When a David fells a Goliath, the earth tends to shake with the mighty thud of the fallen giant. And so it was at Centennial Stadium yesterday when the El Paso Dawgs drubbed the reigning WPK champions, the Denver Brewers, and earned the first WPK title in the history of their often beleaguered club.
Let's face it, even Brewers fans had to be pulling for these upstarts just a little. Though they probably would have preferred a well played, tightly contested game 7 loss rather than getting humiliated in game 6.
Sekien Hamasaki gave up 8 runs (though only 4 were earned) on 8 hits in just 2 innings pitched before giving way to veteran left-hander
Erik Sloan, who settled things down a bit, giving up just 1 run on 3 hits over his 2 and 2/3rds. The bullpen was quite good after that with only
Ben Flynn giving up 1 run in 1 2/3rds innings pitched, and the Brewers offense battled back a bit late in the game to make the final score look a little less lopsided than the game really was. But make no mistake about it, the better team (or at least the team that played much better) won.
Veteran third baseman Trevor Leach had waited a long time, over the course of 8 seasons playing for the Pittsburgh Roadrunners and now in his 4th season as a Dawg, and he was ready when the chance finally came, earning the series MVP honors, and well deserved it was.
As for the Brewers- there were certainly some who had a good series:
Brett Taranto (.391/.444/.565),
Joe McPhillips (.350/.500/.400), Josh Schaeffer (.375/.545/.563), and even rookie
Jose Figueroa, whose 3 for 5 day in this final game of the series boosted his slash line to .350/.350/.400. The two catchers,
Zacarias Martell and
Kirk Patnode also did quite well. Not so good was
Val Guzman (.056/.105/.111) or
Jake DiCesare (.190/.190/.429) or
Antonio Acuna (.200/.182/.200), or, well, any starting pitcher not named
Jim Atwell.