A move to the New England Collegiate Baseball League has made this past offseason a quick one for the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks.
Even before the Sharks were officially announced in January as the NECBL’s first expansion franchise since 2016, president and general manager Russ Curran had been working to transition a roster from the Futures Collegiate Baseball League to his team’s new home in what Collegiate Summer Baseball Register ranked as the nation’s No. 2 circuit in its “Top Ten” report a year ago.
“It’s easier to get the bigger-name schools as an NECBL team than it was in the past,” said Curran, who has signed players from multiple Big 12, Pac-12, Big East and Atlantic Coast Conferences to his first NECBL roster. “It wasn’t that much of a struggle because I had almost everything in place waiting for the move to happen.”
Fans will see plenty of high-end talent when a new baseball era in Oak Bluffs begins June 5 against the two-time defending NECBL champion Valley Blue Sox. However, nine members of the season-opening roster are veteran Sharks who played at least one summer on the Vineyard during the team’s eight-year Futures League tenure.
