FROM THE RCBL TO MLB OPENING DAY FOR HANIFEE, DOYLE AND WAGNER

Brenan Hanifee Courtesy of the Detroit Tigers

By David Driver, Special Correspondent
TAMPA, Florida - "I kind of weighed my options. I really didn’t have a career plan after college. I was going to college to play baseball," pitcher Brenan Hanifee said in an interview with this reporter at spring training in Florida in 2017.

Baseball as a career path turned out to be a wise move for the former RCBL two-way player for Clover Hill - he signed with the Orioles out of high school in 2016 instead of attending East Carolina, moved to the Tigers in December 2022, made his Major League debut with Detroit in 2023 and has now cracked the Opening Day roster for the first time.
 
Hanifee, 26, played infield and pitched for Clover Hill from 2013-15 while in high school at Turner Ashby. "He had a very calm demeanor on the mound," said Clover Hill manager Kevin Chandler, a teammate with Hanifee with the Bucks. "He knew what he was doing. He is a very calm, competitive person."

A right-hander, Hanifee did not allow a run in nine spring training appearances this year, covering 10.2 innings. On Opening Day against the host Dodgers on March 27, he allowed one run in one inning (he pitched the seventh) as the Tigers fell 5-4 to the defending World Series champs.

Hanifee is one of three former RCBL stars to make an Opening Day roster for this MLB season. The other two were outfielder Brendan Doyle (New Market), who won a Gold Glove with the Colorado Rockies again last year, and infielder Will Wagner, who played with Montezuma in 2020, was drafted out of Liberty University by Houston then hit .305 in 24 games with Toronto in his first MLB season a year ago. Wagner, 26, was 1-for-3 as the DH on March 27 as the Jays lost at home to the Orioles 12-2. The Rockies and Doyle opened the season on March 28 at Tampa Bay.

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Brenton Doyle Courtesy of Shepherd University

​"I remember he was fast," Chandler said of Doyle, who is also 26. "He still is. He was good." 
Nolan Potts, a former New Market teammate, agrees.

“He only played 17 games with us that summer, but as a young player, getting those at-bats in the summer can really help you when you get back to school. I’d like to think that his time in the RCBL helped a little in his development, but he obviously put a lot of time and work into his game blossomed into an phenomenal player at Shepherd, and to see him have so much successful early on in his MLB career and turn into one of the premier centerfielders in the game has been so amazing to see,” according to Potts, a teammate in 2017 with Doyle.

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Will Wagner Courtesy of Liberty University

Wagner is the son of Marion native Billy Wagner, a former MLB closer who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this year. The elder Wagner is the sixth native of Virginia to be honored in Cooperstown, following Culpeper native Eppa Rixey and former Negro League stars Leon Day, Ray Dandridge, Pete Hill, and Jud Wilson.
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Last season was the first time in more than 30 years that three RCBL alums played in the majors in the same season. In 1990, Reggie Harris, Daryl Irvine (Spotswood High), and Larry Sheets all appeared in The Show at some point. Harris made his MLB debut in July 4 of that year with Oakland; Irvine broke in on April 28 with the Red Sox while Sheets played his first game in 1984 with Baltimore.

This is believed to be the first time that three RCBL alums were on Opening Day rosters in The Show in the same season, according to available material. Hanifee began the 2024 season with Triple-A Toledo before he was called up to Detroit in August. From western Rockingham County, he pitched in the playoffs for the Tigers against Houston.

Other RCBL alums to play for Detroit included the late Wayne Comer (Grottoes), who was part of the 1968 World Series champs with the Tigers, and Sheets (Shenandoah), who hit 10 homers with Detroit in 1990 and was the Orioles MVP in 1987. Sheets, like Hanifee, was drafted by the Orioles. Former TA, RCBL and Virginia Tech pitcher Ian Ostlund, who began his college career at VMI, played at Toledo in 2007-08 in the Detroit system.

