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The Frontier League ( FL; French language: Ligue Frontière, LF) is a professional baseball league in North America composed of 18 teams – 15 in the United States and 3 in Canada. The FL is one of the eight independent baseball leagues in North America and is considered the oldest currently running independent baseball league in the world. The Frontier Cup, the oldest independent baseball trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season. The league is an official MLB Partner League since 2020, and the level of play is comparable to Minor League Baseball's Single-A level. The FL is headquartered in Sauget, Illinois.
The Frontier League was organized by several men who got together in the winter of 1992–1993 and decided to start an independent professional baseball league to serve the West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southeast Ohio areas. They believed they could bring professional baseball to areas that would never have a chance of affiliated professional baseball coming to their communities. The seed was planted and they named their project The Frontier League.
At its inception, the FL had eight teams, all in the United States. The league expanded to Canada in 1999, when the London Werewolves joined, and has since consisted of both American and Canadian teams. From 2008 to 2019, the league operated with many different franchises, peaking with 14 in the league at one time. The league added five new teams as a result of the Can-Am and Frontier Leagues merger in 2020, then increased to 16 teams by 2021, and to 18 teams due to the 2025 expansion. Pearl, Mississippi and Kinston, North Carolina were awarded an Expansion team in 2025; it acquired the baseball assets of the Mississippi Braves and the Down East Wood Ducks, which folded, and established the Mississippi Mud Monsters and the Down East Bird Dawgs that increased the total number of teams to 18.
The FL is the fifth-highest grossing professional minor sports league in the United States by revenue, after the American Hockey League (AHL), International League (IL), the Pacific Coast League (PCL) and the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball (ALPB). The league's headquarters have been in Sauget, Illinois since 2001, when the Gateway Grizzlies were formed. As of the 2024 season, the FL had players from 17 different countries.
The league's regular season is typically held from May to September, with each team playing 96 games. Following the conclusion of the regular season, 8 teams advance to the Frontier League playoffs, a three-round tournament that runs into late-September to determine the league champion. Since the league's founding in 1993, the Schaumburg Boomers have won the most combined FL titles with four, and the reigning league champions are the Québec Capitales, who defeated the Washington Wild Things in the 2024 Frontier League Championship Series.
On June 20, 2000, Brian Tollberg debuted with the San Diego Padres, becoming the first FL player to make it to the Majors. A week later, Morgan Burkhart made his debut with the Boston Red Sox.
Although the league does not have any teams located in the same city as Major League teams, it does nonetheless have teams located within the markets of Major League teams. The Chicago area has three teams (Joliet Slammers, Schaumburg Boomers and Windy City ThunderBolts), as does the New York area (New Jersey Jackals, Sussex County Miners, and New York Boulders), and St. Louis (Gateway Grizzlies), Cleveland (Lake Erie Crushers), Cincinnati (Florence Y'alls) and Pittsburgh (Washington Wild Things) each have one. The Wild Things, in particular, have been able to market themselves as a successful alternative to the Pittsburgh Pirates due to the latter franchise's long stretch of losing seasons, which lasted from the league's founding in 1993 until 2013 when the Pirates finished with a record of 94–68.
On September 24, 2020, Major League Baseball announced that it named the FL as an ''MLB Partner League''. This enables collaboration with MLB to jointly discuss marketing and promotional initiatives to grow, expand, and enhance the game and quality of baseball.
On April 22, 2021, the league announced that the Québec Capitales, the Trois-Rivières Aigles, and the Ottawa Titans would not compete in the 2021 season due to the prolonged closure of the Canada–United States border as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Titans, Aigles and Capitales later joined forces to form a new team that competed as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Can-Am Conference. Known as Équipe Québec, they began the season as a traveling team, and starting on July 30, 2021, started sharing home games between Quebec City and Trois-Rivières following a loosening in border restrictions. 10 games were played in Québec City and 11 in Trois-Rivières. They did not play in Ottawa due to COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario.
In September 2023, the league announced a new team, the New England Knockouts, who were planned to play at Campanelli Stadium in Brockton, Massachusetts, beginning with the 2024 season. This brought the total number of permanent members of the league to sixteen teams. After playing one season as the Knockouts, the team was renamed as the Brockton Rox in January 2025.
