By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

David Brauer looked at his first season as the Prospect League’s commissioner as “Year 0.”

“Maybe it’s cliche,” Brauer said. “But your runway is short in the lead-up to the season. You’re trying to evaluate, trying to look at what you can implement quickly, and still have everything moving forward.”

That’s why this year in the college summer league will be the first step in what Brauer plans to be the continued progression of the league.

The league now has 18 teams in seven states with the addition of the Dubois County Bombers of Huntingburg, Ind., and the Full Count Rhythm of Hendersonville, Tenn. The 56-game schedule begins on May 28 and runs through July 31, with the postseason set for August 1-8.

There were 17 teams in the Prospect League, which meant there was at least one team with an off-day every day.

“We’re back to 18, which is good for scheduling,” Brauer said. “It makes sense. Certainly much easier. You don’t have that team that has the rotating off day. It works well for football, but for baseball it’s a little awkward.”

The 56-game season is down four games from last season, but Brauer said it’s a good number.

“That aligns with the college season,” he said. “It’s a good number. You want to be in that middle.”

Brauer noted how the Coastal Plains League plays a 48-game schedule, while the Northwoods League is at 70.

“I don’t think you want to go to either extreme, you want to be more in the middle,” Brauer said.

Brauer noted that in conversations with college coaches, the idea of a shorter season was one that appealed to them.

“They are most adamant about the calendar,” he said. “The game schedule is important, considering how condensed it is. We’re playing 56 (games) in probably 65 days. That was really the focal point for the college coaches, like, ‘Hey, let my kids get back on campus, or give them a little time to decompress.’ You’ve got to remember that these kids are 18 to 21 years old, so give them a little time to relax.”

Brauer pointed out how the league’s season starts within days after the end of the college season.

“When you come to our league, without much of a break, you’re really at game 56, game 57,” he said. “I don’t think people realize that. They think you walk into this league and it’s a whole new season, but it’s really not. It’s really just a continuation.”

The league set an attendance record with 575,294 fans last season. Ten teams in the league had increased average attendance, including the Burlington Bees, who drew an average of 1,026 fans last season, up from 1,011 in 2022 and 896 in 2021.

“To me, the biggest thing was our attendance record,” Brauer said. “There was tremendous support around the league. We were above 500,000 for the first time. You could easily point to it and say, ‘Well, you had two new teams,’ and doing the math like that. But realistically, the average attendance was up more than 200 fans in each ballpark, on average. That’s really encouraging.”

Brauer wants to build on that with increased marketing within the league.

“Now, it’s how can we tap into that and really engage the fans more, build the brand more, get the visibility out there,” he said. “I think social media engagement is what we want to focus on more this year, get our teams visible, not only in their market, but league-wide and nationally, so people know who the Prospect League is. I think there are a lot of great selling points.”

There are challenges in a league that has such a wide footprint.

“There are some holes out east,” Brauer said, noting travel for some teams is the biggest challenge. “How we fill that in in the future is something under consideration, something our directors talk about frequently. You want to make sure that you have the right markets, the ones that can be successful.”

Brauer knows the lure of the league to players is to get into markets that have been part of professional baseball in the past.

“I think, top to bottom, we’re a good league,” he said. “This league, I think you can get that game-day experience you can’t get at other places.

“We’re a college baseball league, but we’re wrapped up in minor-league packaging. You’ve got the Bees and the Clinton LumberKings with minor league backgrounds. You’ve got cities that were in independent leagues, cities with professional baseball histories. The more we can showcase the fan experience and the ballparks and what you see in the league talent-wise, then the reputation grows. It’s not an overnight fix, but it’s something you can keep stacking over the years.”

Photo: The Burlington Bees celebrate Caleb Wulf’s walk-off hit in a game last July. (Steve Cirinna/Burlington Bees)

By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

Tanner Holland, who played for the Burlington Bees last season, announced on social media on Thursday that he was committing to play baseball at Rice.

Holland batted .255 with a .729 OPS in 38 games with the Bees. He had three home runs and 19 runs batted in, and had 11 stolen bases in 12 attempts.

Rice is coached by Jose Cruz Jr., who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball.

Holland, who plays at Central Arizona College, joins Kooper Schulte and Caleb Wulf as NCAA Division I signees/commitments off last season’s team. Schulte and Wulf signed with Iowa during the fall signing period. Mason Schwalbach will play for Kansas State in the upcoming season.

Photo: Tanner Holland watches a home run during a game last season with the Burlington Bees. (Steve Cirinna/Burlington Bees)

By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

Burlington Bees second baseman Caleb Wulf was named to the Prospect League’s Western Conference all-star team on Thursday.

