Goldeyes’ postseason starts with hard-fought victory

After playing 100 games in 109 days in the American Association, our second season is finally upon us, and there is nothing like postseason baseball.

Thanks to a staff that captured the league’s pitching crown and a well-rounded lineup, we were able to accomplish our first goal by going 60-40 to win the North Division pennant. Our ultimate goal is to win the league championship series. We took our first step toward accomplishing that as we opened our best-of-five division series at home against St. Paul on Thursday night, before losing our next two games, all three going to extra innings.

Game 1 was a classic, setting the stage for a series that appears will be hard-fought to the final out every night.

As we have been all season long, our team was very business-like as we went through our paces to prepare for our postseason opener. I arrived at around 2:30 p.m. and took the pitchers through fielding practice as we do every homestand, just before our entire team came out to the field for pregame batting practice.

I tried to talk to a few of the guys to get the pulse of our team, to see if there was any nervousness. For the most part, everything seemed to go as usual, with our guys getting their daily work in before the 7 p.m. start. The mood was steady, and if anything there were a few guys who were a little quieter than usual.

Once the game started and began to unfold, I could definitely sense some jitters from both teams. Our ace righty, Ace Walker, has earned a reputation as a gutty performer with pitch ability with all four of his pitches. He worked a little faster than usual and left more balls up in the hitting zone than usual early in the game, but settled in during the third inning, pitched into the seventh and left with the game tied 1-1.

First out of the ‘pen was talented lefty Ian Thomas, who pitched out of a jam in the seventh.

After we scored a run to take a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the seventh, Ian got the first hitter of the eighth to roll over to short, but the ball was misplayed to allow the hitter to reach base.

Next out of the bullpen was Aaron Cook, and St. Paul attempted to sacrifice the runner to second with a bunt. Our first baseman charged and fielded the bunt and then threw wide of first base to give the Saints runners at the corners with no outs.

We then turned to our closer, former Toronto Blue Jay Jamie Vermilyea, to get us out of this self-inflicted situation and he was up to the challenge against former Kansas City Royal Shane Costa, getting him to punch a ground ball back to the mound.

Jamie fielded it cleanly, looked back the runner at third, then turned up the middle to start a 1-6-3 double play. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The runner was still just 90 feet away from tying the game, but there were two outs and our best arm was on the mound.

But as luck would have it, our catcher missed the first pitch Jamie threw to the next hitter, a slider down off the plate, to allow St. Paul to even the score.

Over the next two innings, Jamie continued to do his thing and send the Saints back to the dugout without allowing a run before we managed to put together a rally of our own in the bottom of the 10th inning.

St. Paul sent former big league reliever Julio Depaula to the mound to start the inning and face our former major leaguer, Brian Myrow. Depaula got ahead in the count quickly, but then hit Brian to put the leadoff hitter on base.

Our next hitter was longtime Triple-A slugger Jon Weber. With St. Paul aligning its defense expecting a bunt attempt, Weber laced a single to center to send Myrow to third base with no outs. St. Paul then elected to walk our next hitter to load the bases and bring the infield in to set up a force out at home.

That set the stage for team RBI leader Wes Long, who wasted little time in putting a good swing on a pitch, drilling a 1-0 fastball into left-center to win the game for us.

As our guys charged the field to celebrate, I could not help to think that that game was very reflective of our ballclub. We didn’t get too high when we took an early lead, and we didn’t get down when we allowed St. Paul to tie the game late. We just kept plugging and put ourselves in position to win in the end.

We will need to keep plugging away to win two more games if we hope to take this division series.

Brendan Sagara, a former Leilehua and Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is a veteran minor league pitching coach in his first year with the Winnipeg Goldeyes.