Time to check in on baseball's worst tradition, the rainout. If you need a refresh on what constitutes a rainout, here is my previous summary. Last time I broadened the rainout list to cover both Middle (or Low, to those who think of Short Season as not really Class A) A leagues. This time I am covering all seven Class A Leagues: the High A California, Carolina, and Florida State Leagues; the Middle A Midwest and South Atlantic Leagues; and the Low/Short Season A New York-Penn and Northwest Leagues.
High A
1. (Port) Charlotte 7
T2. Lynchburg 6
T2. Potomac 6
T2. Salem 6
T5. Carolina 5
T5. Tampa 5
T5. Wilmington 5
T8. Bradenton 4
T8. Brevard County 4
T8. Fort Myers 4
T8. Lakeland 4
T8. Myrtle Beach 4
T8. St. Lucie 4
T14. Daytona 3
T14. Frederick 3
T14. San Jose 3
T17. Bakersfield 2
T17. Clearwater 2
T17. Palm Beach 2
T17. Winston-Salem 2
T21. Jupiter 1
T21. Lancaster 1
T21. Stockton 1
T24. Dunedin 0
T24. High Desert 0
T24. Inland Empire 0
T24. Lake Elsinore 0
T24. Modesto 0
T24. Rancho Cucamonga 0
T24. Visalia 0
Middle A
1. Beloit 7
2. Lexington 6
T3. Bowling Green 5
T3. Clinton 5
T3. Delmarva 5
T3. Kannapolis 5
T3. West Virginia 5
T8. Greensboro 4
T8. Hagerstown 4
T8. Lakewood 4
T11. Asheville 3
T11. Augusta 3
T11. Charleston 3
T11. Dayton 3
T11. Quad Cities 3
T11. West Michigan 3
T17. Burlington 2
T17. Cedar Rapids 2
T17. Fort Wayne 2
T17. Greenville 2
T17. Hickory 2
T17. Lansing 2
T17. Rome 2
T17. Wisconsin 2
T25. Columbia 1
T25. Great Lakes 1
T25. Kane County 1
T25. Lake County 1
T25. Peoria 1
T25. South Bend 1
Low (or Short Season) A
1. Aberdeen 3
T2. Hudson Valley 2
T2. Tri-City (NY) 2
T4. Batavia 1
T4. Boise 1
T4, Brooklyn 1
T4. Everett 1
T4. Mahoning Valley 1
T4. Salem-Keizer 1
T4. Staten Island 1
T4. Vermont 1
T4. West Virginia 1
T4. Williamsport 1
T14. Auburn 0
T14. Connecticut 0
T14. Eugene 0
T14. Hillsboro 0
T14. Lowell 0
T14. Spokane 0
T14. State College 0
T14. Tri-City (WA) 0
T14. Vancouver 0
As far as the High A leagues, not surprisingly the California League has very few rainouts. San Jose leads the league with three rainouts, all on the first week of the season. California is generally a good place to be in the summer. The only recent cancellation in that league was by Lancaster, not because of too much rain but too little leading to the Sand Fire. I thought the Florida State League would have more, but it is played in Spring Training stadiums with good staff who can recover a field from the routine Florida thunderstorms. Only Charlotte (the city is Port Charlotte, like Port St. Lucie they shorten it to the county name) has had serious issues dealing with the weather in the FSL. Roger Dean Stadium, which houses both the Jupiter Hammerheads and Palm Beach Cardinals, has had only three rainouts despite having a game nearly every day of the season. And Dunedin has had none! Kudos to whoever works the stadium down there at beating the Florida weather for a remarkable job at getting baseball played.
The Low A (the real Low A, not what the SAL is colloquially called) leagues have very few rainouts because of its official designation: Short Season A. The NYPL and Northwest League have only been operating this season for six weeks so far. But congrats to Aberdeen for somehow getting three rainouts already in that time period. Given that the Ironbirds sell well, you would think they would put more effort into getting the games played.
For the Middle A leagues, poorly attended Beloit leads with 7 rainouts. Even though the attendance is per game played, I think it's quite possible that in some manner what is driving the high rainouts there is keeping attendance low. It could either be due to poor facilities or that fans in southern Wisconsin don't want to put up with poor weather anymore. But on the whole, the Midwest League is faring a lot better than the SAL. The Midwest often has thunderstorms roll through and has heat and humidity too. But aside from a few teams, the Midwest League has not had many issues getting the games played especially since the end of spring. Meanwhile the SAL continues to rack up rainouts, albeit not quite as bad as the higher level Carolina League. Five of the 16 Midwest League teams only have one rainout while only one SAL team has fewer than two rainouts: the Fireflies!
So why are the Fireflies so much better than the rest of the league at avoiding rainouts? I had thought maybe Spirit Communications Park had better drainage as a new stadium, but I saw the rained out game on July 18 and that was clearly not the case as the field could not handle a freak pop-up storm. Those kinds of storms happen nearly every day around here, so it's really surprising they couldn't handle it. Perhaps the field could have been fixed but they were very quick to call the game, barely over 30 minutes after the start of the delay. It's possible the umpire had a lack of patience for the storm moving out or the Fireflies were more interested in getting ready for a long bus ride the next day to Hagerstown. It's good that is the only rainout so far, but even one rainout is too much and you want to get as many games in without succumbing to every passing summer thunderstorm because we will get more without a doubt.
This is my first post in over two weeks! And I'll probably not post much in the near future until I get caught up on other things right now after having gone to many of the games.
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