Wulf was the only Bee named to the 16-player team.

Wulf, who plays at Southeastern Community College, hit .367 in 36 games. Wulf had 51 hits and scored 22 runs. He drove in 19 runs, finishing with a .404 on-base percentage and a .396 slugging percentage.

The Cape Catfish led the team with five selections — shortstop Justin Carinci, outfielders Chris Hall and Brody Christian, and starting pitchers Jorge Romero and Noah Gadberry.

The Western Conference team included Illinois Valley reliever Sebastian Gonzalez, who was named the league’s pitcher of the year and pro prospect of the year.

Photo: Bees second baseman Caleb Wulf was named a Western Conference All-Star on Thursday. (Steve Cirinna/Burlington Bees)

By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

I had a college baseball coach tell me that he always recommended to his best players that they play a season in a summer league.

The chance to play, he said, was invaluable, even in leagues where the competition wasn’t so good. More at-bats and more innings makes for a better player.

But there was a bigger reason to play, he told me. It’s a chance to get a simulation of what it will be like if a player becomes a professional.

It’s long bus rides, it’s building a bond in a clubhouse with a team of players you’ve never met before. It’s playing in quirky ballparks, being embraced by a community, learning to manage your time in a schedule that’s all about baseball.

It’s about memories.

I thought about that this year in watching the Burlington Bees in the Prospect League.

The Bees played 57 games this season, each one having its own story. And so many of the games had stories inside the story.

The Bees endured rain, heat, nights in the smoky haze that covered the Midwest. They pulled tarp, their bus broke down somewhere on an Ohio highway during a seven-games-in-six-days-in-four-states odyssey.

What was fascinating was the clubhouse dynamic never changed throughout the season even when the roster did. The common theme of the newcomers was, “There’s a great group of guys here.”

It was something pitching coach Jack Gray predicted at the Bees’ winter banquet in February.

A good chunk of the roster had already been signed, the last couple of months before the season would be about filling the final spots.

Gray, though, said the signed players already had a group text message going. “I don’t know how good we’re going to be, but these guys really like each other,” Gray said.

It showed during the season.

Go back to the loud cheer from the dugout on Connor Laeng’s single in the second inning of the June 25 game against O’Fallon. It was Laeng’s first hit of the season, on his 36th at-bat.

A few weeks later, Laeng went 3-for-5 in a win at Normal, capping a three-game run of six hits in 11 at-bats.

There was the behind-the-scenes recruitment of outfielder Corey Boyette by pitchers Drew Martin and Jake Jakubowski when the Bees had some roster holes because of injuries. Boyette, Martin and Jakubowski were teammates at Heartland Community College, and the two pitchers convinced Boyette to come to Burlington.

All Boyette did was hit .286 and post a .950 OPS.

It was that kind of chemistry that kept the Bees in the playoff chase until the final week, and kept them in most games.

There were plenty of standout performances. Mason Schwalbach hit .335 and had a league-high 21 doubles. Keanu Spenser hit .304 with 14 doubles and 10 home runs. Caleb Wulf hit .367 in 36 games. Kooper Schulte was batting .373 before a broken hand ended his season.

It was a season in which the Bees had their first player in their three seasons in the Prospect League selected in the Major League Baseball draft, when Spencer Nivens, who played with the team last season, was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the fifth round.

Three Bees — Schwalbach (Kansas State), Lincoln Riley (Arkansas) and Coy Sarsfield (Iowa) — will be on the rosters of Power-5 conference teams in the upcoming college baseball season.

The game of the year was the 10-9 win over Alton, when the Bees rallied from an 8-0 deficit to win in 10 innings on July 28.

It was the hottest night of the season — a heat index of 108 degrees at game-time — and in the moments after the win the smothering humidity of the night was mixed with the fog of the comeback, a feeling of that-was-cool-but-what-the-hell-just-happened.

Outside the Bees’ clubhouse, relief pitcher Preston Kaufman was on the phone with his mom, telling her about the game, when a man walked by and said to Kaufman, “Hell of a game.”

Kaufman stopped his conversation, and shook the man’s hand.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

Kaufman was one of those stories-within-the-story. He had allowed just one run in four innings of relief in the game, keeping the River Dragons in check to help set up the rally.

I interviewed Kaufman when he got off the phone, and when we were done talking I said, “Hell of a game.”

Kaufman just smiled.

“I won’t forget it,” he said. “Ever.”

Photo: Caleb Wulf (middle) is mobbed by teammates after his game-winning hit against Quincy on July 17. (Steve Cirinna/Burlington Bees)