Aruba Champions

[Alleghenies]

After years of campaigning for a Rookie league, GM Abcarian’s pleading worked. This year was the inaugural year for the Intercontinental Baseball Coalition (R) league. After scouting out many places, the Alleghenies chose Aruba to be its minor league affiliation. Many people expected Aruba to be a competitive team this season, but no one expected the success they achieved, first in the regular season and then becoming the first IBC Champions.
The Wahoos started out the season well and at the end of July they were 27-15. While that isn’t setting the world on fire, it was good enough to be in position to make the playoffs, and then August hit. When August hit the team went 26-3 and a funny fact all 3 losses were on a Thursday. With that month the Wahoos showed the league they were a powerhouse and were to be reckoned with. While in September they came back to earth a little going 13-6, they went 66-24 just good enough to hold onto 1st place for the Paradise League.
In the first round in the playoffs, they Wahoos faced the Wagga Wagga Crows. Aruba knew if they could contain Yi and Fujihara that they should be able to take the series. The Wahoos easily held Yi to a pedestrian .235 batting average, but Fujihara had a tremendous series hitting 2 home runs and batting .462. The thing that really helped is no one else on the Crows hit the ball well and the Wahoos won the series 3-1. The stars on offense for Aruba were Pablo Fuentes, Sixto López Pedro Gonzáles and Tung Thum.
Heading into round 2, the Wahoos were meeting up with the tough Port Sudan Tycoons. During the season the Tycoons finished in 1st and were 66-24, the same as the Wahoos. Looking at the pitching and hitting stats, they were almost identical, and each team almost had identical W/L splits. The Tycoons had José Reyes, Luis Cortéz, Alejandro García, Ramón Espinosa and Leonardo Cardenas to all watch for at the plate and Luo, Mayes and Jenkins on the mound. Well the batters combined went 4-51 and Luo and Jenkins self-imploded. Meanwhile Héctor Ventura shut out his old organization. For the Wahoos, Tung Thum was the MVP, with Shawn Hardin and Mike Fitzpatrick close behind. The series that looked like it was going to be a close one was an easy 3 game sweep for the Wahoos.
The last series the Wahoos ended up facing Mogadishu Pirates who went 59-31. Of all the series, the Wahoos felt most confident about this series. Why you ask? Well the Pirates had the 15th runs against for pitchers and the Wahoos during the playoffs and season have been hitting the ball well. The Pirates had Héctor Límon, António Ortega, Yen-ti Yi and Travis Carter at the plate for the Wahoos to worry about, but as I stated earlier none of the pitchers struck much fear into the hearts of the Wahoos players. During the series, Limón hit well, but the rest of the batters were mostly shut down by the Wahoos. What did surprise the Aruba fans was that after the 9 runs scored in game 1, the offense that was expected to blow up, didn’t do much. What it did do though was enough to win the series 3-0. Sixto López won the MVP hitting 3 home runs, with Raúl Gonzáles hitting .455 and the 3 starting pitchers going a combined 17.1 innings and giving up only 1 run.
Will the excitement carry over to next year? The team has said that at least 12 of the 35 guys on the team will be promoted and 5 will be cut, so the new replacements will have some big shoes to fill. The one good thing is there are a bunch of good players in the organizations International squad that are ready to step up. To all you Wahoos out there, keep on keepin on.