GARY, Ind. — Three straight trips to the championship series and a pair of titles earned Greg Tagert’s Gary SouthShore RailCats the moniker of “mini-dynasty” from Baseball America in 2007. With 56 more wins and another trip to the finals in 2008, the Northern League’s latest dynasty has reached new heights.
In 2007, Tagert’s RailCats dominated the Northern League, winning more regular season games (58) than any other team and claiming both the first and second half South Division titles. Anchored by four excellent starting pitchers – Willie Glen, Josh Habel, Jason Shelley and Travis Kerber – the RailCats went on to win the Northern League Championship in five games.
In 2008, however, the RailCats were forced to restock the talent pool, beginning with their dominant starting four. Each pitcher either retired (Habel, Shelley and Kerber) or went on to affiliated baseball (Glen), and the ‘Cats were left with only one pitcher – record-setting closer Tony Cogan – from their championship club.
SHAKING OFF AN EARLY SLUMP
Early in the season, the RailCats looked like a team rebuilding, sputtering to win just four of their first 14 games and left searching for answers after a 2-5 road trip through Fargo-Moorhead and Kansas City. In front of their home crowd on May 30 the RailCats found some traction, though, scoring a thrilling ninth inning win on Steve Haake’s one-out double and knocking off longtime nemesis Fargo 7-6, setting the stage for a sweep of the RedHawks for the first time in RailCats franchise history.
That series sparked the RailCats’ bats, led by four pillars of the RailCats’ success the last four years. Third baseman Tanner Townsend, shortstop Jay Pecci, second baseman Eric McNamee and Haake were each part of Tagert’s initial RailCats outfit and were vital in carrying the team’s winning attitude into 2008. Townsend, Pecci and McNamee had career seasons at the plate, and Haake was his usual consistent self, providing stability to the middle of the order.
The RailCats won 18 of their 25 games in June and hit .310 as a team, moving into first place on June 15 and remaining there with a 24-17 record at the end of the month. Despite some big offensive months from veteran right-fielder Cristian Guerrero (.370, 6 HR, 19 RBIs) and Townsend (.361, 20 RBIs), no star was bigger in June than southpaw pitcher Jeremy Plexico.
A reliever for five seasons in the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals system, the South Carolina native was released in spring training and snatched up by the RailCats, who envisioned Plexico as a top-of-the-line starter. And after a shaky couple starts early, Plexico turned into one of the league’s premier arms and was especially large in June, picking up for Cogan – another converted reliever who earned the start on opening day – after he was felled by a serious oblique injury. Plexico went 4-0 in June with a sparkling 2.03 ERA and was named the Northern League’s Pitcher of the Month.
The RailCats rolled into July on a four-game winning streak, but the ‘Cats would find the sledding much more difficult in the middle month of the season. Five losses in six games to start July – highlighted by a sweep at the hands of the RedHawks in Fargo – sent the RailCats into the All-Star break just three games over .500 and 1.5 games out of first place.
ALL-STARS SHINE DESPITE MID-SUMMER BLUES
A club-record 11 RailCats were named to the Chicagoland All-Star Team for the 2008 edition of the game, July 9 in Winnipeg, and it was RailCats who stole the show. Pecci hit a go-ahead two-run homer and was named the game’s Most Valuable Player, Plexico earned the start and the win, and closer Nate Hoelscher picked up a save with a scoreless ninth. Pecci, Plexico and Hoelscher’s achievements were each a first for the franchise.
In Gary, meanwhile, the rest of the RailCats geared up for a second half run, a run that would be put on hold by a rainout in the first day of the half. Unfortunately for the ‘Cats, day two of the second half did not go well either, as the Kansas City T-Bones swept a doubleheader and sent the reeling RailCats into fourth place in the six-team league. Seven straight losses to Fargo-Moorhead would follow later in the month, and by the time the calendar read July 24, the RailCats were 29-32, nine games out of first place and out of the playoff pitcure.
RAILCATS ROLLER-COASTER FINISHES ON A HIGH
Just before the end of the month, the RailCats pulled out a series win against the Winnipeg Goldeyes at U. S. Steel Yard before trekking up to Canwest Park to begin a six-game road trip. The RailCats had never won a series at the Goldeyes home before taking two of three earlier in the season, and those two wins were only the second and third the ‘Cats had collected in the last four years under Tagert.
