Explorers bow out of playoffs
Sioux Falls sweeps X's, claim North Division championship
By Terry Hersom, Journal sports editor | Posted: Friday, August 29, 2008
Sioux Falls' Josh Patton is safe at second after sliding under Sioux City's Nick McCoola during Sioux City Explorers vs Sioux Falls Canaries baseball action Thursday at Lewis and Clark Park. (Staff photo by Tim Hynds)
Six nights after all that excitement about reaching the American Association playoffs, the celebration for the Sioux City Explorers has come to an abrupt end.
Scraping up just a single run for the third time in as many postseason games, the X's went out the door beneath the broom bristles Thursday night as a 3-1 victory gave the Sioux Falls Canaries a three-game sweep of the teams' best-of-five North Division championship series.
Starter Travis Kane and a trio of relievers finished it off for the Canaries' first-half division winners, capturing their first postseason series triumph in franchise history.
But it was a frustrating exit for Sioux City's second-half division champs, whose struggles at the plate left them such a tiny margin for error.
And Thursday, after losing 2-1 and 7-1 in games played Monday and Tuesday in Sioux Falls, it all came down to a calamitous fifth inning in which risky decisions on the infield, both in bunting situations, came back to burn the Explorers badly.
With no score after four frames, the Canaries Josh Patton, a former Northern League batting champ for Sioux City, led off the fifth with a base hit up the middle.
Then came the defensive backfires -- two straight bunt attempts on which the hustling Patton made the X's pay for trying to retire the lead runner.
First, it was catcher Chris Grossman, scooping up Ben Van Iderstine's bunt and throwing too late to retire Patton at second base. Then, it was first baseman Derek Schermerhorn, trying to get Patton at third on a bunt by Patrick Reilly.
Instead of two outs and possibly one runner aboard, the Birds had the bases loaded and nobody out.
That's when catcher Paul Smyth golfed a lazy two-run single into right field, putting Sioux Falls in front to stay, 2-0.
Rookie righthander Paige Dumont and a gutsy Sioux City defense managed to limit the Canaries to just those two runs, leaving the bases loaded.
"That really hasn't been our style of baseball, we've been the kind of team that waits for the three-run homer,'' said Canaries pitching coach Mike Meyer, filling in for Manager Steve Shirley, who remained in Sioux Falls due to health concerns. "We played a little small ball and it worked out for us.''
After the X's got one run back in the sixth inning, shortstop Tim Hutting, who had the game-winning hit on Monday and then drove in five of the Canaries' seven runs Tuesday, delivered yet another RBI, making it a 3-1 advantage with an RBI double in the seventh inning.
The bottom three men in the order -- Patrick Reilly, Smyth and Hutting -- finished with 12 of the Birds' 12 hits in the series. Hutting's five hits in 10 at-bats drove in seven of his team's 11 total runs.
"With our lineup, we really don't have a top and bottom,'' said Hutting, a modest .232 hitter during the regular season on a team that led the league by 15 percentage points with a lofty .296 batting average. "My whole career, I've usually been the guy who started the rallies, maybe batting first or second or anywhere from sixth to ninth.''
Sioux City simply couldn't deliver the clutch hit when the opportunities presented themselves.
"The first game, I'll give them that,'' said Lancaster, conceding what was just a 2-1 setback. "The second and third games, we definitely beat ourselves. But when you're playing against a good team and playing the umpires, it makes it pretty damned hard.''
Lancaster's words were directed toward an umpiring crew that had frustrated him with its strike zone the entire series. In fact, after Schermerhorn was ejected Thursday, arguing with home plate umpire David Marco after being rung up on an inside pitch, Lancaster was in Marco's face, as well, getting tossed just a short time later.
In a series that saw the X's go a dismal 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position, the lone exception was Juan Senreiso's sixth-inning RBI double. The two-out double was surrendered by Angelo Morales, the first of three relievers to follow Kane, exiting after issuing back-to-back one-out walks to Walter Young and Chris Grossman.
Morales bore down, though, and fanned Chad Gabriel to end the inning. Then, he combined with Mark Roberts and closer Kris Regas to blank the X's the rest of the way.
Dumont worked seven innings, yielding three runs and striking out a season-high eight batters, while closer Brett Reid finished with two perfect frames.
"The guys did a great job to get to the playoffs,'' said Lancaster. "Coming in as a new manager, having to rebuild, it was a challenge. And we owe it all to the players.''
X's and OH's
Sioux Falls Manager Steve Shirley, Sioux City's skipper in 2005, missed 32 games during the regular season after a blood clot was discovered in one of his lungs. He has recovered to a large extent, but takes daily blood tests, though, and doctors asked him to stay home Thursday because his blood had gotten too thin.
"We had a hard time convincing him to stay home, but it's just a baseball game,'' said Canaries pitching coach Mike Meyer. "His health is more important.''....
Unlike Sioux City, Fort Worth was able to fend off elimination after dropping the first two games in the South Division playoffs. The Cats, who've won the league's first two championships and captured both halves in the South this season, squeezed past Grand Prairie in a 1-0 thriller Thursday.
