percentage,” Murphy said. “I’m hopeful as we get into this year that things will revert back to a more normal environment that we were familiar with in 2019.”
The Valleycats averaged 2,393 fans per game in their first year in the Frontier League. While that ranked second in the league, it fell well below the 4,000 fans per game the Valleycats usually averaged
as an Astros affiliate.
Murphy said at the end of last season the Valleycats would need to average 3,000 fans per game to survive, a figure he said still holds true.
“I’m hopeful that by the end of this year, we’ll average north of 3,000 fans,” he said. “I would think it’s going to take a little bit of time for us to get to that as the season unfolds, the weather gets better and we’re into more traditional months that our fan base is used to. I think as the season goes on, we’ll pick up momentum and at the end of the year, I’m confident we’ll be north of 3,000 on average.”
Valleycats fans will have a year of familiarity with the independentleague
Valleycats, who are in their second year under manager Pete Incaviglia.
“Learning experience,” Valleycats chairman
Doug Gladstone said of last season. “I would expect everything would be better this year, especially pandemic-wise. But I think hopefully fans have heard or seen themselves that this is quality baseball and quality leadership and it’s the same organization running the business, so the experience and fun of being at The Joe is consistent. I hope people are coming out and wanting to have that experience because we’re still doing it.”
One attendance boost could come from the arrival of former Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker, the New York Mets’ unsigned first-round pick a year ago, who came to terms with the Valleycats last week. Though his formal signing hasn’t been announced, he could be ready to make his first start in Troy in early June.
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