In game one of the series July 29, it looked like it would be another ugly night north of the border. Trailing 6-1 into the bottom of the fourth, Winnipeg’s Kevin West hit a three-run home run to give the home team an eight-run lead. The score remained 9-1 into the sixth before the RailCats began to show the resiliency that would be a hallmark of the team all season. Despite squeezing only one ball out the infield, the ‘Cats put three runs on the board in the sixth to close the gap, and after Winnipeg added a run in the bottom of the inning Townsend launched a grand slam in the top of the seventh to make the score 10-8. In the eighth, Rob Marconi drove home Brett Wallace with the ninth RailCats run before Mike Reese unloaded on a two-run home run to deep left to complete the RailCats’ biggest comeback in franchise history. From 9-1 down after five innings to an eventual 14-10 win, the improbable victory kick-started a perfect 6-0 road trip and a nine-game win streak, the club’s longest ever.
At the end of the streak, the RailCats were 40-33 and firmly planted in second place in the league, and would cement that position with an incredible August. The ‘Cats were 22-7 in the month (breaking a team record for wins in a month that had been matched in June) and hit a ridiculous .343 as a team en route to setting the Northern League record for hits in a single-season (1,057). What long had been a club built for success in their home ballpark (the harsh winds and high fences at U. S. Steel Yard make for a pitchers’ paradise) had instead become an offense juggernaut in 2008, smashing 24 individual and team offensive records and leading the Northern League in hitting (.307) for the first time.
REWRITING THE RECORD BOOK
Townsend was in the middle of the RailCats emergence, hitting in the cleanup spot most of the season and enjoying the best season of any player in the seven-year history of the team. Despite three nagging early season injuries, Townsend smashed a team record and finished second in the league with a .371 batting average, all while leading the circuit in RBIs (84 – a club record) and slugging percentage (.623 – another club record). Townsend broke seven team records on his own and was named the Northern League Player of the Year, becoming the first RailCat ever to be so honored.
The accolades and records did not stop with Townsend either, as 11-year veteran Guerrero clubbed 16 home runs in his first year with the RailCats – breaking Jermaine Swinton’s six-year-old team record – and Reese had two record-setting streaks, belting a home run in four straight games and ending the year on a 22-game hit streak. Pecci set career-highs in average (.317) and home runs (9), McNamee batted nearly 40 points over his career average (.302), Haake set a RailCats record and led the league in walks (65) and eight RailCats – Eric Blakeley, Anthony Esquer, Mike Rohde, Guerrero, McNamee, Pecci, Reese and Townsend – all hit over .300.
Rohde was one of the RailCats’ steadiest options all season, shining in just his second year of professional baseball. A star in the second half of 2007 with the Schaumburg Flyers, Tagert targeted the 24-year-old infielder in the offseason and the University of Illinois product did not disappoint, batting .319 with 55 RBIs and going no more than two straight games all season without a hit. At year’s end, Rohde too was honored for his steady play, becoming the first RailCats player to earn the league Rookie of the Year award.
Pecci and Townsend landed on the Northern League’s postseason All-Star team for the first time and they were joined by the voters’ selection as the circuit’s top left-handed pitcher, Plexico. The 28-year-old finished with a league-leading 10 wins and his 2.79 ERA was second among starting pitchers, behind only his teammate Cogan who bounced back from his injury to go 6-3 with a 2.08 ERA. Plexico missed only two scheduled starts all season long – both late in the season – and became the second straight RailCats hurler to be named the Northern League Pitcher of the Year.
While Cogan and Plexico did their work in the games’ early innings, the RailCats also boasted one of the league’s premier closers. After Hoelscher struggled in July, the RailCats inserted 34-year-old Japanese right-hander Koichi Misawa into the closers role, and the 1996 Olympian paid immediate dividends. A longtime veteran of professional baseball in his native country, Misawa allowed a run in only one of his first 19 appearances and enjoyed a 24.0 inning scoreless streak, the longest ever by a RailCats reliever. July’s Pitcher of the Month, Misawa led the RailCats with six saves and allowed only 24 hits in 42.2 innings, all while piling up an impressive 54 strikeouts.
