Midwest League Championship Game 1

Tin Caps lead series (1-0) Best of 5

Fort Wayne Highlights:

Do you need more highlights than Fort Wayne taking game 1? The bullpen (Alexis Lara, Nick Schumacher and closer Brad Brach) combined for 3 IP, no hits, no walks, no runs, 3 K's. A lights out performance that followed a solid 6 innings, 2 runs and 5 K's by starter Erik Davis.

Game decided by:

The bottom of the 6th was the big offensive inning for the Tin Caps. Cole Figueroa led off the inning with a double and, after a ground out by Allen Dykstra that moved Figueroa to 3rd, Justin Baum followed it up by driving him in with another double to break a 2-2 tie. Fort Wayne continued to rally with a walk by Monday's hero Robert Lara, a Blake Tekotte RBI single and a Dan Robertson RBI single to make it 5-2. The bullpen took over from there.

It was mentioned in comment yesterday that playing a Royals affiliate should make it easy to win this series. That is actually somewhat true. The Bees had a record 64-79, which is not very impressive compared to Fort Wayne's 94-46 record. However, the Bees are defending champs (for whatever that's worth in a league that turns over most of its players year to year), the split the season series with the Tin Caps and they had one of baseball's better pitching prospects on the hill today (Tim Melville). Nevertheless, the Tin Caps lead the series 1-0 and are now only 2 wins from the championship.