LIKE MAJORS, IT TOOK 413-PITCH MARATHON TO DECIDE ATLANTIC LEAGUE

Major League Baseball does not have anything on the Atlantic League when it comes to exhausting postseason games.

The season finale in the Atlantic, which ended up with Lancaster, PA winning its second championship, included back-and-forth leads between the Barnstormers and Sugar Land (TX) Skeeters over 13 gripping innings that required four hours and 40 minutes to play. Gabe Jacobo’s walkoff home run in the bottom of the 13th won it to the delight of most of the 6,084 fans, giving Lancaster a three-game sweep.

Fifteen combined pitchers three 413 pitches (225 by Sugar Land) with 30 hits, six home runs, 12 walks and 22 strikeouts. Twenty-eight runners were left on base in the 8-7 contest. Jacobo had a double in addition to two homers and drove in four runs. Delwyn Young homered twice for the Skeeters.

INDEPENDENTS MAY GET SHUT OUT IN LCS AND WORLD SERIES

Unless Washington can reel of three consecutive wins to erase its 2-0 deficit against San Francisco or Kansas City elects to activate reliever Aaron Crow (Fort Worth, TX, American Association) for the American League Championship Series against Baltimore, not a single Independent Baseball player will get to experience a League Championship Series or World Series this year. Tanner Roark (Southern Illinois, Frontier League) carries the current Indy hopes with Washington. Max Scherzer (Fort Worth) was the Game 1 starter for Detroit in its Division Series loss to Baltimore. Scott Kazmir (Sugar Land) of Oakland and John Holdzkom (Amarillo, TX, and Sioux City, IA, American Association, and San Angelo, TX, United League) of Pittsburgh had their hopes of going on dashed in the wild-card games.

95 WINS FOR INDY HURLERS

The final tally for onetime Independent hurlers in the major leagues during the regular season showed 95 victories and 73 defeats with Scherzer on top with 18 wins followed by 15 for both Roark and Kazmir.

‘PERCEPTION OF AGE’ NOT HELPING JASON LANE

One of the many players whose future is an unknown is Jason Lane (Sugar Land and Southern Maryland, Atlantic League), but the outfielder-turned-pitcher seems to carry an extremely positive attitude as he prepares for the winter season in Venezuela.

Lane won praise this summer when he became a rarity at the age of 37 to make his first major league mound start and held Atlanta to one run in six-plus innings for San Diego. “It’s the perception of age that works against me,” the California native told The Santa Rosa Press Democrat recently. “But the odd thing is that I’ve only been pitching for a few years (starting, primarily, at Sugar Land in 2012). My arm is really like a 27-year-old.

“I’m just very thankful for the Padres organization giving me a shot for the short time I was up there (10.1 innings, 0-1, 0.87 over two times called up).” Lane, who said he is open to most any offer the team makes but insists “I’ll fight to get back there (majors)”, also pointed out he never missed a start at Triple-A El Paso, where he went 9-9 with a 4.15 ERA.

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