The many individual achievements aside, the RailCats did still embody the team-first mantra their manager preaches. No ballclub had more depth than the RailCats – versatile players like Blakeley, Reese and John McCarthy came up big time and again – and no team had a more resourceful slew of hitters, from sluggers Townsend, Guerrero and Haake, to veritable five-tool leadoff man Marconi, to the gritty, tough-to-strike-out combo of Pecci and McNamee. Defense also was a big part of the winning formula, as the RailCats led the league in fielding for the second straight year and got sensational work from strong-armed Townsend at third and fleet-footed Marconi in centerfield.
PLAYOFF PUSH PART FOUR
Secure as the second seed in the four-team postseason, the RailCats began the playoffs at U. S. Steel Yard, September 2 against Winnipeg. The Goldeyes finished the year strong and had developed a stingy pitching staff that allowed less than four runs a game in August. In game one, however, the RailCats got to the Goldeyes early when Guerrero tripled in two runs in the first. The lead swelled to 4-1 before Winnipeg scored twice to narrow the gap. With his team up 5-3 in the fifth, a man on and two outs, Haake – the RailCats’ all-time leader in postseason hits and home runs – launched an opposite-field homer to give the RailCats a three-run cushion and eventually a 7-4 game one win.
The Goldeyes came back to take game two, however, and the series moved to Winnipeg tied at a win apiece. Cogan got the ball for the critical game three and delivered one of the best starts of his career. The 31-year-old left-hander weaved through the Winnipeg lineup with surgical precision and was handed a 4-0 lead in the third on a McNamee home run – the first of his four-year pro career. Cogan allowed only two runs in the fifth and retired the last seven men he faced as part of a complete game masterpiece, striking out six to bring the RailCats within a game of the championship series with a 5-2 win.
In the early stages of the fourth game – once again in Winnipeg – starting pitchers Brian Forystek and Brandon Kintzler held both offenses in check. Haake hit another homer in the fifth to put the RailCats up first 1-0, but Chad Ehrnsberger left the yard for Winnipeg to give the Goldeyes a sixth inning 2-1 lead. The score remained the same into the ninth when Winnipeg turned to All-Star closer Brian Beuning, who earlier that day had been named the Northern League Relief Pitcher of the Year. Blakeley led off the ninth with a hustling infield hit to bring up Pecci, who dinged an 0-1 pitch off the foul pole in right for a two-run homer – the first of his RailCats postseason career – to give the RailCats a 3-2 win and a fourth straight berth in the Championship Series.
WILD WEATHER WINDS DOWN RAILCATS SEASON
In the other Northern League semifinal, fourth-seeded Kansas City stunned the regular season champion RedHawks with a three game sweep and awaited the RailCats at CommunityAmerica Ballpark for the first game of the finals. Despite a three-run homer for Jim Fasano in Kansas City’s first inning, the RailCats took it to the T-Bones in game one, getting two home runs from Guerrero and hanging on for a 7-6 win behind Misawa’s third playoff save.
On the verge of a commanding 2-0 series lead after a six-run third inning in game two, however, the RailCats’ visions of back-to-back championships began to unravel. Kansas City hit a pair grand slams and came back to stun the RailCats 12-7 to even the series before it headed to U. S. Steel Yard for the remaining games. But instead of baseball, Northwest Indiana was instead treated to an unprecedented storm that produced serious flooding and near constant rainfall that postponed the series’ third game three straight nights. Finally, five games after game two, the two teams met for game three and Kansas City again used the home run ball for a big win, slugging two big blasts to beat the RailCats 7-4. The T-Bones cranked three more home runs in game four and held off a three-run ninth inning rally to win the Northern League title with a 5-3 victory.
2009: THE DRIVE FOR FIVE
Despite the loss, the RailCats are still the only team in Northern League history to make the league finals four years in a row and expect nothing less in 2009. RailCats manager Greg Tagert signed a long-term contract extension before the 2008 season and the skipper will be his usual busy self this offseason. With some nice young pieces in place and an ever-growing veteran core, the RailCats have no plans to “re-build” anytime soon. After all, a dynasty needs only to re-load.
