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Corredor Grand Slam Sends Potomac to Mills Cup Finals

Potomac back to the Carolina League finals for the first time since 2014

After hours (days) of rain, a power outage, and a grand slam from first baseman Aldrem Corredor, the Potomac Nationals will advance to the Mills Cup for the first time since 2014 with a 6-2 win over the Lynchburg Hillcats.

The 1:05 p.m. game began at 6:14 p.m. in front of a crowd that was about 1,000 less than the claimed attendance. By 6:18 p.m. the teams were in another delay as the lights went out on a strike-three swing to the Hillcats’ Mitch Longo.

But after about 10 minutes, and the F.P. Santangelo Fan Club settled down, the lights came back on and the game resumed.

Lynchburg drew first blood against Jackson Tetreault in the 2nd as Jorma Rodriguez doubled off the glove of a diving Jack Sundberg in deep left-center field to drive in Anthony Miller, who was able to score all the way from 1st on the two-out knock.

While twice more an P-Nats infielder would falter and allow a runner to reach second, Tetreault was equal to the task over covering for their errors and delivered five innings of one-run ball without a walk and five strikeouts.

The same could not be said for the Hillcats’ Eli Morgan, who gave up a single to Ian Sagdal then a double to Tres Barrera that Mitch Longo briefly mistook for a hand grenade but not before Sagdal was able to score all the way from first. Corredor grounded out to second to push Barrera to third.

The Potomac backstop scored when his counterpart, Gavin Collins, did his best imitation of Raudy Read as he let a pitch in the dirt skip past and then ran like a tortoise after it, which allowed Barrera to lumber down the line for the go-ahead score.

Ben Braymer replaced Tetreault in the 6th and once again dominated Lynchburg for six whiffs and three scoreless innings. Potomac threatened in both the 6th and 7th innings, but Roughlas Odor was able to pull the strings on his pitchers to quash both threats… until the 8th.

After Luis Garcia drew a one-out walk to reach base for the third time in the game, Odor brought in Dalbert Siri for his second appearance in the series. A passed ball by Collins forced Siri to issue an intentional walk to Sagdal. An unintentional walk to Barrera loaded the bases.

Corredor simply needed to get the ball to outfield, perhaps not even that deep because the Lynchburg outfielders had shown repeatedly that a good throw was not common. When the ball left the bat, it looked like another deep fly that the cold, damp air would keep in the confines of the Pfitz. But it kept carrying, enough for a split second it looked like the ball had bounced off the wall instead of just beyond it.

To their credit, the Hillcats did not roll over in the 9th: they scratched out a run against Jacob Condra-Bogan on three singles before the big fella got the last batter on a one-hop smash to the mound and tossed over to Corredor for the final out.

Potomac is scheduled to play Buies Creek, winners of the Southern Division series in three straight, tomorrow and Wednesday before returning to the Pfitz on Thursday. It’s worth noting that a year ago, with Hurricane Irma barreling towards the East Coast, the Carolina League shortened the CLDS to a best-of-three and declared Down East and Lynchburg co-champions.

As of this writing, Hurricane Florence is doing the same. While Buies Creek is likely far enough inland to avoid the wind, the rain may affect both locations, particularly in Woodbridge later this week.

24 Commments

  1. Luke maybe Hurrucane Florence will be kind to fans like Florence Henderson as Mama Brady
    I still cannot help mentioning that big GS Michael Barrett can recall Milton Bradley hitting for Harrisburg vs the Yankees AA affiliate then ( Albany ??)??
    Luke we know the season has been long on the dog loving baseball advocate but the barbs on folks like Read is very
    Don Rickles. Lol. Lmao

      2. I noticed Goodwin had two hits for KC tonight who is employing Ryan O” Hearn @ 1b , a Sam Houston State alum just like Blake Chisholm .

