Jackfish ready for Royals
The Welland Jackfish don’t have much time to enjoy their quarter-final series win over the Kitchener Panthers.
The defending Intercounty Baseball League champions topped the Panthers 11-5 Tuesday night to take the best-of-five quarter-final series 3-1 and are already preparing to face the Guelph Royals in a best-of-five semifinal beginning Thursday night in Welland.
“Ideally, to get another day or two off would have been great but on the flip side of that, we’re built to play multiple games, multiple days. We have the pitching and depth in our lineup,” Jackfish manager Brian Essery said.
The Jackfish were upset in Game 1 of the quarter-final 3-2 in extra innings before regrouping to win three straight games, all in convincing fashion.
“Definitely a wake-up call,” Essery said. “Nothing was going to be handed to us and we know that going through the rigours of the playoffs the last two, three seasons when we’ve been in the semifinals and finally broke through last year and won.
“We know how hard it is to win.”
The Jackfish’s normally potent lineup was silent in Game 1 before breaking out with 41 runs in the final three games.
“We just weren’t ourselves that first game. We had great pitching but we didn’t get the timely hits. Games 2-3-4 you saw that was a complete performance by our team on both sides of the ball. The bats came through, which we knew they would at some point, and our pitching stayed true to form,” Essery said.
The Royals finished the regular season with a 24-18 mark before sweeping Chatham-Kent 3-0 in the first round of the playoffs. Welland swept the regular season series versus Guelph 4-0.
“We’re rolling pretty good right now, but that being said, Guelph’s a much tougher challenge than Kitchener,” Essery said. “Guelph’s pitching is very, very good — they led the league in pitching this year— their starters are very, very good. They have high-end guys like we do so we expect every game to be a tight game. I think it’s going to be a real tough series on both sides.”
Essery feels his squad is built to win close games with about half the team’s 32 regular season wins requiring a save.
“You have to win those 3-2, 4-3, games, which we did in the playoffs last year,” he said. “We know how to win those and we’ve won them all season. We can win those tight games and I really like our chances with our back end of the bullpen if we’re leading games late.”
Ben Abraham will start on the mound Thursday followed by Teodoro Ortega in Game 2 and Enrique Saldana in Game 3.
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