Birds nip X’s
Sioux Falls turns back Explorers in playoff opener, 2-1
By Terry Hersom, Journal sports editor | Posted: Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sioux City’s Chad Gabriel takes baseball off the chest next to Sioux Falls’ Patrick Reilly as he reaches first base on an infield single Monday. Gabriel advanced to second as a throwing error was charged to Sioux Falls’ Josh Patton. (Photo by Tim Tushla)
SIOUX FALLS -- Pat Mahomes didn't need any reminders about his last three encounters with the Sioux City Explorers.
After beating the X's five times in a row last season and once in his first meeting this year, the veteran major leaguer dropped three mid-season decisions in a row to his Sioux Falls Canaries' I-29 rivals.
And, Monday night, as the best-of-five American Association's North Division championship series got under way, the 38-year-old righthander wanted to make a few amends.
Surrendering one run and five hits in 7 2/3 innings, he got the job done, turning a 2-1 lead over to the league's record-setting closer, Kris Regas, picking up a four-out save after nailing down 30 saves in 31 tries during the regular season.
Beau Torbert, the Association's player of the year, staked Mahomes to a 1-0 lead in the first-inning, settling for an RBI single on a ball hit high off the left-field wall, perhaps two feet shy of a home run.
And, after Sioux City's Cameron Cheek battled back with five shutout innings to keep his team within reach, Mahomes made his only mistake.
"It was a curveball, down and in,'' said X's slugger Walter Young, whose towering fly ball to right field sailed out of the yard in the seventh inning, knotting the score at 1-1. "For a power-hitting lefty, down and in is my strong point.''
Unfortunately for Young and his teammates, though, Sioux Falls answered immediately, taking advantage of a rocky performance from Matt Kretzschmar, a talented young reliever who finished the regular season with a 1.28 earned run average.
After Ben Van Iderstine opened the home half of the seventh with a base hit through the right side, Patrick Reilly bunted the go-ahead run into scoring position.
That's when X's Manager Les Lancaster decided to turn to Kretzschmar.
First, the 22-year-old walked Paul Smith, the Canaries' No. 8 hitter, on five pitches, the last of which was a wild pitch sending Van Iderstine to third. Then, Kretzschmar surrendered the game-winning single to No. 9 hitter Tim Hutting, batting a team-worst .232 for the potent Birds.
Kretzschmar also later issued a walk that loaded the bases, but the X's avoided any further damage, only to manage just one baserunner in the final two innings. That was Nick McCoola, stroking the two-out single that prompted Sioux Falls Manager Steve Shirley to bring on his mesmerizing lefty, Regas.
Mahomes, who has won 23 games in two seasons for the Canaries, certainly didn't mind yielding the mound.
"Regas has been lights-out all year,'' said Mahomes. "How can you argue with the best reliever in this league coming in with two lefties (Alex Llanos and Young) coming up. I knew it was going to happen. Llanos has pretty much owned me all year.''
Young, meanwhile, was also familiar to Mahomes because both men had been in the Pittsburgh Pirates' big-league camp in 2003.
Mahomes started the season 7-0, then hit a remarkably rocky stretch, losing six decisions in a row. Three of those were to the X's. He followed that up, though, by winning his last three decisions of the regular season.
"I went through a bad stretch and they caught me three times in a short period of time,'' said Mahomes. "At this point, though, I know the hitters and they know what I'm going to try to do to them. It's just a matter of who executes better.''
Sioux City's Lancaster wasn't handing out any bouquets for his team's side of that.
"We made no adjustments at the plate,'' said the X's skipper. "I felt tonight we really beat ourselves. We had a four-pitch inning, You can't allow a pitcher to do that to you. I thought we reverted back to our first-half style offensively.''
Shirley, the Sioux City manager in 2005, was fully expecting a challenging night from the X's Cheek, who spent much of the year in the bullpen for a team that will be without league ERA leader Nick Singleton for the post-season (elbow injury).
"He's done a great job in his recent starts,'' said Shirley, now in his second year at the Sioux Falls helm. "We weren't taking him lightly at all. It was just decided on a single key base hit (Hutting's seventh-inning single). That's playoff baseball right there.''
Mahomes claimed that he felt more nervous than he had in four post-season major league appearances with the New York Mets, all in 1999.
"I don't know why, but that's what I was telling Steve (Shirley),'' said the Lindale, Texas, native. "We've got a five-game series and may have to play three of them (Games 3 through 5, if the fourth and fifth contests are necessary) on the road. That's pressure.''
Game 2, though, is back at the Bird Cage tonight, starting at 7:05 p.m.
