The first half of the Midwest League season is in the books and what a first half it was. In the early stages it looked like we were never going to get a game in due to terrible weather causing postponements left and right. Now we are back in the swing of things as we find ourselves in the heart of summer. Speaking of summer, the Midwest League all-stars took the field last night in their own version of the “Midsummer Classic”. Here is how the MWL All-Star game went down.
You can view the full rosters here: Eastern Division : Western Division
Good pitching is hard to beat and there were a ton of good pitchers in this one. The best hitters the Midwest League had to offer only managed to push five combined runs across the plate in the 54th Midwest League All-Star game. It wasn’t due to a lack of contact. In fact, there were a combined 15 hits in this one, not exactly a box score that screams low scoring game. But, that is exactly what we saw as the East came out on top 3-2 in 10 innings.
The scoring started for the East in the bottom of the first, leading us to believe the game may take a different course than it ultimately did. Lansing’s Kevin Vicuna led off the inning with a double before he was driven in by Bowling Green’s Taylor Walls. We were quiet from there until Great Lakes’ Jared Walker hit a solo homer in the bottom of the fifth to double the lead to 2-0. It looked like the East was sitting pretty with their pitchers dealing.
The West wouldn’t take long to answer back though when Burlington’s Julio Garcia drove in Kane County’s Jasrado Chisholm in the sixth with an RBI double. The West would get one more in the eighth off of Tommy Romero as he allowed a single, threw a wild pitch, and allowed an RBI single to Cedar Rapids’ Alex Kirilloff.
With things tied 2-2 at the end of nine innings, everyone decided that we would give this thing one more frame. Thankfully the East ended things in the bottom half of the tenth so we aren’t talking about a tie today. Stuart Fairchild started the inning out on second base before Dayton’s Montrell Marshall drove him in with a two out single.
In all, each team used 30 total players, both trotted out 16 position players and 14 pitchers a piece. With so little playing time for each guy, it was hard to designate and MVP, but ultimately Marshall took home the honors thanks to his walkoff.
