Frontier League - Steve Tahsler to Bret Leuthner: “You’ll see new markets next year”

Bret Leuthner, play-by-play announcer for the Sussex County Miners, was kind enough to let me know that Frontier League Deputy Commissioner, Steve Tahsler, was at Skylands Stadium on Saturday and would probably be dropping in.

He did.

Here’s a resume of what was said and, if you want to hear it in replay of the broadcast, it is available at the 1h49 mark of the June 5 game on Frontier League TV.

• It is exciting to be playing Frontier League baseball again after a long wait and the product on the field has been entertaining. There is a record number of players that have been signed to major league organizations for that time of the season.
• Steve was at the Tri-City ValleyCats home opener on Friday and they hit their capacity considering what is allowed under the COVID restrictions. He mentions how great the Tri-City organization is and has been since the beginning of this 3-year deal with the league.
• Mother Nature has been playing some tricks on the schedule so far, but it’s interesting to see that attendance has been good so far, especially the Chicago area, like Joliet and Schaumburg, with some crowds of 3000 registered. Here’s what I found on Pointstreak, below. Don’t read too much into this, as the number will get way better in the next few weeks with schools closing, people going on vacations and the summer weather settling in.

• The biggest disappointment for Steve, this year, is that the league cannot present a full traditional schedule where teams play every other teams at least once. The actual schedule was done strictly with COVID restrictions in mind, not knowing what would be open and what kind of vaccination rollout would be in effect. That was a way to protect themselves and quickly adapt.
• The Canada-US border being closed and not being able to field 16 teams changed the way the matchups were originally proposed. US teams had to keep their home dates, because they had already promotions in place and tickets sold, so certain inter-division games could not be presented and had to accommodate Équipe Québec. The benefit is that is shortens travel times for players, but they also love to play against different teams to show what they can do, so it was hard to make everything fit the original plan.
• Starting next year, Steve mentions that we’ll see different bodies, faces, jerseys and different markets coming to the Frontier League. He did not elaborate on where they could be, but the league has been vocal in the past in its wish to offer a 20-team entity.

If you want to know more on Bret Leuthner, a cool and in-depth interview can be found on the Miners’ website by following this link.