Playoff Baseball

Two of our minor league affiliates were enjoying the thrills of post-season baseball, here's a quick update as the playoffs began this week. Our affiliate in Boise is in a best-of-5 series versus the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes (Giants affiliate) in the Northwest League. This is short-season ball with teams generally full of the two most recent draft classes and undrafted free-agent signings. In Game 1 on Thursday, 2005 first round pick Mark Pawelek threw six and two-thirds of shutout ball with three strikeouts to earn the 5-1 victory with 2006 draftee Jeremy Papelbon coming in for a two and a third inning save, giving one unearned run in his appearance. 2006 first round pick Tyler Colvin and 2004 30th round pick Russ Canzler provided the offense. Both went three for four, with Canzler providing a double and a home run. 2006 7th round pick Steve Clevenger also provided two hits and two RBI's in the win. Last night Jose Ceda took the mound, he was the bounty in the Todd Walker trade. He struggled through four and a third innings giving up five runs on one home run. Ceda needed to be perfect though because Volcanoes starter Adam Cowart, a 35th pick in this years draft pitched a complete game shutout giving up a mere 3 hits, two of them to Tyler Colvin. Game three is tonight at 9 pm CST with Billy Muldowney taking the mound for the Hawks. The Peoria Chiefs were in a best-of-three series versus the Beloit Snappers (Twins affiliate). Beloit struck first on Wednesday with a 2-0 victory, holding the Chiefs to four hits, all of them singles. Mitch Atkins was saddled with the loss. The two teams went at it again on Thursday with the Chiefs winning 6-1 behind the strong pitching of 2005 5th round pick Scott Taylor (7 IP, 4 H, 1 unearned run, 4 K, 2 BB). Second basemen Valerio Heredia and first basemen Ryan Norwood both contributed offensively with three hits apiece while Joe Carter's nephew Yusuf Carter pitched in with two more and an RBI. Ther rubber game of the series put 2004 31st round pick Jesse Estrada on the mound. Spotted a one run lead going into the fifth, Estrada gave up two runs in the top half of the fifth. Peoria struck back with a run of it's own in the bottom of the fifth on a leadoff walk to Davy Gregg who eventually came around to score on a groundout by Robinson Chirinos. The score remained tied until the top of the eighth when righty Justin Rayborn replaced Estrada. Quickly retiring the first two batters, Rayborn hit the third batter of the inning and then gave up a two run blast to Eli Tintor before getting out of the inning. The Chiefs struck back in the eighth with a run on three singles to make the score 4-3. Matt Avery came in to pitch in the ninth and retired the Snappers with only a two-out walk to blemish his line. In the bottom of the ninth, Yusuf Carter lead-off but went down quickly on strikes. Catcher Mark Reed worked a walk to put the tying run on base. But Snappers pitcher Dan Leatherman (great baseball name) snuffed the rally by striking out the next hitter and getting Valerio Heredia to fly out to left to end the game. Playof baseball, catch the fever and go Hawks!