Fall League post season for 1st time ever (2031-1)

[Fat Nige]

After reaching the Fall League post season with Sabana Westpunt last year GM Laverick was keen to repeat the success with Twin Cities affiliate, San Antonio Missions. Last year they had posted a 23-17 record but had come 4th in the division.

All the minor league managers were ordered to send their brightest prospects but the Missions only ended up with six of the top 20 prospects, mainly due to nine on that list finishing up the year on the Twin Cities roster. Still San Antonio was a young side, only three 24-yr-old pitchers and three 23-yr-old batters on the roster were over 22-yrs-old.

The Mission came out of the blocks with a roar, they went to the Port-au-Prince Purple Aces and won 12-4 on their way to a 13-game win streak. The streak saw them score double digit runs ten times and six scores of 15 runs or more including a 24-4 thrashing of Bogota Scholars. A remarkable game where Missions came back from 1-0 down by scoring five in the bottom of the third and seven in the bottom of the fourth. They completed their scoring with five in the bottom of the eighth to make it 24-2 on just 18 hits before allowing Scholars to double their run total in the top of the ninth. The player of the game was Xue-qin Man who went 5-6 including two homers, eight RBI and scored five times.

On October 15th, the 13-0 Missions faced the 10-3 George Town Islanders in San Antonio in a three game set. San Antonio came back to earth as they were swept by the visitors, the Islanders winning 10-6, 13-10 and 7-4. Someone had to pay for that and the very next series San Domingo Scouts were in town. They felt the wrath of the Missions leaving with 4-20, 0-11 and 5-15 losses as San Antonio bounced back to their best.

November started the same way as October with the Missions only lost one of their first 11 games before their efforts finally caught up with them. Looking jaded and lacklustre San Antonio only registered one win in their final seven games and scored three or less in five of them. Still they finished the season 31-9 winning the SL2 Central division and trying the Philipsburg Saints for the best record in the 2030 Fall league. Their 150 run difference was dwarfed though by Philipsburg who posted a 274 run difference !
Post season was a disaster as Missions carried on their form from the final days of the Fall League. Facing the 27-13 Caracas Sting the Missions imploded and were bounced out of the post season on the wrong end of a four game sweep, It was a horrific sweep too as they lost 3-10, 5-8, 2-8 and 0-9.

Star batters for the Mission were 20-yr-old Xue-Qin Man who hit .401/.490/.727 with 13 homers and 53 RBI while 21-yr-old Carlos Fuentes hit .346/,438/.724 with 16 homers and 56 RBI. On the mound Vladimir Reichel, Scott Clark and Justin Tyrrell all pocketed four wins while closer Aaron Campbell went 3-3 with 10 saves and a pretty large 7.71 ERA, not many save opportunities to be had with the free-scoring Missions’ offence. The fans were pretty pleased too with the improvement as the total number of fans through the turnstiles increased from 34,169 all the way to 80,158.

[felipe]

yes...Louisville's Caracas stomped all over the Missions