Gastonia’s Nate Scantlin and Grant Lavigne earn Atlantic League All-Star nods

Gastonia’s early-second-half push got a clear stamp of approval when Nate Scantlin and Grant Lavigne were named Atlantic League Mid-Season All-Stars, a nod the Ghost Peppers called “well deserved.” The Atlantic League of Professional Baseball announced its 2026 Midseason All-Star Team on July 15, with the selections presented by Drake Baseball.

The recognition reads like more than a routine honor list for Gastonia, North Carolina. Scantlin’s recent production gave the selection real force: a league game story from the same stretch said he homered twice in a Gastonia win, one of the key swings behind a club that was riding a seven-game winning streak around the announcement. That kind of power output is exactly what teams lean on in the second half, when one hot stretch can turn a playoff chase into momentum.

Lavigne’s selection put another impact bat beside Scantlin and gave Gastonia two names to feature as the schedule tightened. The Ghost Peppers pushed the announcement across X, Facebook and Instagram, signaling how central the players had become to the team’s identity in the middle of the season. On X, the club posted, “Congratulations to Nate Scantlin and Grant Lavigne on being named Atlantic League Mid-Season All-Stars! Well deserved, fellas!”

The response was immediate on Instagram, where one commenter answered the post with, “Go Grant!” That kind of reaction underscored how quickly All-Star recognition can become part of a team’s weekly rhythm, especially for a club trying to turn a strong run into something larger. In a league where midseason honors often reflect who is carrying the load right now, Gastonia’s pair of selections pointed directly to the bats driving its surge.

For the Ghost Peppers, the All-Star announcement did more than add two names to a list. It showed that Scantlin and Lavigne had already become the players opponents had to plan around, and that Gastonia’s best stretch of the season was being built on production that translated into wins.