After two rainouts, the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks finally begin their playoff run tonight, August 6, at the Shark Tank against the sixth-seeded Ocean State Waves of South Kingstown, R.I.

The Sharks locked down the number one seed and home field advantage thanks to 24 regular season victories in the southern division of the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

Ryan Ramsey takes the mound to open up the best-out-of-three series, which heads to Kingstown on Saturday night and then back to the Shark Tank if necessary on Sunday.

Game time tonight is 6:30 p.m.

The Sharks have been a wildly entertaining team to watch all summer as their platoon of aces on the mound and big bats up and down the lineup led to multiple winning streaks throughout the season.

In particular, the Sharks pitchers have led the way this year and manager Jay Mendez attributes their success to a common goal they made before the season started.

“The group of guys that we have, they all from the get-go set a goal for themselves to get better this summer and they’ve all been doing that so it’s been great,” Coach Mendez said. “We have a good core of starting pitchers that really have kept us in most of our games this year.”

During the regular season, no other team in the NECBL struck out more batters than the Sharks pitchers who punched out 473 opposing hitters. The Sharks team earned run average was also the second-lowest in the league at 3.90.

Of the five Sharks who received all-star honors this summer, three of them were pitchers, including starters Ryan Ramsey and Jackson Nezuh and reliever Adam Boucher. All three hurlers finished the regular season with dominant ERAs below 1.90. Alex Galvan, the Sharks closer, was also nearly untouchable on the mound with a 1.10 ERA and 21 strikeouts.

Additionally, Sharks starter Noah Johnson posted the second-lowest ERA in the league among pitchers with at least 32 innings of work at 2.57. Johnson is also tied for the third-most strikeouts in the league with 50. Riley Phillips, a left-handed reliever for the Sharks, posted a 2.88 ERA and had the second-most strikeouts in the league with 51.

“Honestly, they’ve carried us this whole year,” Coach Mendez said of his pitchers. “When our pitching has been good we’ve gotten most of our wins.”

But now, with the pressure of the playoffs on, Coach Mendez said he would like to see the boys tighten their games up and get back to playing their brand of baseball.

“We’ve gone away from a lot of the things that made us successful earlier in the season so we just need to get back to playing baseball the Shark way,” he said.

Ramsey, who plays his college ball at the University of Maryland, toes the rubber tonight on familiar territory. He has been coming to the Vineyard to visit his grandparents since he was a kid. When he was younger, he used to attend Sharks games with his family and remembers hanging out by the bullpen that he and his teammates occupy now.

“As a pitcher, I would go to the bullpen and didn’t realize what these guys are going through, they’re busy college kids and it’s fun to be here as a player now,” Ramsey said.

As far as his mindset going into the first playoff game, Ramsey said he’s going to continue sailing the course he plotted during the regular season.

“It’s worked for me,” he said. “I usually try to dominate with my fastball and I’ll go fastball, fastball until they start showing me they can hit it and then I’ll bring in the off-speed.”

“I take baseball as a simple game,” Ramsey continued. “It’s hard for hitters, so as a pitcher you just try to keep it simple.”

The Sharks have their work cut out for them against the Waves who boast seven all-stars on their roster including the NECBL batting champion Travis Honeyman who posted a .430 batting average during the regular season.

But after rainouts on Wednesday and Thursday, the Sharks are hungry to get started.

In other Sharks-related news this week, it was announced former Shark and Vineyard native Tad Gold will be inducted into the Endicott College Hall of Fame on Saturday, Oct. 2. While in college, Gold played for the Sharks and the Endicott Gulls. He was drafted in the 35th round of the 2014 Major League Baseball draft by the Baltimore Orioles.