Postseason pro baseball returns to Dozer Park for the first time since 2018 on Tuesday as the Peoria Chiefs open the Midwest League playoffs against the Cedar Rapids Kernels.
The Chiefs clinched their wildcard berth in the best-of-three West Division Series with a home win over Beloit last Wednesday, triggering a clubhouse celebration.
“It's a great opportunity for these young men (who) have worked every day to be able to put themselves in position to progress,” said second-year Peoria manager Patrick Anderson. “Development wise, that's Number One; that's what we're here for in the minor leagues.
“The byproduct of development every day and their hard work showed in the sense of some wins, enough to be able to put ourselves in a good position to get into playoffs. It’s great to be able to have kind of a sense of a little feather in everyone’s cap and a sense of all that hard work, and it’s fortunate we’re getting into the playoffs and have a little fun after the regular season.”
The Chiefs posted a 69-63 overall record, with a 36-30 mark in the second half that earned the wildcard bid behind the league-best Kernels (82-50). Cedar Rapids topped the division in both halves, providing the opening for Peoria to qualify after placing second.
It’s a significant improvement for a St. Louis Cardinals farm club that averaged 52 wins over its past three seasons (2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic). But Anderson said that’s not how he measures the team’s growth.
“Each year is different, so I don't like to compare from last year to this year,” said Anderson. “There's guys that performed a little bit better, the guys were newer to this level last year. And some of the guys that repeated it from last year to this year have gotten better.
“That's the development part, so I don't like to say we were better than last year as a whole. There was a lot of production and development going on last year that allowed for some guys to be more productive this year.”
The success translated at the box office as well, as the Chiefs’ reported their best home attendance since 2019 with a 158,299 total and an average of 2,473 fans. Anderson said the support from the fan base and the Peoria community definitely provided a boost.
“When you when you have people coming to games and they're watching us supporting us, it's just an extra fun part of what we're here for,” he said. “Putting on a good show for them to be able to watch the minor leagues and enjoy themselves every day, and then to be supportive of us is really important from the town — and we enjoy being here.
“It's cool to be able to see the Rivermen, they did really well and they've been very successful as well, along with the Bradley athletic department and what they've done. So for us to be able to be a part of that and for people to be able to support us and be around this town to help our guys out every day in the sense of being in the stands and creating an atmosphere, it helped out a lot. Hopefully they'll enjoy the playoffs and come out and watch.”
Anderson said playing the game “the Cardinal way” is what produced a winning season.
“We battle. What we do is: we get guys on offensively, get them over get them in. We battle until every single pitch at the end of the game. We've had 11-plus walk-off wins, and that's a tribute to guys battling every single game, every pitch, every inning, and never giving up so to speak.
“The (pitchers) did a great job on the mound as a collective group, stepping up for each other. We played really good defense; we're in the top part of the league in defense. Our pitching is in the top part, (and) our hitting is in the middle to the top part. So if you have those combos, you have a pretty good chance of winning.”
First pitch for Game 1 is scheduled for 6:35 p.m., with Game 2 scheduled for Thursday in Iowa. If necessary, the Kernels would host a deciding game on Friday.
Anderson said the key to advancing past Cedar Rapids is fairly simple.
“Doing the same thing we do every day,” he said. “We take literally one inning at a time, one pitch at a time, and we don't look forward. If it happens to be we win a game, we keep moving forward and just we can't look ahead to too much. We're just putting ourselves in position that we can be successful and hopefully let the chips fall where they may.
“It's baseball. It's a hard thing, hitting a round ball with a round bat and putting all that together. So we'll see. They're a very good team, really, really good team. They've been had the best record and they have a lot of really good players. We're looking forward to getting out there.”
The winner of the West Division series advances to face either Fort Wayne or Great Lakes in the Midwest League finals next week. If the Chiefs move on, they would host Games 2 and 3 of the finals.