Grand Prairie, a first-year franchise in suburban Dallas that plays just 22 miles from Fort Worth's home park, got into the playoffs as a wild-card team after leading the South for much of the second half. The Air Hogs' second-half pennant hopes took a serious blow, however, when they were swept at home by Sioux City in a three-game late-season series....
In a game that saw Sioux City Manager Les Lancaster and first baseman Derek Schermerhorn both get tossed in the ninth inning, unhappy with home plate umpire David Marco's strike zone, the X's also felt they were deprived of a sixth-inning balk that would have tied the game.
Canaries reliever Angelo Morales had just yielded Juan Senreiso's RBI double, trimming the Sioux Falls lead to 2-1, when the X's claim he balked with runners at second and third. There was no call, however, and the inning ended with the second of three strikeouts in the game for Chad Gabriel, who went 0-for-4....
The X's had another bad break in the fifth inning when Nick McCoola's liner down the right-field line hit barely to the right of the chalk line. Following up two-out singles by Schermerhorn and Jason Tuttle, it would have been a two-run double, tying the game at 2-2. Instead, McCoola was later called out on strikes -- another pitch that appeared to be off the plate to the inside....
Schermerhorn had two of Sioux City's seven hits in the contest, one more than Sioux Falls totaled, breaking out of a 0-for-6 hiccup in the first two games. Juan Camacho managed a two-out single in the eighth inning that became relatively meaningless after he'd gone 0-for-11 in the series....
Although Senreiso drove in the Explorers' only run of Game 3, his 12 late-season games with the X's failed to produce a home run after he belted 14 round-trippers in 69 Golden League games before being acquired from Reno, the team Lancaster managed the last three seasons.
--Terry Hersom
Lancaster to stay with X's
It wasn't all doom and gloom as the Sioux City Explorers saw their American Association championship hopes come to an end Thursday night at Lewis and Clark Park.
After a 3-1 loss that let the Sioux Falls Canaries finish off a three-game sweep of their North Division playoff series, Sioux City Manager Les Lancaster had a quick answer to the question, "Where will Les Lancaster be next season?''
"Les Lancaster will be here,'' said the former Chicago Cubs pitcher, whose first season with the X's marked his seventh playoff team in nine seasons as a minor league manager.
"I'll take some time off, not much, and then talk to some of the players and see who wants to play.''
Lancaster orchestrated an impressive turnaround after his team started the year 1-7 and finished fifth in the five-team North Division with a 21-27 first-half record.
The Explorers rebounded to win the second-half North flag with a 31-17 mark before Sioux Falls' first-half North winners sidelined them in the playoffs. It was just the fourth playoff trip in the X's 16-year franchise history.
--Terry Hersom
Scraping up just a single run for the third time in as many postseason games, the X's went out the door beneath the broom bristles Thursday night as a 3-1 victory gave the Sioux Falls Canaries a three-game sweep of the teams' best-of-five North Division championship series.
Starter Travis Kane and a trio of relievers finished it off for the Canaries' first-half division winners, capturing their first postseason series triumph in franchise history.
But it was a frustrating exit for Sioux City's second-half division champs, whose struggles at the plate left them such a tiny margin for error.
And Thursday, after losing 2-1 and 7-1 in games played Monday and Tuesday in Sioux Falls, it all came down to a calamitous fifth inning in which risky decisions on the infield, both in bunting situations, came back to burn the Explorers badly.
With no score after four frames, the Canaries Josh Patton, a former Northern League batting champ for Sioux City, led off the fifth with a base hit up the middle.
Then came the defensive backfires -- two straight bunt attempts on which the hustling Patton made the X's pay for trying to retire the lead runner.
First, it was catcher Chris Grossman, scooping up Ben Van Iderstine's bunt and throwing too late to retire Patton at second base. Then, it was first baseman Derek Schermerhorn, trying to get Patton at third on a bunt by Patrick Reilly.
Instead of two outs and possibly one runner aboard, the Birds had the bases loaded and nobody out.
That's when catcher Paul Smyth golfed a lazy two-run single into right field, putting Sioux Falls in front to stay, 2-0.
Rookie righthander Paige Dumont and a gutsy Sioux City defense managed to limit the Canaries to just those two runs, leaving the bases loaded.
"That really hasn't been our style of baseball, we've been the kind of team that waits for the three-run homer,'' said Canaries pitching coach Mike Meyer, filling in for Manager Steve Shirley, who remained in Sioux Falls due to health concerns. "We played a little small ball and it worked out for us.''
After the X's got one run back in the sixth inning, shortstop Tim Hutting, who had the game-winning hit on Monday and then drove in five of the Canaries' seven runs Tuesday, delivered yet another RBI, making it a 3-1 advantage with an RBI double in the seventh inning.
The bottom three men in the order -- Patrick Reilly, Smyth and Hutting -- finished with 12 of the Birds' 12 hits in the series. Hutting's five hits in 10 at-bats drove in seven of his team's 11 total runs.
