From the Daily Freeman newspaper, Friday, August 8, 2025.
Members of the Saugerties Stallions baseball team lift the championship trophy after beating Batavia 10-6 in 17 innings on Sunday, August 3, 2025, to capture the Pefect Game Collegiate Baseball League championship at Batavia, New York.
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By Rick Remsnyder | rremsnyder@freemanonline.com
UPDATED: August 7, 2025 at 3:31 PM EDT
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BATAVIA, N.Y. — The Saugerties Stallions won their second Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League (PGCBL) title in franchise history by completing a 2-0 sweep of the best-of-three series over the Batavia Muckdogs on Sunday, August 3.
The Stallions opened the series with a 9-2 victory on Saturday, August 2, at Cantine Field in Saugerties.
Georgia State pitcher Virgil Heath nearly went the distance in the opener at Cantine Field, allowing just two runs in 8 1/3 innings.
The championship-clinching 10-6 win over Batavia was a six-hour, 17-inning marathon that was the longest title game in PGCBL history,
Trailing 5-3 in the eighth inning, the Stallions got a two-run single from Seton Hall University’s Casey Cumiskey to tie the game at 5-5.
From there, neither team could score again until the Stallions’ scored five runs in the top of the 17th inning on the way to the 10-6 win.
Mason Weaver (Wofford) entered the game in the 12th inning for the Stallions and kept Batavia in check with four shutout innings. Then in the 16th inning, Saugerties native Matthew Murtaugh (North Carolina A&T) took the mound and closed the door.
The Stallions’ five-run inning began when Cumiskey doubled and then scored on an RBI single by Brandon Fish (UMass Lowell) to give Saugerties a 6-5 lead.
A throwing error and RBI single by first baseman Dylan Passo (Notre Dame) pushed the lead to 10-5.
Murtaugh returned to the mound for the bottom of the 17th inning and worked around a few baserunners, allowing one run before getting the final out on a fly ball to right field.
The Stallions advanced to the championship series by beating three-time defending PGCBL titlist Amsterdam in the East Division finals.
The Stallions’ other PGCBL championship came in 2021.
The PGCBL is a 16-team collegiate summer baseball league founded in 2010. All teams are within the state of New York except one in the province of Ontario, Canada.
All players in the league must have NCAA eligibility remaining in order to participate. Each team plays an eight-week, 48-game schedule from June to August with the playoffs in early August.
Following the end of the playoffs, Stallions skipper Collin Martin was named the 2025 PGCBL Coach of the Year.
Martin is the second Stallions’ coach to win the award. Rich Dubee became the first member of the franchise to win the PGCBL Coach of the Year Award after guiding the Stallions to the 2021 championship.
Under Martin’s leadership, the Stallions compiled a 28-13-1 record in the regular season, clinching the No. 2 seed in the East Division playoffs. After defeating No. 3 seed Utica in the first round, the Stallions knocked off No. 1 seed Amsterdam for the East Division title and then upended West Division winner and No. 1 seed Batavia in the championship series.
Along the way, the Stallions batted .287 as a team and led the league with 286 runs batted in.
Saugerties was second in the league in runs scored (329), and third in extra-base hits (99), total bases (543) and slugging percentage (.386).
Saugerties used speed as a weapon under Martin, leading the league in stolen bases with 154. The 154 steals came on 174 attempts, a conversion rate of 88.5 percent.
During the year, Martin lives in Babson Park, Florida, and is the head baseball coach for Webber International University. With the Warriors, Martin has a 216-103 (.677 winning percentage) and led the team to Avista NAIA Baseball World Series appearances in 2022 and 2025.