DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette Dark rain clouds emerge ahead of a Williamsport Crosscutters game at Bowman Field.

“Seriously, what is up with the rain lately?”

“Does it usually rain this much out here?”

“Is it gonna be like this all year?”

These are some of the questions that you can hear echoed throughout batting practice or within the facilities of Historic Bowman Field this season. From athletes who come from all across the country and beyond, this June has seemed much different then where they are from in terms of rainfall.

When interviewing, or even talking to, coaches and players this year, usually the same topic or sidebar gets brought up: “Well, hopefully the rain holds up today.”

But it’s not just those outside of the community that are perplexed about the amount of rain that there has been this month, and taking it into a baseball sense, the numbers are quite revealing with how much rain there has been.

In the entire 40 scheduled home games in 2024, just five were cancelled to rain with an extra game called due to wet grounds.

2023 was a similar rate, with four rain postponements and one called to wet grounds in the campaign.

Combining all seasons from 2022-2024, there have been 120 combined home games scheduled. Of the 120, 14 were postponed to rainfall, and 106 were played enough for the game to count and a final score recorded, leading to a respectable 88% rate of games going through.

With the Cutters season just three weeks old, Williamsport has already had three home games called off due to rain with just five home games played as of Wednesday. That gives a rate of just 63% of home games counting.

“We’re used to dealing with rain, it’s an outside sport, it happens,” said Gabe Sinicropi, longtime Crosscutter stadium emcee and Vice President of Marketing with the ballclub. “That said, it’s happened a lot so far this season.”

Included in the rain outs was Williamsport’s home opener against the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, which was rained out after just an inning and a half played. Williamsport’s series finale with Mahoning was all called off. The latest called off game was this week’s series opener against the last place Frederick Keys.

Those three call-offs do not include Wednesday night’s fixture, which was called in the middle of the seventh inning due to a severe thunderstorm in the area. It also does not take account for, of the five home games that have been played, all five had some form of rainfall during the contest.

“The league has had nine rainouts this season. Last year, the whole league had 16.” Added Sinicropi. “The [grounds] crew is a little tired, you know? The crowd sees them take the tarp on during the game or take it off before a game; but this morning, for instance, they were here to pull the tarp off at 7:00am. That’s the grounds crew.”

“So it’s been tarps on and off, like, every single day, and that gets to be grueling.”

Due to MLB Draft League rules, no game that gets called off is allowed to be replayed or resumed. For Williamsport, who sit in second place in the Draft League and chasing a first half title, they may feel hard done by the fact that they can’t make up games to try and stay on level terms with the first place West Virginia Black Bears, who have actually played one less game then them Billtown season.

The results are series that are rarely completed. Just one of Williamsport’s three home series’ this season have been played in full (June 13-15 vs. the Trenton Thunder.)

Williamsport have just five home sets left in the first half, with only two more fitting the traditional three games in a set, with a pair of two game series vs. Trenton and West Virginia in July.