Deep in the dog days of summer, the Hyannis Harbor Hawks looked like longshots to win the Cape League’s West Division. Hyannis’ offense was struggling to score runs, and its pitching staff had the highest ERA in the Cape Cod Baseball League. The reigning Cape League champions, the Bourne Braves, were favorites to repeat.

Hyannis manager Mitch Karraker and his squad never lost hope.

“We knew we had a good team,” Karraker said. “We like who we have, and we think we just need a little bit of time to continue to develop and get their feet wet a little bit more, and it’s turned out to pay off.”

From July 14 until the end of the season, the Harbor Hawks won 11 of 15 games. They took down the Braves twice and fended off a Yarmouth-Dennis comeback to defeat the league-leading Red Sox by one run at Red Wilson Field.

The Harbor Hawks climbed over .500 with a win over division rival Cotuit on July 28, and haven’t looked back. They clinched the West Division on August 1 by splitting a doubleheader against Falmouth and Cotuit as the Braves lost twice in the same day.

Hyannis general manager Nick Johnson said a team meeting after a brutal 17-1 drubbing at the hands of Yarmouth-Dennis was one part of the team’s turnaround.

“[We] said, we lost a lot of guys, so we really need to come together and have an identity,” Johnson said. “That identity is we want to be chaotic. We want to run a ton. We want to bunt. We’ve obviously had great prospects here, but it’s fundamentals. It’s speed, it’s defense, and it’s strike-throwing, and I think that was on full display.”

Karraker couldn’t say enough about the many players on the roster who have given their all and improved over the course of the season.

“Jax [Gimenez] and [Matt] Ineich have been really good for us,” Karraker said – the dynamic baserunning duo, usually found at the top of Hyannis’ lineup, lead the team with 14 and 12 stolen bases, respectively – “[Taylor] Kirk’s come a long ways, [Andrew] Lamb, Brody Briggs. The list goes on and on.”

Ask any given player what he gives to the team, and he’ll immediately pivot to what his teammates do for him. That culture of humility is what keeps the team together.

“The guys that have stayed around are the right guys, and the guys that came in are the right guys,” said outfielder Henry Zenor, who has been on the Cape since Opening Day. “When you have a group like that, you can do something special.”

Infielder Charlie Bates is another of the few players that has stayed on the Cape all season. Bates is also one of the few returners on this year’s Harbor Hawks squad: He played 32 games with the 2025 Harbor Hawks, struggling to a .546 OPS.

But as the team improved from year to year, so did Bates. The Stanford standout climbed to a .717 OPS this year, and was named a Cape League All-Star – Hyannis’ sole position player to get the nod.

Accordingly, Bates has a unique perspective on this team that comes from having prior playoff experience on the Cape. He thinks this year’s team has an even better chance at a league title than last year’s.

“I always told everyone, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing in June, it matters what we’re doing in August,” Bates said. “I think we have a really, really tight-knit group of guys, which [was] hard to get last year, with how many guys we lost. So I’m super stoked.”

Zenor said “this group is definitely a lot tighter” than the roster that began the season. He said that culture of closeness stems from team leaders and mentioned Bates, first baseman Caden Miller and catcher Brody Briggs as some of those clubhouse leaders.

Briggs arrived late in the year, but is another returning member of the 2025 Harbor Hawks – “when you have guys that know what they’re doing and can pave the way for the new guys, that definitely helps,” Zenor said.

Catcher Will Fosberg, another full-season member of the team, said the “roster [getting] a little more consistent” also helped stabilize the clubhouse.

“There’s guys moving in and out, but we knew that this would be the core group of guys going down the stretch,” Fosberg said. “We bonded over being together every day, and it’s a lot more consistent.”

Every Cape League team experiences wild roster turnover: Players have other commitments, pitchers have innings limits and some just want to go home and prepare for their next college seasons. The Harbor Hawks have limited the impact of their losses.

“One of the biggest goals for this team this year was keeping a lot of players,” Bates said. “From what I understand, I think we’ve lost the least amount [of players] throughout the entire league, and that’s just huge for the core of guys.”