Hanifee was the eighth native of Harrisonburg to reach The Show, following the late Doug Neff, Nelson Chittum, Alan Knicely, Daryl Irvine, Travis Harper, Brian Bocock and Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh, the son of former JMU assistant coach Todd Raleigh. Chittum, who passed away in 2024, Irvine and Harper were also pitchers. He is also the third TA product to play at the highest level, following former RCBL players Knicely and Brian Bocock. Hanifee is the first TA grad to make an MLB Opening Day roster since Bocock broke camp with the Giants in 2008 at short.

Last year, Hanifee had an ERA of 1.84 in 21 games with the Tigers - three of the outings was as the opener.

Hanifee was never considered a top 10 prospect while coming up through the Baltimore system. But he kept progressing - and impressing. "I feel like he has it in him for sure," Justin Lord, his pitching coach in 2019 with Single-A Frederick, said then when asked then if Hanifee had a chance to make the majors. "I definitely see him pitching in the big leagues. He has a lot of good years ahead of him."

Hanifee was projected to be part of the starting rotation with Double-A Bowie in the Baltimore system in 2021 – but he had Tommy John surgery that spring. He made it back to Double-A with the Baysox at the end of 2022, then signed with the Tigers after the season.

While at TA, he played for Clover Hill for three seasons. Hanifee saw action at shortstop in five games for the Bucks in 2013 and hit .250. He saw limited action in 2014, then pitched 18 innings and hit .308 for Clover Hill in 2015.

"Top five rounds was most likely a definite yes” to turning pro, Hanifee said in 2017. That worked out well, as he went in the fourth round out of TA in 2016. 

Doyle, who is from Warrenton, will be the Rockies’ center fielder again this year. He played in the RCBL in 2017 and hit .347 in 72 at-bats with the Shockers in regular-season and playoff contests.
 
“As players, we didn’t know much about him,” Potts noted of his time with New Market. “We had heard he was young, strong, and athletic, and anytime you can add a player like that to your roster, you’ve got to do it. As soon as we saw him warm up before his first game with us, you could tell he had all the physical tools in the world. He had legitimate power at the plate, and he was truly special in the outfield. The reads he would get off the bat, the amount of ground he covered, and his arm strength were really something to behold in the time he was with us that summer. I don’t know if any of us at the time thought he’d end up being a fourth-round draft pick and making it to the big leagues and winning two Gold Gloves in his first two seasons, but we knew he was a tremendous talent. He went to Shepherd and obviously had a stellar career there and was able to develop into what he is today – a starting centerfielder in Major League Baseball. It’s been really cool for me personally to be able to watch a Rockies game or see highlights online of some of the incredible plays that he’s made and say that I got to play with a player of his caliber.”

NOTES: Hanifee’s father, Sean, was the TA head coach for three years and was a former assistant at Bridgewater College under Curt Kendall, a former RCBL standout with the Reds … TA has won seven state high school titles, tied for the second-most in the state. With a combined total of seven titles and three MLB alums, TA is tied with James Madison High (six titles, four MLB alums) of Vienna for the most of any public school in the state for a total of 10 … Hanifee entered this season as the No. 20 prospect in the Detroit system, according to Baseball America. Wagner is No. 22 in the Toronto system and former JMU and Broadway Bruins star Chase DeLauter, the RCBL MVP in 2020, is ranked fifth in the Cleveland system. The outfielder underwent core muscle surgery, Cleveland announced in early March, and will miss several weeks … TA won its 1,000th game in program history on March 25, beating Wilson Memorial. The first Knights season was in 1957.
 
Editor’s note: David Driver is the former sports of the Daily News-Record and the co-author of “From Tidewater to the Shenandoah: Snapshots from Virginia’s Rich Baseball Legacy,” which is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and at the Rocktown History Museum in Dayton. He was part of the 1980 Valley District champions at TA and played infield on the Clover Hill team that won the RCBL title in 1982. He can be reached at [email protected].

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