If you’re a Seattle area sports fan it’s been a tough summer. You’ve seen the Sonics leave for Oklahoma City and the Mariners plummet to the bottom of the American League.
But if there is something to cure those blues it might be the Mill Creek Little League All Stars who are legitimate contenders for the Little League World Series title.
For the first time in its 14-year history, Mill Creek is in the Series and it’s the sixth time a team from Washington has made it. The last team to make it was Redmond North in 2004. Kirkland won it in 1982.
“I know we have to step up our game if we want to win,” Mill Creek second baseman Dan Kingma said. “I just want to do my job and hope everybody else does theirs. We just set our goals to win this tournament right here. We know our work is not done yet. One last tournament and we’re world champions. We’re just trying our best to win this tournament.”
Mill Creek opens play at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, Saturday in Williamsport, Pa. against South Lake Charles Little League of Lake Charles, La.
Before the state tournament, the Mill Creek players said they believed they could make it to the Series.
“They believed it and they followed through and they reached it,” manager Scott Mahlum said. “You have an exceptional group of athletes who have athletic ability, God-given talent. Hard work is the next thing. The third and most important thing is the confidence they have.”
The team’s hitting, pitching and defense dominated the Northwest regional as it outscored opponents 80-8.
“I feel pretty confident going into the Little League World Series,” said pitcher/shortstop Jason Todd, who went 3-0 with a 1.29 ERA and hit .556 at regionals. “There’s going to be even better hitters here. The regional was good but the Little League World Series is even better.”
Todd said he saw some of the South Lake Charles players on his first day in Williamsport and sized them up.
“They’re pretty big just like us,” he said. “I don’t know if they’re pitching is dominant or their hitting is, but we’ll just go at them. (Our) hitting should be a great thing. We’re putting a lot of runs on the board. We’ve got pitching to back it up and defense which is really key.”
In 1999, Mill Creek made it to the Northwest regional tournament with an 11-year-old Travis Snider who is now playing in the Toronto Blue Jays farm system. In 2002, the league qualified again, led by 12-year-old Danny Oh, who will play for the University of California-Berkeley on a baseball scholarship next year. But after going 6-0 in the regional tournament, this is the first group to make it to Williamsport.
“We played pretty close to as perfect a tournament as a coach or manager could hope,” Mahlum said.
To advance to the U.S. semifinals, Mill Creek has to finish in the top two in its pool which includes South Lake Charles of Louisiana, Hagerstown Federal of Maryland, and Jefferson/GRC American of Indiana. Mahlum said he plans to watch some game tape and do some scouting before Mill Creek plays South Lake Charles at Howard J. Lamade Stadium, a game that will be broadcast on ESPN.
If there is tie in pool play, the first tie breaker would be runs allowed divided by innings played—the team with the lowest average per inning would win the tiebreaker. The second tiebreaker is head-to-head play within the pool.
Mill Creek’s bread-and-butter is its pitching staff led by Ryan Todd, Derrick Mahlum, Alec Kisena and Joakim Soderqvist, but the offensive explosion at regionals left people in awe.
The team struggled with plate discipline in its second game against Montana, swinging at too many pitches in the dirt, before winning 10-4 in extra innings, but those struggles didn’t last long.
“Ever since that game we really caught fire and we’ve done well, hitting for power and average,” Scott Mahlum said. “The Montana game, that game opened our eyes and scared ‘em. It showed them they can’t just show up.”
Soderqvist led Mill Creek in the regional tournament with a .714 average and four home runs. He added 10 RBI. Mahlum added three home runs and 11 RBI and hit .474. Alex Jondal led Mill Creek with 14 RBI and three doubles and hit .438.
“I think during state it was kind of on and off but before the championship game that’s when our bats started clicking,” said Kisena, who hit two of Mill Creek’s 12 home runs and had 12 RBI at regionals. “Everybody’s been saying our hitting is contagious. It happens to be true that once a couple people start hitting everybody starts clicking.”
As far as the pitching goes, Mahlum is not sure who he will throw first, but Todd, Mahlum and Kisena figure to be at the forefront of the rotation.
“During that whole tournament there wasn’t one game where our pitching wasn’t phenomenal,” Mahlum said. “Pitching and defense was lights out.”
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