"With our lineup, we really don't have a top and bottom,'' said Hutting, a modest .232 hitter during the regular season on a team that led the league by 15 percentage points with a lofty .296 batting average. "My whole career, I've usually been the guy who started the rallies, maybe batting first or second or anywhere from sixth to ninth.''
Sioux City simply couldn't deliver the clutch hit when the opportunities presented themselves.
"The first game, I'll give them that,'' said Lancaster, conceding what was just a 2-1 setback. "The second and third games, we definitely beat ourselves. But when you're playing against a good team and playing the umpires, it makes it pretty damned hard.''
Lancaster's words were directed toward an umpiring crew that had frustrated him with its strike zone the entire series. In fact, after Schermerhorn was ejected Thursday, arguing with home plate umpire David Marco after being rung up on an inside pitch, Lancaster was in Marco's face, as well, getting tossed just a short time later.
In a series that saw the X's go a dismal 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position, the lone exception was Juan Senreiso's sixth-inning RBI double. The two-out double was surrendered by Angelo Morales, the first of three relievers to follow Kane, exiting after issuing back-to-back one-out walks to Walter Young and Chris Grossman.
Morales bore down, though, and fanned Chad Gabriel to end the inning. Then, he combined with Mark Roberts and closer Kris Regas to blank the X's the rest of the way.
Dumont worked seven innings, yielding three runs and striking out a season-high eight batters, while closer Brett Reid finished with two perfect frames.
"The guys did a great job to get to the playoffs,'' said Lancaster. "Coming in as a new manager, having to rebuild, it was a challenge. And we owe it all to the players.''
X's and OH's
Sioux Falls Manager Steve Shirley, Sioux City's skipper in 2005, missed 32 games during the regular season after a blood clot was discovered in one of his lungs. He has recovered to a large extent, but takes daily blood tests, though, and doctors asked him to stay home Thursday because his blood had gotten too thin.
"We had a hard time convincing him to stay home, but it's just a baseball game,'' said Canaries pitching coach Mike Meyer. "His health is more important.''....
Unlike Sioux City, Fort Worth was able to fend off elimination after dropping the first two games in the South Division playoffs. The Cats, who've won the league's first two championships and captured both halves in the South this season, squeezed past Grand Prairie in a 1-0 thriller Thursday.
Grand Prairie, a first-year franchise in suburban Dallas that plays just 22 miles from Fort Worth's home park, got into the playoffs as a wild-card team after leading the South for much of the second half. The Air Hogs' second-half pennant hopes took a serious blow, however, when they were swept at home by Sioux City in a three-game late-season series....
In a game that saw Sioux City Manager Les Lancaster and first baseman Derek Schermerhorn both get tossed in the ninth inning, unhappy with home plate umpire David Marco's strike zone, the X's also felt they were deprived of a sixth-inning balk that would have tied the game.
Canaries reliever Angelo Morales had just yielded Juan Senreiso's RBI double, trimming the Sioux Falls lead to 2-1, when the X's claim he balked with runners at second and third. There was no call, however, and the inning ended with the second of three strikeouts in the game for Chad Gabriel, who went 0-for-4....
The X's had another bad break in the fifth inning when Nick McCoola's liner down the right-field line hit barely to the right of the chalk line. Following up two-out singles by Schermerhorn and Jason Tuttle, it would have been a two-run double, tying the game at 2-2. Instead, McCoola was later called out on strikes -- another pitch that appeared to be off the plate to the inside....
Schermerhorn had two of Sioux City's seven hits in the contest, one more than Sioux Falls totaled, breaking out of a 0-for-6 hiccup in the first two games. Juan Camacho managed a two-out single in the eighth inning that became relatively meaningless after he'd gone 0-for-11 in the series....
Although Senreiso drove in the Explorers' only run of Game 3, his 12 late-season games with the X's failed to produce a home run after he belted 14 round-trippers in 69 Golden League games before being acquired from Reno, the team Lancaster managed the last three seasons.
--Terry Hersom
Lancaster to stay with X's
It wasn't all doom and gloom as the Sioux City Explorers saw their American Association championship hopes come to an end Thursday night at Lewis and Clark Park.
After a 3-1 loss that let the Sioux Falls Canaries finish off a three-game sweep of their North Division playoff series, Sioux City Manager Les Lancaster had a quick answer to the question, "Where will Les Lancaster be next season?''
"Les Lancaster will be here,'' said the former Chicago Cubs pitcher, whose first season with the X's marked his seventh playoff team in nine seasons as a minor league manager.
"I'll take some time off, not much, and then talk to some of the players and see who wants to play.''
Lancaster orchestrated an impressive turnaround after his team started the year 1-7 and finished fifth in the five-team North Division with a 21-27 first-half record.
The Explorers rebounded to win the second-half North flag with a 31-17 mark before Sioux Falls' first-half North winners sidelined them in the playoffs. It was just the fourth playoff trip in the X's 16-year franchise history.
--Terry Hersom
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