By: Ben Prantl
The Bees and Prestige World Wide will meet in a 2022 Championship Series rematch this season, as they clinched spots in the best-of-three final with bracket victories Monday night.
Play-In Bracket
The Play-In Bracket featured seeds 7-13 with two teams advancing to the Playoff Bracket as the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds respectively. The No. 10 Caucasians advanced past the No. 13 High Heat via forfeit and met the Replacements, the 12 seed who had beaten the No. 11 Valley Boys in Round 1. The Replacements won and met the No. 7 Noodles in the first play-in game.
The Replacements won a 7-6 nailbiter thanks to the help of six long balls: one from Josh Clopp, two from Jon Quinque and three from Chris Sarnowski, who also served as the game’s winning pitcher.
The eighth and ninth seeds met in a direct play-in game. The No. 8 Prestige World Wide beat the No. 9 Lumberjax 15-13. Despite allowing nine home runs, Will Taczak did enough on the mound and with the bat to win, striking out six and hitting four home runs of his own.
Playoff Bracket
The Playoff Bracket is made up of seeds 1-6 with the Replacements at seed 7 and Prestige World Wide at seed 8 via the Play-In Bracket. With the exception of the semifinals, the losers in each round of the Playoff Bracket would enter the Second-Chance Bracket, which was win-or-go-home. The teams to advance from the Playoff and Second-Chance Brackets will meet in the Best-of-Three Championship Series.
The first round saw the top-seed Splunkers take down the Replacements 10-2. The Ball Busters beat the Oakdale Cuve 16-4 in a matchup of the fifth and fourth seeds. The No. 3 Bees took down the Space Cowboys, and No. 8 Prestige upset the No. 2 Chefs 19-5 to advance to the second round.
The Splunkers bested the Ball Busters to open up second-round play, while the reigning-champion Bees survived an extra-innings affair against Prestige, winning 3-2 off a Steve Keelon walk-off homer, which followed a pair of Rob Licht game-tying home runs in the fifth and sixth innings. In the Second-Chance Bracket, Oakdale took down the Replacements via an Austin Buzza walk-off grand slam, and the Chefs beat the Space Cowboys to keep their title hopes alive.
Prestige and the Ball Busters entered the Second-Chance Bracket in its second round, where Prestige knocked off Oakdale 8-3 thanks to a strong 4-0 start in the first inning, and the Chefs were bounced 9-3 to the Ball Busters, who hit five home runs. Prestige would then beat the Ball Busters, 6-4 in seven innings, to enter the second Semifinal. Tyson Mead hit a two-run homer in the top of the seventh to win it for PWW.
The Bees beat the Splunkers 3-1 to advance to their third straight Championship Series. Steven Keelon tossed five innings of one-run ball and secured two hits. His teammates, Jordan Castelli and Rob Licht, each recorded two hits apiece including a two-run double from Licht in the first. The Splunkers would remain alive and enter the Second-Chance Bracket semifinal.
Prestige World Wide defeated the top-seed Splunkers, 3-1, to advance to the Championship Series, their second in three seasons. Tyson Mead and Will Taczak combined for three home runs, two of which came from Taczak in the first and fifth innings to lead the PWW offense. Taczak, who took a no-hitter into the fourth inning, also threw a complete game on the rubber and allowed only one run, which was a homer by Aidan Miller of the Splunkers in the fifth.
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