EVERETT — Monday’s game between the Everett AquaSox and Tri-City Dust Devils marked the beginning of a critical series for the playoff aspirations of both teams.
Going into Monday’s games, Everett and Tri-City were locked in a three-way tie with the Vancouver Canadians for first place in the Northwest League’s North Division with records of 15-15. There were eight games remaining in the first half of the NWL season. The first-half champion qualifies for the playoffs.
The Dust Devils currently hold the tiebreaker over both Everett and Vancouver, but a three-game sweep at home would give the AquaSox the edge over Tri-City.
“Yeah, no doubt,” Frogs manager Rob Mummau said when asked if the topic had been addressed in the clubhouse. “If you’re not talking about it, then you’re not trying. We’re definitely out to win the first half and play our best.”
Going into Monday’s game Everett was 2-4 against Tri-City this season and 2-1 against Vancouver to hold the tiebreaker over the Canadians. A season ago the Dust Devils won the first-half division title with the AquaSox taking the second half-title. Tri-City then swept Everett in the North Division playoffs before falling to the Hillsboro Hops in three games in the NWL championship series.
Needless to say the Frogs would prefer to wrap up a playoff spot by the time the first concludes with next Monday’s game at Salem-Keizer.
“This series is huge against Tri-City,” Everett outfielder Eric Filia said. “As long as we build into that mentality of winning each pitch and winning each inning, we have the capability of doing something very good.”
Team meeting led to bounce-back
The AquaSox lost three of the first four games in their recent series against the Hops in Oregon. The losses in games three and four were particularly disappointing as the Frogs blew late leads in both games to spoil good outings from starting pitchers Brandon Miller and Ljay Newsome.
“That’s baseball,” Mummau said. “You’re going to play it every day and you’re going to have days like that. It happened to us a couple times, but you just got to bounce back and see how resilient these guys are.”
That led to a team meeting prior to Sunday’s series finale. The Frogs regrouped and got solid outings from pitchers Reggie McClain and Matt Festa, who each threw four scoreless innings as part of a piggy-back start. Marvin Gorgas struck out two in the ninth to pick up his second save.
Filia doubled to lead off the fourth and scored the game’s only run on an RBI groundout by Yojhan Quevedo.
“That was a big, big win and it showed a lot of who we are as a team,” Filia said. “We have a lot of tough ones, a couple of losses that were kind of shaky. But you have that in a long season like this. You win some and you lose some.”
Frogs to visit Safeco Field
Today’s game begins at 11:05 a.m. as part of Kid’s Day festivities at Everett Memorial Stadium.
But the Frogs have another incentive to get the game finished early: They are scheduled to attend Tuesday night’s Seattle Mariners-Chicago White Sox game at Safeco Field.
“Hopefully we get down there early enough for batting practice and get a little tour,” Mummau said. “It’s good for the kids.”
It will be the first trip to Safeco for many of the players, who hail from all over the United States in addition to Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
Notes
Outfielder Austin Grebeck was not in the starting lineup Monday for the second straight night. Grebeck was hit in the shoulder by a pitch in Saturday’s game, though he did appear as a defensive replacement and had one at-bat in Sunday’s game. … Infielder Donnie Walton was held out of the starting lineup for a third consecutive game with a sore arm. However, Walton did take batting practice and was in uniform.
For the latest AquaSox news follow Jesse Geleynse on Twitter @jessegeleynse.
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