“Worst to first”. It’s a thing, perhaps specific to American sports, which tend to have dinky divisions.
But dinky or not, numbers don’t lie.
In 2025, the Herts Raptors finished the year joint bottom of their Single A division, with a record of 4 wins and 18 losses. In 2026 they were the runaway winners of their division with a 14-2 record.
Their record would’ve been ever better but for some late-season rulebook shenanigans, which shaved off several wins — but either way the Raptors ended up as Number 1 seed in the playoffs for what is now called Division 5, rather than Single A. And that is a tribute to the way the team approached 2026.
Teams and leagues always change in British baseball, but the Raptors did carry over a big chunk of players from the 2025 roster to this year, and the growth in their performance is clear.
First let’s take ace pitcher Abdul El Hamri. He opened this year with a statement no-hitter at home to the Northants Centurions. It was obvious then that relentless off-season work had made him so much more consistent and confident. His strikeouts were up, his walks were down and his batting average against had more than halved.
The Herts rotation was remarkably consistent behind him as well. The Raptors added veteran Andrew Slater who ended with a superb ERA of 4.80, and manager Paul Auchterlounie — with the next biggest chunk of innings — put up much improved numbers from 2025.
Their dominance allowed some experimentation with pitchers, and Ollie Nourse, Stu Francis and Emily Dallas were among those who got to contribute innings for the first time.
That seamless addition of young and new players was perhaps the most satisfying element. Nourse came through the Herts youth ranks, along with Reilly Williams, and both adapted to adult baseball brilliantly. Francis was in his first year of competitive baseball and ended with 9 RBI and a .750 slugging percentage. Anna Drizen learned the game while lifting all of those around her.
The Raptors offense was driven by eventual MVP, first baseman Craig Elliott-Davey, who went from being a frustrated slugger last year to being a hitting machine. He led the team in RBIs, driving in 19 runs. He was among the top ranked in hits and total bases — but also paced the side in stolen bases, with 42.
Other Raptor veterans stepped up alongside him to secure the team’s success. Catcher Nic Hine actually had the highest average, and an .882 on-base percentage – as well as the team’s only home run. Centre-fielder Dave Roberts hit .639 and legged out two triples, and El Hamri was a constant threat to opposing pitchers.
The playoffs did not end the way the Raptors had dreamed. They lost a tight game 14-12 to the London Mastodons in the first round. The London side went on to win the Division 5 title, sweeping aside the teams they met in the semi-final and final.
On one level, that made defeat far harder to take. The Raptors felt they were ready to challenge for the big prize, and results suggested that if they had only got past the Mastodons, they could have laid hands on the trophy. They knew that fielding errors had cost them in their playoff game, and everyone wanted to do-over those chances.
But a narrow defeat to the team which won it all proved that the Raptors were right to think they were the real deal. They belonged in the playoffs — it wasn’t just a quirk of an easy schedule. In what was by far their toughest game of the year, Raptors twice rallied from behind to tie it up and lost narrowly enough for it to be a heart-breaker.
This had been an all-squad effort in 2026, with an impressive turn-out week after week. There were far too many important team-mates for them to all appear here.
2027 will probably bring some changes – as we said earlier, teams and leagues will always change in British baseball. But everyone who had a taste of that playoff defeat now wants even more fervently to taste playoff victory.