Wichita Wind Surge hope to find their power at home Friday in must-win playoff game
The Wichita Wind Surge will need to win three straight games at Riverfront Stadium this weekend in order to capture the Minor League Baseball Double-A Central championship.
Wichita finds itself in a 2-0 hole in the best-of-five championship series against the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, following 7-5 and 5-1 losses Tuesday and Wednesday in Springdale, Arkansas.
With the series shifting back to Wichita for a must-win Game 3 at Riverfront Stadium at 7:05 p.m. Friday, the players are still confident they can pull off what would be a magical run to a league title.
“We definitely need a packed house and for everybody to get fired up,” Wind Surge outfielder Trey Cabbage said. “This is what you play all season for. It’s a long season. We’ve been playing since May and we’ve been training for this since 2020. This is what it all comes down to.”
To get back in the series, Wichita hopes to showcase some of the power that made the Wind Surge a dominant hitting team in August when they smashed 50 home runs — 10 more than the next-closest team in the 10-team league.
The players give credit to the Minnesota Twins’ organization’s commitment to baseball analytics, which has helped players better understand the game and the advanced scouting reports help them look for pitches they may see at the plate.
“When we get the scouting report, we have all of the pitches, his velo(city), his heat maps,” Cabbage said. “It gives you an idea of what to look for when you walk up to the plate, instead of going up there and just seeing what he throws you. Now we know what it’s going to look like, what window it’s going to be coming from, all of that. Now we have an idea of what we can jump.”
Wind Surge hitting coach Ryan Smith said he has been impressed by how receptive the players in Wichita have been this summer. It also helps having powerful hitters like Jermaine Palacios, Andrew Bechtold and Trey Cabbage, who have combined to hit 55 home runs this season.
Wichita finished the season with the most hits and the highest batting average in the league.
“We tell them that a good hitter swings at the right pitches, good pitches, takes balls out of the strike zone and they hit the ball hard when they get the opportunity,” Smith said. “We’re trying to figure out how we can make these guys big leaguers.
“And we just have a lot of guys here who can rake. When you get a bunch of good hitters that are good baseball players and they buy into what we do as an organization, then you’re going to see a lot of balls leave the yard.”
While the players may study launch angles and exit velocity to prepare for the games, Cabbage said those are just tools for preparation. They don’t actively think about them while they’re up at the plate.
“It’s incredibly hard to hit a baseball to begin with and it’s even harder to hit home runs,” Cabbage said. “All we do is try to put ourselves in the best positions to do the damage we want to do. You can’t go up there thinking, ‘I’ve got to hit this ball at 25 degrees at 98 mph and it’s going to go out.’ Then you’re sitting there and you try to manipulate your swing and it changes your approach.
“We’ve got a lot of guys with a lot of pop. We want to do a lot of damage, even if that’s not home runs every time. Our approach is to stay loose, stay aggressive and trust the process.”
If Wichita continues to win this weekend, then the Wind Surge would host the Naturals for Game 4 at 7:05 p.m. Saturday night and then for a decisive Game 5 at 5:05 p.m. Sunday night.
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