X's AND OH's
Two of the league's winningest pitchers collide in Game 2 tonight, also at the Bird Cage. The Canaries send out lefthander Ryan Ford (13-6, 2.77 ERA, sixth in the league) to face Sioux City's Alexander Francisco (12-1, 3.31, 10th in the Association). Francisco, of course, set a club record for wins in a season in his last start -- a 6-3 triumph over St. Paul last Thursday -- which gives him 22 victories in two years with the team.
Ford got that 13th win Saturday, when he happened to pitch one inning in relief and it wound up being the one in which his team took the lead in a 9-6 season finale win over Shreveport. And, that let him break the Canaries' club record of 12 set by Scott Martin in 2001 -- Sioux Falls' only previous playoff team -- and equaled last year by Pat Mahomes.
After a day off Wednesday, Game 3 is Thursday at Lewis and Clark Park, where 6-8 rookie righthander Paige Dumont (7-4, 3.34) goes for the X's and Travis Kane (11-6, 3.45) gets the call for the Birds....
So potent was the league-leading Sioux Falls offense this season that Monday's lineup didn't include the American Association player of the week, recent addition J.D. Reininger, an outfielder acquired from El Paso a couple of weeks ago. Reininger appeared in three games during the regular season's final week, but he went 7-for-14 with three home runs and eight runs batted in.
The Canaries had four batters surpass 100 hits for the season -- Alex Llanos, with 102, was Sioux City's only triple-digit hit man -- and weren't that far from having six as Paul Smyth had 99 and Patrick Reilly 97. Ben Van Iderstine, who bats sixth in the order, had a team-leading 119 hits, Grant Richardson 114, Beau Torbert 110 and Josh Patton 102....
Prior to this season, only four Sioux Falls pitchers had reached 10 or more wins in a season. This year's Canaries have doubled that, becoming the first team in short-season independent baseball (everything except the Atlantic League) to have four 10-game winners. Behind Ford's 12 wins, Sioux Falls got 10 wins each from Mahomes, Kane and Ben Moore. Meanwhile, closer Kris Regas has set an short-season independent league mark for saves in a season with 30....
One thing's for certain about this fourth post-season appearance in the Explorers' 16-year history: For the first time, the X's won't be derailed by the Winnipeg Goldeyes, who eliminated them in all three previous playoff bids -- 1994, 1999 and 2002, when Sioux City swept a three-game series with Joliet before losing in four games to the Goldeyes. Of course, all three of those were in Northern League playoffs....
Home plate umpire Lance Schoenwald wasn't the most popular man in the ballpark Monday, particularly with the Explorers, who struck out nine times and owed several of those to Schoenwald's extended outside corner.
--Terry Hersom
After beating the X's five times in a row last season and once in his first meeting this year, the veteran major leaguer dropped three mid-season decisions in a row to his Sioux Falls Canaries' I-29 rivals.
And, Monday night, as the best-of-five American Association's North Division championship series got under way, the 38-year-old righthander wanted to make a few amends.
Surrendering one run and five hits in 7 2/3 innings, he got the job done, turning a 2-1 lead over to the league's record-setting closer, Kris Regas, picking up a four-out save after nailing down 30 saves in 31 tries during the regular season.
Beau Torbert, the Association's player of the year, staked Mahomes to a 1-0 lead in the first-inning, settling for an RBI single on a ball hit high off the left-field wall, perhaps two feet shy of a home run.
And, after Sioux City's Cameron Cheek battled back with five shutout innings to keep his team within reach, Mahomes made his only mistake.
"It was a curveball, down and in,'' said X's slugger Walter Young, whose towering fly ball to right field sailed out of the yard in the seventh inning, knotting the score at 1-1. "For a power-hitting lefty, down and in is my strong point.''
Unfortunately for Young and his teammates, though, Sioux Falls answered immediately, taking advantage of a rocky performance from Matt Kretzschmar, a talented young reliever who finished the regular season with a 1.28 earned run average.
After Ben Van Iderstine opened the home half of the seventh with a base hit through the right side, Patrick Reilly bunted the go-ahead run into scoring position.
That's when X's Manager Les Lancaster decided to turn to Kretzschmar.
First, the 22-year-old walked Paul Smith, the Canaries' No. 8 hitter, on five pitches, the last of which was a wild pitch sending Van Iderstine to third. Then, Kretzschmar surrendered the game-winning single to No. 9 hitter Tim Hutting, batting a team-worst .232 for the potent Birds.
Kretzschmar also later issued a walk that loaded the bases, but the X's avoided any further damage, only to manage just one baserunner in the final two innings. That was Nick McCoola, stroking the two-out single that prompted Sioux Falls Manager Steve Shirley to bring on his mesmerizing lefty, Regas.
Mahomes, who has won 23 games in two seasons for the Canaries, certainly didn't mind yielding the mound.
"Regas has been lights-out all year,'' said Mahomes. "How can you argue with the best reliever in this league coming in with two lefties (Alex Llanos and Young) coming up. I knew it was going to happen. Llanos has pretty much owned me all year.''
