The San Francisco Firebells clinched first place in the first ever Women’s Pro Baseball League regular season with an 8-5 win over the Boston Hunters Wednesday night in Springfield, Ill. With that, the Firebells secured the top seed heading into next week’s playoffs and will open the first ever WPBL postseason next Wednesday, Sept. 9, with homefield advantage throughout.
Leading the Firebells to victory Wednesday night was their captain, Kelsie Whitmore, who hit her league-leading 10th home run, pitched four strong innings to earn the win, and snuffed out a sixth-inning Boston rally with a sliding catch in center field. With all four teams making the playoffs, however, there was no champaign flowing after the game.
“Yeah, we’re the first seed, but we haven’t won it all yet,” Whitmore told The IX Sports. “Today, obviously, we were internally celebrating, but we just know there’s so much more left of this season, and we’re going to continue to stay on the grind. So, until we win it all, and that’s the goal, then we can celebrate. But … we’re on the grind right now.”
That “all gas and no breaks” approach, as Whitmore described it, was in evidence during the game, as the Firebells jumped out to an early 8-1 lead on the fourth-place Hunters, a team that has yet to defeat them this season.
Making her league-leading sixth start on the mound, Whitmore wasn’t as sharp as she was in her previous outing, but the only run she allowed in her four innings of work was a first-inning solo home run to Boston’s number-two hitter and third baseman Denver Bryant.
Bryant didn’t get to enjoy her first home run of the season for very long, however, as her fielding error in the top of the second helped open a five-run inning for San Francisco. With one out and right fielder Skylar Kaplan on first via a single, center fielder Ela Day-Bédard hit a chopper to third that Bryant played on her back foot only to have it deflect off the thumb of her glove, allowing Day-Bédard to reach.
Firebells third baseman Ayaka Yamamoto, making just her second start of the season, followed with a single to load the bases, and second baseman Amanda Gianelloni plated Kaplar with a sacrifice fly to left. That brought up Whitmore, who had been hit with ball four in her first at-bat in the top of the first. This time, she ran the count full against Boston starter Kate Blunt before reaching for a pitch away and tapping a low bouncer to shortstop, where Boston’s Raine Padgham, anticipating a higher hop, let the ball scoot under her glove and into the outfield to plate Day-Bédard and Yamamoto.
Having effectively induced four of the first six hitters of the inning to put balls into play that should have been outs (though only two of them were), Blunt struggled to nail down the third out. She walked Firebells shortstop Joely Leguizamon, got ahead of Sunday’s hero, Andréanne Leblanc, only to have her deliver an RBI single up the middle, walked catcher Alexia Jorge, and the gave up a single to Kaplan for the second time in the inning, this one plating another run.
By that point, Blunt was up to 56 pitches, though it was still just the second inning. After she finally got Jua Park to fly out to right (also for the second time in the inning), Blunt was at 59 pitches and finished for the night.
In the top of the third, the Firebells went right back to work against reliever Maïka Dumais, with Yamamoto delivering a one-out single over the leaping try of her namesake, Hunters second baseman Suzuka Yamamoto, and Gianelloni following with a walk. That brought up Whitmore for the third time in as many innings. For the third time she got ahead in the count. The 3-1 pitch from Dumais was a fastball up in the zone, and Whitmore deposited it on the far side of the left-field fence for a three-run home run to make it 8-1 Firebells.
Whitmore’s homer once again broke the tie atop the WPBL leaderboard, giving Whitmore 10 home runs to Heights catcher Denae Benites’s nine. Whitmore has hit those 10 home runs in the span of nine games and has homered in seven of the Firebells’ last nine contest. She also has an active 11-game hit streak.
Over the remaining four innings, the Hunters scored four unanswered runs to close the final score to 8-5, and the difference in the game may have been Boston’s sloppy play as much as the Firebells’ excellence.
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The Hunters made five fielding errors in this game. The two already mentioned opened up San Francisco’s big third inning. Dumais and lefty Olivia Bricker managed to pitch around three others. In the fourth, Bryant had another bounder deflect off her glove, and and a throw home from right fielder Molly Paddison got away from catcher Beth Greenwood. In the sixth, Bricker’s first inning of work, second baseman Suzuka Yamamoto had a hopper clank off her glove and roll far enough away to prevent her from recording an out.
What the Hunters couldn’t work around was a pair of baserunning blunders in the bottom of the fourth. Lexi Hastings, starting at designated hitter for the first time after an ugly game in the field last Friday, led of the frame with a walk but was picked off first by Whitmore, an inexcusable error when down 8-1. Padgham followed with a single, which made Hastings’ mistake hurt even more. After Whitmore struck out Greenwood, the former’s only strikeout of the night, Yamamoto dropped an infield single in front of Gianelloni’s attempted dive on the infield dirt, pushing Padgham to third, but was then thrown out attempting to steal second, which was just as inexcusable.
Hastings and Yamamoto let Whitmore off the hook, sending her out to center field with a tidy line of one run allowed in four innings. Had they run the bases more conservatively, the Hunters might have had the bases loaded with one out for the top of the order. As it was, the top of the Boston order pushed a run across against Firebells reliever Rosi del Castillo in the fifth, albeit with continued aggression on the bases in the form of a successful steal from Bryant following her one-out walk (Alli Schroder, starting at first base, singled her home).
Hastings made some small amends for her error in the sixth by leading off against righty Peyton Coria with her second home run of the season, but that one run was all the Hunters would manage in that inning despite putting runners on second and third with one out via a single from Greenwood and a double by Yamamoto. Coria rallied to strike out center fielder Gabrielle Haas for the second out. Bryant then followed with a floater to shallow right center that might have plated at least one of those runners, but Whitmore, now in the outfield, streaked in and made a sliding catch to strand both.
