Twins 9 Indians 3: Is the Season Over Yet?
September 21, 2010Buckeye 12-Pack
September 21, 2010
That’s right, Cleveland fans: last night the Lake County Captains won the decisive fifth game of Midwest League against the Clinton Lumberkings, bringing home the championship for which we’ve been waiting so long.
Giovanni Soto, the player received from Detroit in the Jhonny Peralta trade, threw 5.1 innings with nine strikeouts (!), two walks, three hits and only one run allowed. The Captains took the lead for good in the sixth inning, after the speedster Delvi Cid singled and stole second. Then the Indians’ 2009 17th round pick Casey Frawley had a big, two-out RBI single to break the tie.
Already mastering the post-game quote machine, the 23 year old Frawley said, “I was doing my best to get a hit. I took advantage of a fastball he left over the plate and hit it up the middle.”
After struggling in the second half of the season, Frawley had a nice showing in the postseason, batting .326 with six runs scored and five RBI in the Captains 11 playoff games.
The Captains added an insurance run in the seventh, and relied on reliever Preston Guilmet for a three-inning save, just one night after the bullpen imploded in the eighth inning to force a fifth game.
Manager Ted Kubiak said of Guilmet’s performance, “He was the guy. He’s the guy to go to. He was ready to pitch three or four tonight. That’s his thing, he’s done a great job all season for us. He was the guy we needed and he did it.”
Lake County became the second Indians affiliate to win their respective championship this year, less than a week after the Columbus Clippers took home the IL Championship last week (more on them at 2PM today).
Congratulations to the Captains; I saw them play several times this season, and while they never overwhelmed me with talent, they played hard, fundamental baseball. A sign of a good manager and high quality kids. Always a good time at Classic Park.
And considering the respective ages of most of the players, I assume they celebrated with juice boxes and Chuck E Cheese pizza well past bedtime.
UPDATE: Tony Lastoria has some great video of the last out and the locker room celebration over at Indians Prospect Insider. You should definitely head over there to check it out. Here’s a taste:
Those sure don’t look like juice boxes to me…
Photo Credit: milb.com
14 Comments
When’s the parade ?
DEY TURK R JERBS!!!!
/everybody, back in the pile
well, I would rather the minor league teams do well and feed those productive players to the Tribe.
at least we have a source of hope/optimism.
(now if players could actually start translating their minor league success to the majors on the Indians, then we would be set)
THATS IT IM STARTING REMEMBERINGLASTYEAR.COM
good job kids.
This should be on the who gives a $#%# Channel.
oh, good, I can stop being bitter.
ah well, congrats to them!
So the only local minor league baseball team that didn’t win this year was the Cleveland Indians?
Congrats to the Captains though !
@7 – your joke lost any chance to be funny when you forgot to include the Akron Aeros.
@8…you are forgetting…Akron is WAY different from Cleveland. Those Cleveland kids made fun of Akron when LBJ was a youngster. Clearly, Akron doesn’t count.
now that is how you do it 🙂
What about the Cleveland Crunch?! They won the NPSL back in ’95, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6RvZ86wpIk
GOOOOOO Captains! It was a fabulous finish to a great season!
@mglobe Last time I checked, Eastlake is a whole lot closer than Akron. So yes, I purposfully didn’t include the Aeros.
Sorry you didn’t get the joke.
@ #9, LOL that was good.
Im surprised only 1400 people showed up for the game. I get that its A-Ball and everything, but you’d think they would get a decent crowd for a championship game. Oh well, I guess people only give a crap about the Captains when there’s fireworks after the game.