It’s pretty amazing: the Columbus Clippers won the Triple-A National Championship Game for the second year in a row, beating Omaha by a score of 8-3 on Tuesday night at Isotopes Park in Albuquerque.
The Triple-A Championship Game is a pretty recent creation, but it seems that back-to-back champions should be very rare. Consider the fact that Triple-A rosters have nearly 100% turnover from year-to-year, consider that the teams had to run the gamut of the league playoffs, and consider the fickle nature of a one-game championship – you see where I’m going with this.
Despite all of that, in the six years the game has existed, we have had back-to-back champions twice. Sacramento won two straight in 2007-2008.
Last night Omaha – the visiting team – scored three runs in the top of the first – but they did not score again against Columbus starter Joe Martinez.
Columbus tied the game in the bottom of the second inning when catcher Luke Carlin launched a three-run home run off Omaha starter Sean O’Sullivan. The Clippers then took the lead with a three-run rally in the bottom of the third, with Jared Goedert delivering the go-ahead RBI single.
Attendance looked good on TV – they announced 9,569 in Albuquerque. Next year the game will be in Durham. Perhaps some day we’ll host the game in Tacoma – although I believe that we’ll get the Triple-A All-Star Game first (and that won’t be for a while).
Links:
- We have the story on the Triple-A Championship Game from MiLB.com.
- As far as I can tell the only Mariners beat writer who travelled to Minnesota is Greg Johns of Mariners.com. Here is his story from last night’s win, in which Alex Liddi hit a two-run homer and Mike Carp went 5-for-5. Ex-Rainiers Wooo!
- The Mariners and 710 AM ESPN Seattle extended their broadcast agreement through 2014.
- I was surprised to see Mariners outfield prospect Guillermo Pimentel ranked so low in Baseball America’s list of top prospects from the Appalachian League.
- Ex-Rainiers slugger Bryan LaHair was named the Chicago Cubs Minor League Player of the Year.
- From Baseball Prospectus, we have research proving that certain catchers are better at getting borderline pitches called strikes, and much of it is due to catching mechanics. Not surprising: Molinas are good at this.
- Over at the The News Tribune, Ryan Divish has written his best story since they switched his coverage to UW football and hoops.*
With that game last night, the Minor League Baseball season is officially over. Don’t worry, dear readers – the blog lives on! We’ll follow the Mariners down to the end, and the MLB playoffs. I also have a few ideas jotted down here on my desk, and I’ll share one with you: a thorough look at the numbers to see how much the lowered fences at Cheney Stadium affected scoring this year. That story is coming… soon?
* I’m just kidding – he’s been churning out all kinds of good stuff. His Huskies blog on the TNT site is mandatory reading for fans of all teams in the Pac-10 Pac-16 Pac-12.
Mike, Although the stadium has much improved I believe that there is not enough seating to get either the all star or AAA championship game here.
They need to build that outfield bleacher section they omitted during the renovation; that would increase the seating capacity (would like to see it bumped up to around 9,000). Maybe then we’ll have a shot at the 2013 AAA All Star game and maybe the AAA championship game down the road.. I heard that Reno also is bidding to host the 2013 game. If Tacoma wants to host this game, I feel that all parties involved need to step it up. It would be nice to have it at New Cheney in two years.
The all-star game is in Reno in 2013 – that’s a done deal. The earliest we could get it in Tacoma is 2015. I don’t believe seating capacity would be an issue.