In September 2024, the league announced an expansion to Mississippi and North Carolina. A franchise was awarded to Pearl, Mississippi, called the Mississippi Mud Monsters, following the departure of the Atlanta Braves Double-A affiliate, the Mississippi Braves. The Down East Bird Dawgs, a new team in Kinston, North Carolina, will play in Grainger Stadium, which was formerly home of the Texas Rangers-affiliated Down East Wood Ducks.
Teams usually hold a spring showcase for prospects in April and participate in prospect tournaments, full games that do not feature any veterans, in late April. Full training camps begin in late April, including a preseason consisting of a few Exhibition game. Split squad games, in which parts of a team's regular season roster play separate games on the same day, are occasionally played during the preseason.
During the regular season, clubs play each other in a predefined schedule. Since 2021, in the regular season, all teams play 96 games: 48 games each of home and road, playing 84 games in their own geographic division—four series (12 games) against five of their eight intra-conference opponents, plus three series (9 games) against two others, and two series (6 games) against the remaining one; and only one series (3 games) against four of the nine teams in the other conference once—home or road.
The league's regular season standings are based on a win percentage system. At the end of the regular season, the team that finishes with the highest win percentage in each divisions is crowned the division champion, and the league's overall leader are named the Frontier League regular season champions.
The Frontier League playoffs, which go from early to late September, are an elimination tournament where two teams play against each other to win a series in order to advance to the next round. The final remaining team is crowned the Frontier League champion. Four teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs: the top team in each division plus the two conference teams with the next highest win percentage. The two Wild Card Series winners proceed to the Frontier League Division Series (FLDS) as the league's conference finals, and the two conference champions proceed to the Frontier League Championship Series (FLCS). In all rounds, the higher-ranked team is awarded home-field advantage, with up to three of the five games played at this team's home venue. In the FLCS, the team with the most wins during the regular season has the home-field advantage.
Teams in the FL must recruit and sign their own players, who usually are undrafted college players or one-time prospects who have been released by their teams.
The league also has several other rules to give younger players more opportunities. This includes a maximum of eight veterans per team, and a minimum of ten rookies in their roster. The remaining six players on the 24-man roster can be classified as ''Experienced-1'' or ''Experienced-2''. Rosters are limited to a size of 24 players on the Opening Day series, although up to 10 additional players can be added to a team's roster during the regular season before the transactions limit.
The league expanded for the first time in 9 years to 15 teams with the addition of the Ottawa Titans in 2020, then to 16 with the addition of the Tri-City ValleyCats in 2021. In September 2024, a new expansion team in Mississippi was created, after the ownership group of the Mississippi Braves sold the team. A few weeks later, a second new team in Kinston, North Carolina joined the FL, and started playing in 2025 as the Down East Bird Dawgs. The expansion of the two new teams marks the league's first expansion into the deep south, and largest expansion in history. The league reverted to the 2021 setup: two conferences with four divisions.
