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2024 Playoffs
Divisional Round
In the east Boston would host playoff new boys Chicago while Indianapolis would face off against New Orleans in a repeat of their 2019 meeting at the same stage. Over in the west, World Series favorites Denver took on Austin while Los Angeles and Oklahoma City met for the second year in a row.
The eastern league saw a strength-on-strength matchup in the divisional round with Boston’s powerful offense taking on Chicago’s No2 pitching unit. Games 1 and 2 in Boston went to the visitors as the vaunted Boston bats found themselves stymied, first by Jose Cuesta in game one then Justin Babbitt in game two, scoring just three runs combined against the two Chicago starters. However, in game three the Boston offense came to life, hitting three homeruns and roughing up Chicago starter Ramon Perez on the way to an 11-3 win, Chicago starter Jose Cuesta continued his dominance of the Boston hitters in game four, pitching six shutout innings before handing over to Alfonso Vargas and the bullpen to see out a comfortable 6-1 win and send Chicago through to the pennant series.
The series between Indianapolis and New Orleans was expected to be a low-scoring battle as both teams possessed top pitching (IND #1 while NO were #3) and middling offenses, to the surprise of many game one was a slugfest as the Blues slugged three homeruns (Salvador Marrero, Fernando Flores and Damon Massingham) while Indianapolis clubbed four (Bill Smith 2, Rob Hodges and Richard Watson) in a 12-10 Indianapolis win. Game two was back to normality with Indianapolis starter Eric Parker keeping New Orleans quiet on the way to a 3-1 win, New Orleans kept the series alive by taking game three in another pitcher’s duel with Carlo Tagros getting the better of Josh Shaw. Game four went to Indianapolis when Jerry Wood pitched a shutout with the only run of the game coming from the bat of Tim Calhoun in the seventh inning. Indianapolis advanced onto the EL pennant series for the fourth time in their history to face off against playoff virgins Chicago.
Denver rolled into the playoffs on the back of an eight-game winning streak boasting the NABL’s most powerful offense and full of confidence, standing in their way was an Austin squad who had battled all season long to surprisingly win the Southwest division crown. The series appeared to heavily favor Denver and a mismatch was predicted and that is exactly what transpired, Denver rolled over Austin three games to nil barely breaking sweat while outscoring Austin 19-3 over the three games. The other series in the western league was a mouth-watering matchup between LA and OKC. Pitting LA’s pitching (No2 in the WL) led by Max Castle and Raul Vazquez against OKC’s offense (No 2 in the WL) featuring C Bob Stone, SS Kevin Jones and 1B Carlos Vazquez. While on paper this was a close matchup, in reality it was another mismatch. LA entered the playoffs having won eight of their last ten games and going 18-11 in September while OKC had stumbled down the stretch dipping to 12-16 during the final month. Despite the best efforts of OKC’s pitchers, the Lynx shut the Outlaws offense down completely while scoring just enough to win the series 3-0, while the scores were close the games themselves were not as it always felt LA had another gear to slip into if needed.
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