River Monsters face long road in WBA regionals

Given that four of the eight regional pools in the Wisconsin Baseball Association playoffs are being held in Dairyland League venues at Merrill and Wisconsin Rapids, the Rhinelander River Monsters figured surely they would have a shorter drive this year than last year, when they were sent to Ellsworth for postseason play. 

The jaunt will indeed be shorter —by all of one mile.

The regional seeding meeting, conducted last week, did the Monsters no favors as they wound up the18th seed in the 24-team playoffs and have been shipped to River Falls for regional play tomorrow and, possibly Sunday.

The good news is the Monsters didn’t draw River Falls, the top overall seed, which is in the opposite three-team pool. The bad news is if Rhinelander wants to get back to River Falls the following weekend for the WBA state tournament, it will have to get through defending state champion Tilden.

The Tigers are the No. 4 seed overall and the top seed in Rhinelander’s three-team pool. Depending on how the River Monsters fare in their opener against 12th-seeded Spring Valley, they will play Tilden either Saturday night or Sunday afternoon.

While the roughly 3-hour, 15-minute road trip makes things more difficult on the River Monsters, manager Todd Johnson said he feels the team will field a lineup that should be able to go head-to-head with some of the state’s top teams.

“Two good teams in our bracket. Tilden is obviously the defending state champion. That’s going to be a challenge and Spring Valley had a nice year,” he said. “We’re going over there with a good team. We should match up pretty well and we’ll have the pitching to get through the two games. I like the team we’re going over there with.

“We are going to miss a couple of guys that thought if we were playing in the Merrill regional, they could travel back and forth, but they’ve got some other commitments and are not going to be able to make the trip to River Falls. We lost a couple of guys because of that. It’s certainly more of a challenge to travel all the way across the state instead of making a short drive to Merrill.” 

The math is simple, two wins in the pool and Rhinelander advances to state. If there’s a three-way tie at 1-1 — as was the case last year when Rhinelander lost to Ellsworth before upsetting third-seeded Holmen — it will come down to run differential to determine who advances. 

For seeding purposes, Rhinelander was credited with fourth place in the Dairyland Large. While the Monsters and Everest shared 7-5 marks, the Merchants earned a tiebreaker thanks to a head-to-head sweep over Rhinelander this year. 

Despite having two teams in the WBA semifinals last year, and Everest finishing as state runner-up, a topsy-turvy season did not do the Dairyland any favors in the seeding for the Division A tournament. League champ Marshfield (8-3) was the highest seed at No. 9, and will play in Merrill this weekend in a pool that features the sixth-seeded Eau Claire Bears. While Wisconsin Rapids (8-4) hosts a regional, it’s the No. 13 seed and will have to get through fifth-seeded Holmen in its pool. Everest, like Rhinelander, was shipped to River Falls as it comes in as the 16-seed and will have to get past the hosting and top-seeded Fighting Fish.

While a long road trip for the postseason is less than ideal, making the playoffs in a year in which the team used eight starting pitchers in 13 games — none of whom was last year’s ace Joe Schneider (arm) — was an accomplishment. 

“That was satisfying,” Johnson said. “It’s a testament to those guys to decide, ‘We want to get there.’ Their commitment’s been good all year. I’ve been really happy with that. It’s tough for those guys to make every game, and I understood that going in, but this year was certainly an improvement over last year.”

The Monsters figure to get some help in the rotation this weekend as Ryan Jamison, who’s made two starting appearances this season while working around a summer coaching job, is slated to get the ball for one of this weekend’s contests. Martin Hoger and Josh Randolph, the pitchers of record in the Monsters’ season-ending wins over Whittlesey and Minocqua will also be available, along with reliever Quinn Lamers.  

Johnson said the plan likely will be to save Jamison for the showdown with Tilden. That game would be played at 7 p.m. Saturday if the Monsters lose their opener against Spring Valley tomorrow afternoon. A win in the opener for Rhinelander would mean a 1 p.m. Sunday date with Tilden in which it would clinch a state tournament berth with a win.

“I think to win our pool, we’re going to have to beat Tilden,” Johnson said. “Last year we threw Joe against Holmen. This year it will be Jamison against Tilden and the other guys are going to have to go out and beat Spring Valley.”

That strategy almost worked for Rhinelander last year as, behind Schneider and Lamers, the Monsters held off Holmen 3-2 in 11 innings. But Rhinelander 7-6 loss to Ellsworth earlier in the weekend allowed Holmen to take the tiebreaker to advance to state on run differential.

Johnson said to finish one spot better this year will take all three phases of the game working in concert.

“It’s the same as what you need in every baseball game,” he said. “You need to have good pitching. We’re going to have to play solid defense and you’re going to have to get the timely hitting and offensively play well and play smart.” 

The weekend’s games will be played at First National Bank of River Falls Field. River Falls Sports Broadcasting will stream all of the regional games live via YouTube.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].