It started with an error. And then another. And then another. By the time the Hunters recorded the first out in the top of the first inning Saturday night, the Los Angeles Queens were up 7-0 (a run scored on the out, of course). By the time Boston came to bat, LA was up 8-0. The Hunters closed it to 9-6 after the bottom of the fifth, but even that inning saw them give away multiple outs, and they only managed one baserunner thereafter.
After the game, manager Jemile Weeks put a positive spin on everything. To hear him tell it, starter Alli Schroder “pitched a great game … initially,” but was let down by her defense (half true), and his team showed a lot of fight (four of their six runs came in an inning in which they had one hit and gave away two outs). What else can you say as the manager of a team that just fell to 4-10 and whose only guaranteed games remaining this year are all against a team it has yet to defeat?
The truth is, the Queens, for whom this was the final game of the regular season, treated the game like a warmup for the postseason, yet the Hunters were still never really in it, largely because of their own mistakes.
It started innocently enough. Schroder got Queens leadoff hitter Samaria Benítez to ground to short. Hunters shortstop Raine Padgham gloved the ball awkwardly, then threw high to first base allowing Benítez to reach on an error, but Boston first baseman Maïka Dumais made a nice leaping catch of Padgham’s throw to keep Benítez at first. It could have been worse
Then Queens shortstop Ayuri Shimano singled, as did LA third baseman Ashton Lansdell, who drove in Benítez. On Lansdell’s single, center fielder Lexi Hastings, who charged in to field the hit, had the ball fly out of her glove when she went to grab it with her throwing hand, allowing Shimano to reach third. Lansdell then stole second, and Hunters catcher Hyeonah Kim’s throw sailed into center field, plating Shimano and sending Lansdell to third. Before the second pitch to the fourth hitter in the top of the first inning, the Hunters had made three errors and were trailing 2-0 with a runner on third and no one out.
The inning spiraled from there. Schroder walked Jamie Mackey and gave up a ringing RBI double to Caitlin Eynon. Sarah Edwards and Isabella Villarreal each followed with RBI hits. Two more walks forced in another run. The lineup turned over before Schroder recorded the first out, and the Queens ultimately sent 13 hitters to the plate, scoring eight runs, five of them earned.
Weeks left Schroder in there the entire time, and she finished the inning (and, mercifully, her night) with 50 pitches thrown. In the Hunters’ previous game, Boston starter Kate Blunt threw 42 pitches in a similar second inning. Even that felt like too many.
Asked about those pitch totals after the game, Weeks made no distinction between total pitches in an inning and total pitches in a game, telling reporters, “We have our internal number. [Schroder has] definitely thrown 50 pitches in a game more than once this season, so we knew what type of, if I can say, what type of dog we had on the mound. Alli doesn’t want to come out of the game … We knew how far we could take her. We didn’t take her too far. We took her within the limits that she was able to do.”
The pitchers in the WPBL may not throw as fast as those in MLB, but that doesn’t mean they’re not throwing as hard or with any less effort. In MLB, red flags go up when a pitcher reaches 30 pitches in an inning. Maybe that number is different in women’s baseball, but I found Weeks’s use of Schroder in this game to be unnecessarily reckless, particularly given that Saturday’s game was ultimately irrelevant in terms of the standings and playoff seeding.
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On the other side of the ball, the Queens’ plan for this game was to get each of their likely playoff starters a brief tune-up. That meant that the Hunters had to contend with a procession of LA’s best arms. Boston managed to score of off each of them, with Hastings connecting on Ayami Sato’s very first pitch for a solo home run (her team-leading third), then drawing a leadoff walk in Michelle Roche’s first inning and coming around to score on the Queens’ lone error of the game (a flub by first baseman Edwards on a grounder to first). Still, the Queens pushed across another run in the fourth with the help of Eynon’s second double of the game and were up 9-2 heading into the bottom of the fifth.
After two innings each from Sato and Roche, the Queens handed the ball to Ayuri Shimano, only for Shimano to reveal a sudden inability to throw the ball over the plate. Of course, it took some time for either team to realize that was what was going on. Shimano opened the inning by plunking Kim with a 3-1 pitch. That brought up Hastings who, with a catcher on first, her team down by seven runs, and a home run on her ledger already in this game, decided to try to bunt for a hit. (Weeks told reporters after the game that Hastings had “the autonomy” to do that, though he “would’ve liked to probably see her swing there.”) Instead, she popped the first pitch she saw from Shimano up to catcher Mackay for the first out.