The Harbor Hawks have said farewell to bonafide stars: two-way player Kyle Alivo, catcher Jon Embury, closer Truitt Webb and more. But Hyannis has added more than it has lost: Some of the 2026 Harbor Hawks’ best players and sparkplugs, such as Gimenez and Ineich, came midway through or late in the season.

Rice infielder JC Davis arrived on the Cape mid-season, and is already “super tight” with the rest of the team.

“We hang out on the field, off the field, and everyone that’s here really wants to be here and wants to play well for the team,” Davis said. “We had quite a few guys that came in all around the same time, and we meshed really well and just started playing good at the right time.”

Northwestern State pitcher Kevin Robinson was another late addition to the roster. Robinson is coming off a standout season with the Demons during which he was particularly known for his control – striking out 48 and walking only three batters all season.

Robinson said “it’s been pretty easy” joining a squad that had a long journey before he arrived, and hopes to have a long way to go after.

“The guys accept everybody,” Robinson said. “It’s been pretty good getting the chemistry going, and just getting along with all the guys and everything.”

Though Robinson has struggled in his first two starts on the Cape, Karraker and company have full faith in him to put up zeros in big playoff innings.

“[I’m] learning from every start, getting better every single time,” Robinson said. “Just taking each start at one time, one pitch at a time, and just going from there.”

Robinson will join a strong playoff rotation alongside Ryan Bosch, one of the few pitchers who has been on the Cape the length of the season.

Bosch struggled to open the season, walking three in an inning of work in his Hyannis debut on Opening Day. But he ended up becoming one of the Harbor Hawks’ most trustworthy pitchers: By the end of the regular season, he had lowered his ERA to 3.70, striking out 30 in 24.1 innings, while contributing several dominant starts late in the season.

Accordingly, Bosch said “getting less free passes” – walks and hit by pitches – was key to the pitching staff’s success down the stretch.

“Personally, myself, just focus on attacking with my best pitches and putting it over the plate,” Bosch said. “It’s hard to hit in this league, so just realizing that your best stuff is going to win in this league.”

Hyannis’ newest player is utilityman Matthew Minckler, who arrived on the Cape Tuesday morning and only met his new teammates hours before taking the field with them at the start of the Harbor Hawks’ postseason run.

Minckler, who is coming off a solid season at the University of Delaware, said he isn’t feeling any added pressure debuting in the playoffs – “joining a new team, [whether] it’s the first game or last game, it’s the same jitters and pressure,” he said.

“I feel good,” Minckler said. “Seems like a pretty good squad. Excited to see what these guys are doing.”

Minckler wasn’t around for it, but the rest of the team has already conquered adversity in the form of a brutal stretch of two games in four days – two consecutive doubleheaders – due to rained-out and rescheduled games. Hyannis took three of four in that stretch.

Johnson said that shows the Harbor Hawks are “compared to other years, a team that wants to win.”

“When we came back against Cotuit, the boys were going nuts,” Johnson said – in what was ultimately a 15-8 loss to the Kettleers in the fourth and final game, Hyannis stormed back from a 6-0 deficit to tie the game 7-7 – “when you see that energy and that desire to win … that is a big reason why people go far in this league, the teams that are closest and want to win.”

The Harbor Hawks have not captured a Cape League title since 1991 – a drought eclipsed only by the Falmouth Commodores. Hyannis hasn’t been to the final in over a decade, losing to Yarmouth-Dennis in 2015. But this team, with its 22-18 record third-best in the league, has as good a chance as any to break the drought.

“We got the right group of guys here,” Davis said. “Everyone’s fired up for it, and the guys have been locked in, so pretty excited for it.”

Fosberg said he’s excited for the “playoff atmosphere” at McKeon Park – “I heard it gets pretty crowded here, so I’m looking to see that,” he said.

Hyannis is set to face the Cotuit Kettleers – an opponent it hasn’t lost to in the postseason since 1983 – in round 1 of the playoffs. The Harbor Hawks are the heavy favorites: Cotuit has the second-worst record in the Cape League, at 13-25-2, and ranks second-from-last in both team ERA at 4.83 and team OPS at .653.

“I feel like we should be one of the favorites,” Zenor said. “I don’t feel like anybody can stop us right now.”

The Harbor Hawks’ playoff journey will begin at McKeon Park on Tuesday, with first pitch against the Kettleers set for 6 p.m.