  2. Maybe the loudspeakers should play the hook line from Sinatra ‘s Lady is a Tramp pre game. ” it’s cold and damp outside. … she don’t like the cold in California.
    Lord knows coffee can’t warm the bones some nights. Kudos to the guys playing in this weather which is not West Palm Beach March too shelf
    Granted many folks just brewing their coffee right now

  4. Bravo to the P-Nats! Lots of perseverance through some nasty conditions. Don’t how long they’ll keep it up, but the team postgame photo on their site is pretty awesome:

    https://www.milb.com/potomac

    I do have to scratch my head over why Keister keeps insisting that Mejia (career OBP of .292) lead off, much less why he used Mejia as the DH while Agustin didn’t even play in the last three games of the series.

    As for the forecast, Buies Creek is actually right in the heart of the area where they fear the hurricane might stall and drop biblical amounts of rain. The odds of this final round getting cancelled are quite strong.

    1. Kw. Isn’t this all about infield rotation to get Monestary Man in the flow ? Much like Anderson rotated the infield assets before Garcia promotion and after – Meregildo and Franco rotation on the hot corners too

    2. The problem for Buies Creek is right there in the name–“creeks” have a habit of turning into raging rivers during hurricanes.

  5. Is Ben Braymer going places or just an A-ball flash in the pan? I suspect we will find out next season. Ditto Aldrem Corredor, who may finally be locking it in a year or two behind schedule.

    Congrats to the P-Nats on a great and hard-fought series win.

    1. Braymer is going to the AFL, where he’ll face a stepped-up level of competition. He may be a bit “old for the level” where he is now, but he struggled at Hags in 2017, so it made sense to start him there in ’18, then move him up a level.

      His mixed usage also seems to beg the question of whether the Nats see him as a reliever or as a starter.

      2. I strongly suspect we’re going to see it becoming more typical for teams to use pitchers like Hellickson and Ryne Stanek the way we’ve seen them deployed this season, as one- to four-inning “openers” or twice-through guys. Hellickson was worth a couple wins above replacement this year despite rarely pitching all the way through the sixth inning, much less the seventh as well. The Rays didn’t bother fielding a full rotation all season and they’ve got a better record than the Nats do. The times, they are a-changin’. Braymer could be part of that if he can be a really good four-inning pitcher at those higher levels.

        1. You see the co-starter thing in the minors all the time, with each guy working 3-4 innings. I wonder whether the Nats would consider re-signing Hellickson and intentionally pairing him with Ross in such an arrangement for 2019.

          1. I was looking , Luke, for the Mills Cup playoff roster to include Luis Reyes to ” spring like pitching conga line” co- starter with Joan Not17 Baez. Lol
            Luke that’s sarcasm which you enjoy

          2. Good idea KW. Repeat repeat the sage baseball saying. One NEVER has enough pitching. Thus we should never chuckle @ the collection of depth assets with names ranging from Dragmire to Darnell. Like flipping used cars. You never know what Fassero you might have in the handful .

      3. ‘Old for the level’ is relevant to hitters, not so much pitchers.
        Braymer is worth getting excited about, especially since he’s a 18th round pick.

        1. I do think “old for the level” does matter for pitchers in particular when you’ve got larger, physically imposing guys like Braymer and Crowe. It becomes much less of a deal at AA-AAA, though, other than the career clock ticking a little faster.

      4. I think once they decided to send him to the AFL they put him in the ‘pen to reduce his workload—as others noted, he’s never thrown as much as he has this season.

        2. I was looking , Luke, for the Mills Cup playoff roster to include Luis Reyes to ” spring like pitching conga line” co- starter with Joan Not17 Baez. Lol
          Luke , we are both Swedish. Names both ending in SON

  6. Seems grossly unfair to Potomac for the Mills Cup to go from a best of 5 where you have home field advantage to a single winner take all game where you don’t have home field advantage. Carolina League should probably have just declared co-champions.
    (score is still 0-0 as I post this, so not sour grapes, yet)

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