NEWS

NEWPORT, RI- Baseball is back! College baseball began roughly 10 days ago and MLB Spring Training started playing games this past weekend. Newport has quite a few alumni who return to Spring Training while nine (9) have been given the opportunity to make the “Big League” roster as Non-Roster Invitees. 

A non-roster invite (NRI) is an invitation for a player who is not on a club's 40-man roster to attend Major League camp in Spring Training and compete for a roster spot. Clubs can extend NRIs to their upper-level Minor Leaguers and also include NRIs in Minor League contracts given to free agents in the offseason- (MLB.com)

After playing in this past fall’s Arizona Fall League, 2015 Gull Matt Ruppenthal (Vanderbilt), 2016 Gull Stephen Scott (Vanderbilt), and 2019 Alumni Justyn-Henry Malloy (Georgia Tech) have all gotten the chance to join the Major League Spring Training Roster. 2016 Gull Devin Mann (Louisville) has also competed in the Arizona Fall League and will be with the Los Angeles Dodgers for Spring Training. 

Justyn- Henry will be joined by fellow Gulls Alumni LHP Adam Wolf (Louisville) at camp for the Detroit Tigers. Catcher Nick Raposo (Wheaton), and OF Kameron Misner (Mizzou), have also received invitations to their first MLB Spring Training. 

2018 Gull Zach Britton (Louisville) and 2010 Gull Mark Appell (Stanford) round out the group of alums who will be competing for a shot at the 40-man roster this year. Both players have previously had a taste of Spring Training with the big league team, and Appell made his MLB Debut this past season. 

Teams have only played a couple of games thus far, but a couple of Gulls already made appearances early on. Devin Mann has had three at-bats and so has Kameron Misner, while Matt Ruppenthal picked up the win against the New York Mets on Saturday, 2/25. 

MLB Opening Day is scheduled for March 30, which means there is plenty of time for these former Gulls to make an impact this spring. Stay tuned to Social Media and Newportgulls.com for continued coverage of alumni as they chase their dreams of playing in the Major Leagues. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Newport Gulls, members of the 13-team New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL), are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded as the Rhode Island Gulls in 1998 in Cranston, R.I., before moving to Newport in 2001. In addition to recruiting, fielding, and developing a team of the nation’s top collegiate baseball athletes and attracting 50,000 fans annually to Cardines Field, the predominantly volunteer organization strives to benefit the community of Newport County via summer camps, reading programs, fundraisers, scholarships, and charitable donations – totaling over $1 million since 2001. The Gulls are six-time champions of the NECBL – the winningest franchise in league history – and were ranked as the overall No. 1 summer collegiate baseball team in the country by Perfect Game USA in 2012.

For more information about the Newport Gulls, visit facebook.com/newportgulls, follow the Gulls on Twitter @NewportGulls or visit www.newportgulls.com.