Wichita Wind Surge’s inaugural season comes to a close with championship series loss
The inaugural season of the Wichita Wind Surge nearly had a perfect ending.
Wichita dominated Minor League Baseball’s Double-A Central standings for almost the entire summer and clinched the No. 1 playoff seed with nearly a week to go in the regular season.
But the Wind Surge came up short in the best-of-five championship series this week, losing three straight games to the Northwest Arkansas Naturals. The final blow came at Riverfront Stadium on Friday night when the Wind Surge lost 6-2.
Wichita finished its inaugural season with a 69-51 regular-season record, which was more than four games better than the rest of the competition in the 10-team Double-A Central.
But that dominance didn’t translate to the postseason, as the Naturals, the Royals’ Double-A affiliate and the franchise that was formerly known as the Wichita Wranglers, swept the championship series.
On Friday, Wichita took a 1-0 lead when Jermaine Palacios drilled a 405-foot homer over the left-field fence in the bottom of the second inning.
But Northwest Arkansas grabbed the momentum from there, tying the game in the third inning and then throwing out the would-be go-ahead run at the plate in the bottom half. A grand slam in the fourth inning staked Northwest Arkansas to a 5-1 lead and the Naturals never looked back.
Palacios led Wichita at the plate with a 3-for-4 performance, while the bullpen of Kody Funderburk and Jordan Gore combined to toss five innings and allowed just one earned run.
.jpg)