Shimano then effectively handed the Hunters a pair of runs on four walks and a pair of wild pitches, the second of which plated both runs and put runners on second and third and two outs. Gabrielle Haas, making her first start of the year at third base, then delivered a two-RBI single to make it 9-6, but that was the Hunters’ only hit of the inning. If Hastings hadn’t given her at-bat away, and Kim hadn’t gotten back-picked down seven runs, the Hunters just might have clawed all the way back.
Instead, Shimano rallied to strike out second baseman Kate Blunt, and Queens closer Meggie Meidlinger came on in the sixth to shut the door with two scoreless innings (and her first plate appearance of the season, resulting in an inning-ending double play in the top of the seventh). Meanwhile, one more Hunters error, a bad throw by Haas at third, brought home another run for the Queens in the top of the sixth.
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The Queens finish the season tied with their semifinal opponent, the New York Heights, at 8-7 but are the third seed heading into the playoffs by virtue of having lost their season series against New York. Those two teams will open their best-of-three semifinal on Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern.
The Hunters, who have now lost four in a row and six of their last seven, will wrap up the first WPBL regular season tonight against the first-place San Francisco Firebells. The Firebells are responsible for half of the Boston losses I just mentioned, are 4-0 against Boston on the season and will host the Hunters in their semifinal beginning on Wednesday.
Asked what his approach would be against San Francisco in the regular season finale — Will he try to give his underused players playing time in preparation for the postseason? Will he rest some of his regulars? Will he try to avoid using the pitchers he hopes will lead his team to victory in the semifinal for fear of giving the Firebells an extra look at them? — Weeks told reporters, “We’re going to put a lineup up that we believe’s gonna win. We’re going to throw a pitcher that we believe’s gonna win. We’re going to throw a bullpen that we believe’s gonna win. And we’re going to go out every day believing we’re gonna win.”
I guess ya gotta believe.
Injury Updates:
Queens two-way outfielder Isabella Villarreal told reporters after the game that her left hamstring, which kept her out of action for most of the season’s first three weeks, is still “not 100%,” but that she has been doing physical therapy on it and seeing the trainers. Villarreal pitched three innings on Thursday and played all of Saturday’s game in left field (going 2-for-4 with a pair of RBI and a run scored), so she doesn’t appear to be limited all that much by the injury.
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Notes:
Queens manager Eric Young was away from his team on Saturday due to a family emergency. Assistant coach Emma Charlesworth-Seiler served as acting manager. Charlesworth-Seiler was not able to provide any further information after the game about Young or his potential return.
If there was one unalloyed positive for the Hunters in this game, it was the relief work of lefty Paloma Benach, who replaced Schroder in the second and allowed just one run and five baserunners over four innings. Benach’s outing was not only encouraging as an individual performance, it also saved the bullpen of the team that will have the least rest heading into the semifinals.
Heights infielder Val Perez, who was ejected from Friday night’s game, the Heights’ last of the 2026 regular season, did receive an automatic one-game suspension from the league, but she will not serve it during the playoffs. Rather, “at the commissioner’s discretion,” Perez will serve her suspension next season, per an announcement by the WPBL. That announcement appears to confirm that any ejection from a WPBL game, not just a managerial one, will trigger an automatic one-game suspension. Fortunately, commissioner Justine Siegal has the good sense to know that not all games are of equal value.
While guesting on the ESPN broadcast, Heights infielder Keira Izumi provided additional insight into the difficulty fielders have had with balls in the air at Robin Roberts Stadium this season. Izumi put some of the blame on the League’s 6:30 p.m. Central start time for its regular season games. “The sun starts out setting over the left-field bleachers, so [for] pretty much the entire right side of the infield and the outfield, anything on a line is impossible to see,” Izumi said. “Then this dusk time [Izumi made her comments at about 7:40 p.m.], when the lights aren’t super bright but its not very bright in the sky, the ball kind of disappears. Even on the mound, it’s super hard to see the catcher’s signs. On the infield, it takes a few seconds to see the ball off the bat. So that’s why we’ve seen so many dropped pop flies and stuff, couple blunders in the infield. I wouldn’t say you should attribute it to players’ abilities. It’s really quite difficult to see out there.”
In light of that, it’s interesting to note that the league is moving the start time to 6:00 p.m. Central for the postseason, with the exception of the Sunday games, which will start at 2 p.m. Central, and Game 2 of the Hunters-Firebells semifinal on Friday, which will start at 5 p.m. Central.
Those time changes won’t help the fielders deal with the turtleback nature of the field, however. In recent games, I’ve been able to more clearly see the steep slope down to the outfield that starts just behind the infield dirt. Izumi said that the total drop from the infield to where the outfielders typically play is 18 inches. For context, that’s more than half the length of the bats the players are using. I’m very curious to see how much better the league as a whole fields if the games are played elsewhere next season.
