Wingnuts advance to championship

The Wingnuts may have been wise to use cheap champagne Sunday night.

After beating Laredo 5-4 at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium to claim the best-of-five American Association division series in four games, the Wingnuts celebrated in much the same fashion as the previous two seasons, when they also advanced to the league championship series.

They’re hoping an even bigger celebration is to come.

“A lot of guys have never experienced this before,” Wichita outfielder Carlo Testa said. “I can’t imagine what (a championship) would be like.”

The Wingnuts begin the championship series Wednesday at either Lincoln or Winnipeg. Those September destinations are familiar — the Wingnuts lost to Winnipeg for the championship in 2012 and fell in the first round to eventual champion Lincoln in 2009 — and so is the path taken to get there.

For the second straight season, the Wingnuts set the league wins record and sailed through an opening-round postseason series as the heavy favorites to win it all, only to be dispatched without a taste — or a spray — of the championship champagne.

A five-game series doesn’t definitively determine the best team from a season whose postseason teams were determined over 100 games in four months, but the Wingnuts seem to have their best chance yet. Their .731 winning percentage equates to 118 wins over a 162-game major-league regular season.

“I’m hoping it’s our time,” Wingnuts manager Kevin Hooper said. “As I always say, if you continue to put yourself in the situation, it’s bound to happen. I always say that when you get the playoffs, whether it’s at this level or the big leagues, you just kind of throw the cards out there, and you know how baseball works sometimes.

“Obviously the last few years I’ve felt like we’ve had the best team, we just fell short. But these boys are hungry, they’re excited. It’s been a special year and I hope we can finish this thing off.”

Sunday, the Wingnuts held on after going ahead 5-2 on Brent Clevlen’s two-out solo home run in the bottom of the fifth. The nature in which the Wingnuts took that three-run lead may have helped them preserve it, as their bullpen rediscovered the energy that the offense found in earlier innings.

Laredo tied it 2-2 in the fourth on Devin Goodwin’s RBI single, a lead that proved as short-lived as many taken against the Wingnuts this season. On the first pitch of the bottom of the fourth, Testa went opposite field for a homer off the scoreboard in left-center.

Testa rounded the bases on a near-sprint, and the rest of the offense followed his lead. Chris McMurray doubled, scoring on a hit by Jake Luce, who nearly scored on an error during the play before being called out at home on a close play.

An inning later, Clevlen lined his homer out to left field, making it 5-2. Abel Nieves followed with a single, Wichita’s final hit — they failed to score on five walks over the final three innings.

“He was fired up, too,” Hooper said of Testa. “He kind of got the guys going again, too. It was back-and-forth. We knew it was going to be a battle. They play us tough and vice-versa. All these playoff games have been close.”

Laredo scored two in the seventh against tiring Wingnuts starter Celson Polanco, who began to labor as he faced the Lemurs’ lineup for the fourth time. Polanco left with runners on first and third and two outs in the seventh, giving reliever Chris Peacock the first crack at finding the energy established by Testa.

Peacock escaped the jam, and two other relievers combined to allow one baserunner, sending the Wingnuts to yet another championship series.

“I hope we get that opportunity (to win a championship),” said Hooper, in his sixth year as Wichita manager. “I haven’t experienced that yet as a manager. This organization deserves it, from top to bottom …I feel like we do things the right way and that’s why we’ve been successful.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2014 at 11:05 PM with the headline "Wingnuts advance to championship."