Young, meanwhile, was also familiar to Mahomes because both men had been in the Pittsburgh Pirates' big-league camp in 2003.
Mahomes started the season 7-0, then hit a remarkably rocky stretch, losing six decisions in a row. Three of those were to the X's. He followed that up, though, by winning his last three decisions of the regular season.
"I went through a bad stretch and they caught me three times in a short period of time,'' said Mahomes. "At this point, though, I know the hitters and they know what I'm going to try to do to them. It's just a matter of who executes better.''
Sioux City's Lancaster wasn't handing out any bouquets for his team's side of that.
"We made no adjustments at the plate,'' said the X's skipper. "I felt tonight we really beat ourselves. We had a four-pitch inning, You can't allow a pitcher to do that to you. I thought we reverted back to our first-half style offensively.''
Shirley, the Sioux City manager in 2005, was fully expecting a challenging night from the X's Cheek, who spent much of the year in the bullpen for a team that will be without league ERA leader Nick Singleton for the post-season (elbow injury).
"He's done a great job in his recent starts,'' said Shirley, now in his second year at the Sioux Falls helm. "We weren't taking him lightly at all. It was just decided on a single key base hit (Hutting's seventh-inning single). That's playoff baseball right there.''
Mahomes claimed that he felt more nervous than he had in four post-season major league appearances with the New York Mets, all in 1999.
"I don't know why, but that's what I was telling Steve (Shirley),'' said the Lindale, Texas, native. "We've got a five-game series and may have to play three of them (Games 3 through 5, if the fourth and fifth contests are necessary) on the road. That's pressure.''
Game 2, though, is back at the Bird Cage tonight, starting at 7:05 p.m.
X's AND OH's
Two of the league's winningest pitchers collide in Game 2 tonight, also at the Bird Cage. The Canaries send out lefthander Ryan Ford (13-6, 2.77 ERA, sixth in the league) to face Sioux City's Alexander Francisco (12-1, 3.31, 10th in the Association). Francisco, of course, set a club record for wins in a season in his last start -- a 6-3 triumph over St. Paul last Thursday -- which gives him 22 victories in two years with the team.
Ford got that 13th win Saturday, when he happened to pitch one inning in relief and it wound up being the one in which his team took the lead in a 9-6 season finale win over Shreveport. And, that let him break the Canaries' club record of 12 set by Scott Martin in 2001 -- Sioux Falls' only previous playoff team -- and equaled last year by Pat Mahomes.
After a day off Wednesday, Game 3 is Thursday at Lewis and Clark Park, where 6-8 rookie righthander Paige Dumont (7-4, 3.34) goes for the X's and Travis Kane (11-6, 3.45) gets the call for the Birds....
So potent was the league-leading Sioux Falls offense this season that Monday's lineup didn't include the American Association player of the week, recent addition J.D. Reininger, an outfielder acquired from El Paso a couple of weeks ago. Reininger appeared in three games during the regular season's final week, but he went 7-for-14 with three home runs and eight runs batted in.
The Canaries had four batters surpass 100 hits for the season -- Alex Llanos, with 102, was Sioux City's only triple-digit hit man -- and weren't that far from having six as Paul Smyth had 99 and Patrick Reilly 97. Ben Van Iderstine, who bats sixth in the order, had a team-leading 119 hits, Grant Richardson 114, Beau Torbert 110 and Josh Patton 102....
Prior to this season, only four Sioux Falls pitchers had reached 10 or more wins in a season. This year's Canaries have doubled that, becoming the first team in short-season independent baseball (everything except the Atlantic League) to have four 10-game winners. Behind Ford's 12 wins, Sioux Falls got 10 wins each from Mahomes, Kane and Ben Moore. Meanwhile, closer Kris Regas has set an short-season independent league mark for saves in a season with 30....
One thing's for certain about this fourth post-season appearance in the Explorers' 16-year history: For the first time, the X's won't be derailed by the Winnipeg Goldeyes, who eliminated them in all three previous playoff bids -- 1994, 1999 and 2002, when Sioux City swept a three-game series with Joliet before losing in four games to the Goldeyes. Of course, all three of those were in Northern League playoffs....
Home plate umpire Lance Schoenwald wasn't the most popular man in the ballpark Monday, particularly with the Explorers, who struck out nine times and owed several of those to Schoenwald's extended outside corner.
--Terry Hersom
Story Comments
Read More and Post Comments 1 comment(s)
Please note: The following are comments from readers. In no way do they represent the views of The Sioux City Journal or Lee Enterprises. We will not edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to not post or to remove comments that violate our code of conduct. No comment may contain potentially libelous statements; obscene, explicit or racist language; personal attacks, insults or threats. Terms of Service
cmj wrote on Aug 26, 2008 5:14 PM: