The first season of the Women’s Pro Baseball League will come down to a single game to decide the league’s first champion on Tuesday night in Springfield, Ill. The San Francisco Firebells made sure of that on Sunday afternoon, breaking open Game 4 with an eight-run fourth inning on their way to record-setting 17-4 win over the Los Angeles Queens. In doing so, they evened up the best-three-out-of-five Championship Series at two games a piece, setting up a winner-take all Game 5 on Tuesday.
Game 4 was a close one before San Francisco’s explosive fourth inning. As they did in Saturday’s game three, the Firebells entered this game facing elimination and quickly got ahead in the top of the first inning. On this occasion, Queens’ starter Ayuri Shimano struggled with her control early, walking the bases loaded with one out in the top of the first. Firebells third baseman Jill Albayati cashed in two of those runs with a single to center, with captain Kelsie Whitmore scoring from second on a single for the third time in the two games.
Shimano avoided further damage in that inning by getting catcher Alexia Jorge to ground into a double play, then stranded a pair of runners in the top of the second by getting Whitmore to foul out to Ashton Lansdell at third base. The Queens then struck back against Whitmore, who started the game on the mound for San Francisco, in the bottom of the second.
After Los Angeles loaded the bases on singles by catcher Maggie Foxx, first baseman Sarah Edwards, and, with two outs, center fielder Mo’ne Davis, Shimano, who also hit leadoff in this game, worked an eight-pitch walk from Whitmore to drive in the first LA run. Captain Lansdell then hit a hard grounder past both Whitmore and second baseman Amanda Gianelloni to plate both Edwards and Davis, giving the Queens a 3-2 lead.
Whitmore got right fielder Jamie Mackay to fly out to hold LA there, but Firebells manager Matt Williams concluded that his captain, who was pitching on three-day’s rest after throwing 91 pitches in Game 1 and, per his postgame assessment to reporters, was “laboring pretty well in the second inning,” was gassed after throwing 43 pitches in two innings and sent her out to center field.
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The Firebells got those three runs back right away in the top of the third. After right fielder Skyler Kaplan lined out to Mackay in right, first baseman Andréanne Leblanc tied the game with her third home run of the year and first in the postseason. That prompted Queens manager Eric Young to send Shimano to second base and bring Mackay in from right field in the hope of a repeat of the latter’s dominant Game 1 performance (Amira Hondras, who started at second base, moved to right field as part of that exchange).
It wasn’t to be. Despite entering with the bases empty, Mackay gave up two more runs in that inning, on singles by Albayati and left fielder Jua Park and a two-out, two-RBI double by shortstop Joely Leguizamon, who went 4-for-4 with four RBI in this game and was 6-for-8 with two doubles and a home run over the last two as the Firebells battled to even the series.
The Queens got one of those runs back in the bottom of the third when Foxx, who was 3-for-4 in the losing effort, hit a one-out double of new Firebells hurler Ela Day-Bédard, was pushed to third when Bedard walked the next two batters, then scored on a sacrifice fly by Hondras. That made it 5-4 San Francisco heading into the fourth. To that point, it was a tense, hard-fought game that looked like it might swing back and fourth all afternoon, with the Firebells’ season teetering in the balance.
Then came the top of the fourth. It started innocently enough. After Whitmore led off with a single through the left side against Mackay, Queens shortstop Cailtin Eynon booted a potential double-play ball from Kaplan, but Lansdell forced Whitmore at third on Leblanc’s subsequent grounder. To that point, Mackay had induced three groundballs, one of which was well-placed and two others that could have gotten her out of the inning if not for Eynon’s error.
Then Albayati, who would go 4-for-5 on the game with three RBI and two runs scored and is 6-for-10 over the last two games for San Francisco, dropped a pop-up into no-man’s-land behind first base to load the bases, and Jorge pulled a 1-2 pitch from Mackay that leaked back over the plate down the left field line for a double that drove in Kaplan and Leblanc. Park followed with a double of her own to the opposite-field gap, driving in Albayati and Jorge, and that was it for Mackay, whom Young sent back out to right field.
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Down 9-4, Young made the surprising decision to call in his closer. Meggie Meidlinger had made just one appearance in the previous week, throwing just 10 pitches to close out the Queens’ 11-7 win in Game 2 of this series on Thursday, so it was assumed she’d be available for an extended outing if the game called for it. It’s unlikely anyone expected that situation to arrive with the Queens down five runs and 3 2/3 innings remaining in the game.
Young told reporters after the game that he was trying to “keep it right there for our offense to get hot and score some more runs. … I didn’t want to wait.” As Young said after the game, “it just didn’t work out.”
Meidlinger dismissed the suggestion that she might have been a bit rusty or put in an unfamiliar spot, telling reporters after the game, “I felt great, and it doesn’t matter what inning I go into. I’m ready to go, no matter whether it’s the fourth or the seventh inning.”
Whatever the reason, Meidlinger was not sharp. After Leguizamon plated Park with a well-placed pop-up behind shortstop that fell for a hit, Meidlinger got Day-Bédard to ground out for the second out, but she struggled to find the third out when the order turned over. Leadoff hitter Gianelloni stroked an opposite-field single to plate Leguizamon. Whitmore also went the opposite way for her second single of the inning, putting runners on the corners, and Kaplan plated both runners by shooting a triple down the left-field line beyond the reach of Isabella Villarreal’s dive.
Kaplan’s hit was technically the second triple in league history, but the first, by Heights right fielder Natsuki Yonetani in Game 3 of the semifinals against the Queens, could arguably have been scored a three-base error, as it came after right fielder Hondras lost an otherwise easy fly ball in the sun. Kaplan’s, however, was a clean triple. Villarreal simply couldn’t get to it, and even if she hadn’t left her feet, it would have gotten past Villarreal and rattled around in foul territory in the left-field corner, as it did.
Meidlinger managed to strand Kaplan at third by getting Leblanc to foul out, but the damage was done. The Firebells were up 13-4, and Meidlinger, having thrown 29 pitches in pursuit of just two outs, would come out of the game to rest up for Game 5.
The game took on a very different character from that point on. Day-Bédard put an exclamation mark on the fourth inning by retiring the top of the Queens’ lienup in order in the bottom of the frame, and she and fellow righty Peyton Coria combined to hold Los Angeles scoreless the rest of the way.
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Young, meanwhile, handed the ball to 18-year-old Addisyn Baird, the fifth-semester high school senior, who had yet to throw a pitch in the WPBL this season. Baird would prove to be arguably the most effective Queens pitcher of the afternoon, working the final three innings and keeping the Firebells from scoring in the fifth and seventh. She did cough up four runs in the sixth. Still, those four runs in three innings look better in the box score than Shimano’s three in 2 1/3, Meidlinger’s three in just 2/3, and Mackay’s brutal seven in one inning (split across third and fourth).
The Firebells’ 17 runs in this game matched their regular-season high, which is also the second-highest single-game run total in WPBL history, and their 20 hits set a new league record for a single game. In addition to Leguizamon and Albayati, Park also collected four hits, going 4-for-4 with two doubles and 4 RBI. Like Leguizamon, Park is 6-for-8 over the last two games. Whitmore went 3-for-4 with a pair of walks and has rebounded from her 0-for-8 in the first two games to go 5-for-8 in the last two.
On the other side of the ball, Day-Bédard has quietly been San Francisco’s best pitcher in this series, throwing 5 2/3 innings between Games 2 and 4 and allowing just two runs, one unearned, on six hits.
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One upshot of this game for both teams is that no pitcher threw more than Day-Bédard’s 55 pitches. With Monday off, and the season ending Tuesday night no matter the outcome of that night’s game, both managers said they expect all of their pitchers to be available for them as needed in Game 5.
