Low Three Quarter Media

By Josh Bookbinder

Thieves have run among us in baseball for a long time. Their names stick in our minds, contrasting the puff of dust they leave behind as they take off in pursuit of yet another stolen base. Rickey Henderson. Lou Brock. Vince Coleman. Tim Raines. Honus Wagner. Billy Hamilton.

Something that happened in D2 baseball in 2023 might be just as fun as anything any of those guys ever did.

It’s time to introduce our two main characters. Braylin Marine, a redshirt senior from Freeport, New York, and Donovan Ford, a sophomore from Greenville, South Carolina, were teammates on the Newberry 2023 squad. Marine started all 58 games at shortstop for the Wolves, and Ford all 58 in the outfield.

Together, they stole 89 bases. That puts them in 57th place on the stolen base leaderboard in D2 this year.

Oops, my mistake. I meant 57th place on the team stolen base leaderboard.

Let that sink in: there are 249 D2 teams. Two players stole more bases than 192 of them.

D2, D3, and NAIA ball are a little bit of a different world than D1. Old-school baseball is still king in most places, staving off the ever-growing tide of new-age analytics. Base-stealing and baserunning are arts that are prized in these spaces, as any kind of run creation is valued heavily. It doesn’t have to look pretty, as long as it gets the job done.

There were other D2 duos who put up some absurd numbers on the bases. Spring Hill’s Gage Ragona and Ethan Valdez combined for 76 SB. Austin Beck and Thomas Cain from Angelo State swiped 80. Christian Jayne and Carlos Amezquita stole 86, and also did damage at the plate (particularly Jayne) for UNC Pembroke.

However, none did what Ford and Marine were able to. The raw stolen base number is one thing: 89 is unmatched this year. But a couple of other numbers tell even more of the story. The Newberry combo were able to put up a combined .486 OBP; this means that every time one of them stepped up to the plate, there was almost a 50% chance that an elite base-stealer got on base. They also slugged .562 and .576, which means they were threats in the box to do damage as well. And both (both!) hit over .400 average-wise: .405 and .406. (Absurdly, halfway through the season, Ford was hitting .495. A second-half “slump” brought him back down to the more human number.)

So, to be clear, the best base-stealing duo in D2 baseball also had an argument to be some of the best hitters in D2 baseball: a combined .405/.486/.569/1.055 slash line. That’ll work.

This time next year, the Wolves will look different. It’s no surprise to constantly see Newberry as a team up at the top of stolen base lists, but they’ll be without Marine. 2023 was his 5th year, and he exhausted his NCAA eligibility. Amazingly, 30 teams passed on Marine in the MLB draft this past summer despite his historic season: DII player of the year, All-American (for the second time), national award after national award. He played in the MLB Draft League this fall, and he’ll be playing in the Pioneer League next season as he looks to catch the attention of affiliated teams.

For Ford, after picking up All-American honors for his performance this past spring, he’ll be back anchoring the Newberry lineup in 2024. Only a junior, he’s got at least two more years of baseball ahead of him. The Wolves are lucky to have someone who fits their style of play so well locked into their lineup, a force to be reckoned with.

The story of these two shows how fleeting baseball really is. For one season, these two did something amazing, and then as quickly as it happened, it’s gone. Newberry won the conference tournament for the first time since the turn of the millennium, and added a conference championship; those rings and trophies will stick around a while. How they got to those fingers and mantles might not be remembered quite so clearly.

Regardless, dynamic duos like Marine and Ford are fun to watch. And while most of us may not have been able to catch too many Newberry College DII baseball games thanks to a paywalled streaming service and a less-than-convenient location in the middle of South Carolina, we can still do some justice by catching Ford moving forward, and appreciating what Marine did.

There’s fun baseball everywhere, even if sometimes, it’s hiding.