With their last licks in the bottom of the seventh, the Hunters again staged a rally and again fell well short, this time with the blunder coming from the bench. Again the Hunters put runners on second and third, this time with no outs via an infield single from Paddison that Leblanc couldn’t field cleanly and a ringing double by Schroder. Due up next was left fielder Ticara Geldenhuis, one of the Hunters best hitters and their only player with multiple home runs prior to Hastings hitting her second earlier in this game.
Instead, manager Jemile Weeks sent up pinch-hitter Paloma Benach, a pitcher who had yet to make a plate appearance this season. After the game, Weeks told The IX Sports that the decision to give Benach an at-bat in the final inning was decided, and communicated to Benach, earlier in the game when the score was more lopsided, and that he “didn’t see the urgency in the moment” to abandon that plan. Weeks did admit, however, “looking back, hindsight 20/20, maybe I back up on that and I use [Ticara] in that moment. But, again, that’s hindsight 20/20. I went with the feel, I went with what I thought could work in that moment, and you live and die by your decisions.”
Benach, put in an unfair position, in my opinion, struck out, and while the Hunters did plate those two runners on a groundout by Hastings and a single by Padgham, they ultimately fell short after giving away too many outs on both sides of the ball.
With the win, the Firebells improve to 4-0 against the Hunters. The two will conclude their regular season series on Sunday in the final game of the inaugural WPBL regular season. They are then very likely to meet again on Wednesday in the Semi-Finals.
About that: The WPBL still has not announced what tiebreaker it will use to determine the playoff seeding if any of its four teams are tied when the regular season concludes this Sunday. When asked if he knew what the tiebreaker was, Hunters manager Jemile Weeks told The IX Sports, “I think we’re going to address that shortly after this little stint, these next couple off days. So no, I wouldn’t be able to speak on the topic.”
However, the acknowledgement that the Firebells have clinched first place seems to confirm that the tiebreaker is head-to-head record (which is the most logical and obvious choice). That’s because it is still possible for the Firebells and Los Angeles Queens to both finish 9-6 (should the Queens win their two games this week and the Firebells lose their remaining two). If San Francisco has indeed clinched, it’s almost certainly because it won the season series against LA 3-2.
There are a number of other tiebreakers the Firebells will likely also hold over the Queens (more runs scored, fewer runs allowed, larger run differential, etc.), but none of those numbers are final yet. The head-to-head season series, however, is over. If the Firebells have clinched, which the players, managers, and broadcasters acknowledged Wednesday night they have, the tiebreaker must be head-to-head record.
If that is the case, it means the Hunters still have a slim chance to avoid finishing fourth, as it’s still possible for the Hunters and the New York Heights to finish with identical 6-9 records (if the Heights lose their two remaining games, and the Hunters win their remaining two, including one more against the Firebells) and the Hunters won that season series 3-2.
Still, the Heights’ magic number to avoid the WPBL cellar is one. One Heights win or one Hunters loss and Boston will finish fourth and find themselves right back up against the Firebells in an all-or-nothing, best-of-three Semi-Final next week, while the Heights and Queens will be locked into the other best-of-three Semi-Final, which starts on Thursday.
To that end, the Queens host the Heights tonight, and a New York win would not only set the postseason matchups, but would give New York and LA matching 7-7 records with one game left for each to play. It would also give New York the tiebreaker for the second seed, and thus potential homefield advantage against the Queens, as that series is currently tied 2-2. A Queens win, however, would clinch second place (and Semi-Final homefield) for LA and keep Boston alive for third place for at least one more day.
Injury Update:
Firebells manager Matt Williams told The IX Sports that two-way star Jill Albayati, who has been away at college for the last week and nursing a hamstring strain, is “feeling good. She’s working with physical therapists [in California], doing a little running on the treadmill.” Williams said Albayati will return to Springfield on Friday, at which point the team will assess her potential availability.
Notes:
Hunters captain Alli Schroder made her second start at first base in the last three games on Wednesday and has now gone 5-for-6 with a double, a walk, two RBI, and two runs scored in those two games. That suggests she’s likely to see more time in the batting order, after spending the first three full weeks of the season as a pitcher-only, while Boston’s previous primary first baseman, Dumais, who did not start this game, is likely to see more time as a pitcher-only.
Schroder told The IX Sports after the game: “I want to be two-way. I want to be able to contribute to my team when I’m not pitching, and that’s just kind of the player that I am. … Being able to be two-way, on the mound and then play the field and contribute at the plate, as well, is just something I’ve always wanted.”
Asked if she had any desire to hit in games she starts on the mound, something she has not yet done this season, Schroder, sitting next to her manager at the press conference table, shot Weeks a sheepish side-eye and replied, “Yes.”
With the Firebells clinching, manager Matt Williams, the 60-year-old veteran of 17 major-league seasons as a player, 13 more as a major-league coach and manager, and two as a manager in the Korea Baseball Organization, was reflective in the postgame press conference (certainly more so than his players), so I’ll give him the final word:
“This may be the most important job I’ve ever had,” Williams told reporters “My job is to try to enhance the capabilities of all the players, whatever that is. So I’m here to help. I’m here to manage the team. And I try to stay out of their way, because they know what they’re doing. At the same time, we’ve worked really hard to improve little aspects of everyone’s game. So, if I can do that, by the time this is all said and done, then I have accomplished my mission. I’m very proud of them. I’m proud of the way that they’ve worked. I’m proud of the way that they conduct themselves on the diamond. If they can continue to do that, we have as good a chance as anybody.”
Do we know who drafted for the Boston Hunters? Whoever it was, they messed up. Their hitting is very weak compared to the other three teams.
Boston will almost certainly be swept in the first round by the powerful Fireballs. I feel for Jemile Weeks… He inherited a tough situation.