Game 5 will take place at 7 p.m. Eastern Tuesday night at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Ill., with the Firebells as the home team. The projected starters are Ayami Sato for the Queens and Jill Albayati for the Firebells. Both will be on four-day’s rest after throwing 98 and 59 pitches, respectively, in Game 2. Both were charged with five runs in that game (in four and three innings of work, respectively). Asked how long she thought she could go in Game 5, Albayati, who is still managing a tender left hamstring and was capped at 65 pitches in Game 2, told reporters, “as much as they let me.”
Behind Sato, the Queens will have four pitchers on one-day’s rest (Meidlinger, who threw 29 pitches in Game 4; Mackay, 43 pitches; Shimano, 51 pitches; and Baird, 46 pitches), two on two-day’s rest (Michelle Roche, who threw 58 pitches in Game 3, and Isabella Villarreal, who threw 57), and Amira Hondras on five day’s rest after starting Game 1 and pitching just 1 1/3 innings. Maggie Foxx, Adelaide Frank (who made her postseason debut as a mid-game replacement at first base in Game 4), and Brittany Apgar (who has been inactive throughout the postseason) all pitched during the regular season but not in the postseason thus far.
Behind Albayati, the Firebells will have three pitchers on one-day’s rest (Coria, who threw just 23 pitches in Game 4; Whitmore, 47 pitches; and Day-Bédard, 55 pitches). Lefties Niki Eckert and Liz Gilder with both be on two-day’s rest having thrown 72 and 67 pitches, respectively, in Game 3. Leblanc will be on four day’s rest after working a scoreless inning in Game 2. Jua Park, who has also pitched this season, has not pitched in the postseason, while righty Rosi del Castillo is out for the season after dislocating her right kneecap in Game 1.
With the Championship Series going to Game 5, the WPBL will have played 10 out of a potential 11 postseason games. I can’t think of a more fitting end for what has been a thrilling inaugural season than a winner-take-all game for the league’s first championship. It’s what these teams and these players, all of them, including the Hunters and Heights, deserve.
Notes:
Sunday’s Game 4 was something we haven’t seen in Major League Baseball in more than 40 years years: an outdoor day game in the championship series. The last day game in the World Series was Game 6 in 1987, which, ironically, was played indoors at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The last outdoor day game in the World Series was the decisive Game 5 at Tiger Stadium in 1984.
The Firebells will hold a “little late practice” today, Jill Albayati told reporters after Game 4, citing her manager. Meanwhile, Queens captain Ashton Lansdell said that her team needs a full day off. “I think we’ve just lost a little bit of focus these last two games,” Lansdell told reporters. “It’s been a long week and a half, two weeks for us. We’ve played seven baseball games in a little over a week. … Sometimes it’s hard to stay locked in, especially if it’s just baseball, baseball, baseball all the time. So, I think we just need a little reset, and we’ll get that.”
Asked what that reset might entail, Lansdell said, “For me, personally, I think it’s getting my mind off baseball. We’ve had a lot of baseball the last however long it’s been. So, I think if everybody just gets off their feet, gets their mind off baseball a little bit, come back Tuesday refreshed and ready to go.”
Its worth remembering that the Firebells had four days off prior to this series after sweeping the Hunters in the semifinals, while the Queens had just one day off after playing a winner-take-all game against the Heights that was decided in their final at-bat.
Speaking about her hamstring injury, Jill Albayati said that she was never concerned it might be season-ending, telling reporters, “I’ve had way worse.” She agreed that it would be fair to say that it effects her most on the bases, but she’s, “just dealing with it.”
The Firebells had a new home-run chain in this game, worn for the first time by Andréanne Leblanc. The new chain appears to be 3D printed and is entirely in team colors, with a purple chain, as opposed to the (fake) gold chain they had been using all season. Joely Leguizamon told reporters after the game that she wasn’t sure where it came from, “a fan maybe? … But it’s high quality, so thank you to whoever brought it in.” The Firebells also had a fan-made bird stuffed animal mascot in the dugout which, according to the ESPN broadcast, is named Phoebe the Phoenix.
Joely Leguizamon told reporters her dad paid up on his $200 reward for her first home run Saturday night.
