Double Day Daily
On one of the season's biggest stages, the Louisville Colonels earned the dubious distinction of being out-hit by a pitcher.
In the process, the third day of February became the day the Toledo Maumees became the feared World Series contenders they've for so long been just shy of being.
In one of the year's big matchups between NL powerhouses, two-time World Series champion Louisville succumbed to the Toledo Maumees in a hard-fought four-game series behind a scintillating performance by starting pitcher Leon Haynes.
Setting the tone for the Maumees was Haynes in game one - the season-one Cy Young winner dominated the Colonels in one of the best pitching performances ever versus the defending champions, with 8 strong innings and only one hit allowed. Haynes, now 13-2 with a 2.63 ERA, cemented himself as a top-of-the-food-chain hurler with just one hit, a line-drive double given up to Brent Russell that broke up a no-hit bid in the 6th inning.
Haynes had 10 strikeouts on the night, and opponents continue to hit hardly .200 against him as the season winds down. The Maumees earned 6 runs off of 12 hits, and four of those hits came from the lineup's unlikeliest source:
Newcomer David Ortiz had a 2-for-4 outing with a double to help buoy what has been a bit of a difficult transition to the Maumees, but it was Leon Haynes who was Toledo's best offensive player, going 4-for-4 with two runs.
The performance by Haynes--4-for-4, with one hit given up over 8 innings--will perhaps go down in Double Day lore as one of the great individual feats in history, as the day a single player out-played the defending champions.
The rest of the series was increasingly close, with Louisville edging Toledo in game two, 4-2. Brent Russell and Ted Mercedes crushed long reliever Tex Serrano, who gave up 3 earned runs while notching only one out. Mercedes and Russell did their damage in the midst of a gloom-and-doom eighth frame in which the Colonels had, for the preceeding 22 outs, looked sluggish and undisciplined at the plate.
In an ultra-competitive third game, the Maumees finally capitalized on a gassed Colonels bullpen, with Gabe Buehrle, who had pitched the previous evening, being called in when the game entered extras. The taxed Buehrle, fumes just about coming from his ears, gave up a double to Ivan Weaver, and Ariel Mendoza narrowly avoided the tag at home to score the go-ahead run.
Later in the inning, third baseman Chuck Romero put the Maumees ahead for good with two more RBIs.
Toledo ended this series in style: on the heels of that extra-innings victory, the Maumees earned a definitive 7-3 victory in game four to seal the series for the Maumees, who, at 78-44, now mirror Louisville's 78-44 mark and will have to fight the Colonels down the stretch for the NL's second playoff bye.
For his historic game-one performance, SP Leon Haynes is our choice for Series Spotlight Player of the Series.
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