| +Overview of FL teams |
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width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s
bar:1 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:09/20/2008 text:Chillicothe Paints (1993–2008)
bar:2 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:09/20/1994 text:[[Kentucky Rifles]] (1993–94)
bar:3 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:end text:[[Lancaster Scouts]] (1993–94), Evansville Otters (1995–)
bar:4 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:09/20/2005 text:Ohio Valley Redcoats (1993–98, 2005), Dubois County Dragons (1999–2002), [[Kenosha Mammoths]] (2003), Springfield-Ozark Ducks (2004)
bar:5 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:09/20/2009 text:Portsmouth Explorers (1993–95), Springfield Capitals (1996–2001), Rockford RiverHawks (2002–09, 2011–12), Rockford Aviators (2013–15)
bar:5 color:orange from:05/15/2011 till:09/20/2015
bar:6 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:07/10/1993 text:Tri-State Tomahawks (1993)
bar:7 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:06/30/1993 text:West Virginia Coal Sox (1993)
bar:8 color:orange from:05/15/1993 till:09/20/1996 text:[[Zanesville Greys]] (1993–96)
bar:8 color:orange from:05/15/1999 till:09/15/2019 text:River City Rascals (1999–2019)
bar:9 color:orange from:05/15/1994 till:end text:[[Erie Sailors]] (1994), [[Johnstown Steal]] (1995–98), Johnstown Johnnies (1999–2002), [[Florence Freedom]] (2003–19), Florence Y'alls (2020–)
bar:10 color:orange from:05/15/1994 till:09/20/2005 text:[[Newark Buffaloes]]/Bison (1994–95), Kalamazoo Kodiaks (1996–98), London Werewolves (1999–2001), Canton Coyotes (2002), Mid-Missouri Mavericks (2003–05)
bar:11 color:orange from:05/15/1995 till:09/26/2018 text:Richmond Roosters (1995–2005), Traverse City Beach Bums (2006–18)
bar:12 color:orange from:05/15/1997 till:end text:Canton Crocodiles (1997–2001), Washington Wild Things (2002–)
bar:13 color:orange from:05/15/1999 till:end text:Cook County Cheetahs (1999–2003), Windy City ThunderBolts (2004–)
bar:14 color:orange from:05/15/2001 till:end text:Gateway Grizzlies (2001–)
bar:15 color:orange from:05/15/2001 till:09/20/2008 text:[[Kalamazoo Kings]] (2001–10)
bar:16 color:orange from:05/15/2007 till:07/25/2012 text:Slippery Rock Sliders (2007), Midwest Sliders (2008), Midwest Sliders of Ypsilanti (2009), Oakland County Cruisers (2010), [[London Rippers]] (2012)
bar:17 color:orange from:05/15/2007 till:09/12/2021text:Southern Illinois Miners (2007–21)
bar:18 color:orange from:05/15/2009 till:end text:Lake Erie Crushers (2009–)
bar:19 color:orange from:05/15/2010 till:09/26/2018 text:Normal CornBelters (2010–18)
bar:20 color:orange from:05/15/2011 till:end text:[[Joliet Slammers]] (2011–)
bar:21 color:orange from:05/15/2012 till:end text:Schaumburg Boomers (2012–)
bar:22 color:orange from:07/25/2012 till:10/31/2012 text:Road Warriors (2012)
bar:23 color:orange from:05/25/2013 till:09/30/2015 text:[[Frontier Greys]] (2013–15)
bar:24 color:orange from:05/15/2020 till:end text:New Jersey Jackals (2020–)
bar:25 color:orange from:05/15/2020 till:end text:New York Boulders (2020–)
bar:26 color:orange from:05/15/2020 till:end text:Québec Capitales (2020–)
bar:27 color:orange from:05/15/2020 till:end text:Sussex County Miners (2020–)
bar:28 color:orange from:05/15/2020 till:end text:Trois-Rivières Aigles (2020–)
bar:29 color:orange from:05/15/2021 till:end text:[[Ottawa Titans]] (2021–)
bar:30 color:orange from:05/27/2021 till:end text:Tri-City Valley Cats (2021–)
bar:31 color:orange from:05/27/2021 till:09/19/2021 text:Équipe Québec (2021)
bar:32 color:orange from:05/27/2022 till:09/17/2023 text:Empire State Greys (2022–2023)
bar:33 color:orange from:05/10/2024 till:end text:Brockton Rox (2024–)
bar:34 color:orange from:05/01/2025 till:end text:Down East Bird Dawgs (2025–)
bar:35 color:orange from:05/01/2025 till:end text:Mississippi (2025–)
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:2 start:1993
TextData =
fontsize:L
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text:"Frontier League Franchise History"
| + !Statistic !Record !Player | ||
| Games Played | 588 | Chris Sidick |
| At Bats | 2,225 | |
| Runs | 434 | |
| Hits | 725 | Santiago Chirino |
| Home Runs | 127 | Charlie Lisk |
| Runs Batted In | 442 |
| + !Statistic !Record !Player | ||
| Games | 255 | Nick Kennedy |
| Games started | 98 | Aaron Ledbetter |
| Innings Pitched | 671.2 | |
| Wins | 51 | |
| Strikeouts | 522 | |
| Complete Games | 18 | |
| Saves | 74 | Zach Strecker |
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