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Even with crushers like Erik Kratz and Kyle Higashioka, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders fell short of winning the Governors’ Cup championship.
They were swept in the first round of the playoffs.
But as the RailRiders returned home Saturday from the Dorian deluge in the Carolinas, one thing was still standing.
A spirit that couldn’t be swept away.
For that, the RailRiders deserve some kind of crown, if not a parade.
The parade of players that marched through their clubhouse this season was overwhelming, even for Triple-A teams accustomed to players coming and going.
“Eighty-nine players came through these doors this year,” RailRiders rookie Triple-A manager Jay Bell shouted to his jubilant team that had just reached the playoffs by winning a dramatic divisional playoff game.
Make that 90.
The RailRiders added righthanded pitcher Greg Weissert, a kid just up from Double-A Trenton, before the second game of their first-round Governors’ Cup series against Durham.
But it wasn’t just numbers that made Scranton/Wilkes-Barre’s path to the playoffs pretty impressive.
The day before the regular season finale, the parent Yankees traded away Scranton/Wilkes-Barre’s most dangerous hitter, 26 home run and Ryan McBroom —who, by the way, ripped a hit for Kansas City in his first major league at-bat — and his team-leading 66 RBI and 87 runs.
The very next morning, RailRiders reliever J.P. Feyereisen and his team-leading 10 wins wound up in the bullpen of the Milwaukee Brewers.
As if those two trades with the season on the line didn’t pack enough punch to knock out the RailRiders, outfielder Trey Amburgey — who has 22 homers and 62 RBI — came up with a groin injury. He wasn’t available for Tuesday’s International League North title game that left Syracuse and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre battling for the division in a one-game playoff that sent the winner to the Governors’ Cup postseason.
It didn’t take an act of God to get the RailRiders there, where they rode 10 hours to Durham — only to have Game 2 of that first-round series postponed a day while the teams waited for destructive Hurricane Dorian to pass.
It did take a reinvigorating resolve that a lot of teams taking the field for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre hadn’t shown in the past.
Twice, the RailRiders were down in the dumps late, trailing Syracuse by six runs while being held to one hit entering the bottom of the seventh inning Tuesday, then facing a seven-run deficit when they came to bat in the eighth.
Twice, they stormed back.
Higashioka hammered two massive homers in consecutive innings,the RailRiders scored five runs in the seventh and eight more in the eighth and Kratz blasted the winning two-run double to complete a wild 14-13 victory.
What made it so special was more about circumstances than the eye-popping score.
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre had plenty of comebacks before, a handful of them driven by the departed McBroom during the last month.
“You just kind of have to stick to your approach,” Higashioka said quietly as a celebration was in full swing behind him.
Kratz stuck his finger out toward Higashioka and hit the main point.
“He didn’t quit,” Kratz said as champagne bottles started popping, “and we didn’t quit.”
Despite Saturday’s 17-2 drubbing that sent Durham on to play for the Governors’ Cup title and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre spinning toward next season, the RailRiders had heart to the end.
As they packed their bags for this year, they left with a pride earned by overcoming adversity just to reach the playoffs.
“We got booed a few times because of the way we played,” Bell said earlier in the week. “But I think, overall, the fans here in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre were proud of this team.”
They had every reason to be.
It didn’t matter if it was a kid prospect named Deivi Garcia, who made his Triple-A debut less than two months ago, pitching three near-perfect innings of relief to give the RailRiders a chance Tuesday, or Brandon Wagner, just called up from Trenton Monday, getting his first two Triple-A hits in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre’s two big innings Tuesday.
When all hope seemed lost, they all kept finding reason to believe.
“You put a lot of emphasis on starting games in the big leagues,” said Kratz, a 39-year-old veteran who played on the Phillies’ 2011 NL East Division title team and with the Yankees in 2017, when the won the AL East.
“I’ve played in a lot of different games, been on the bench for a lot of championship games,” Kratz continued. “We have a team that has very little experience here. It has to help them. It doesn’t get much more exciting than that.”
The RailRiders were supposed to be feeling more frenzy Friday, when rehabbing Yankees ace Luis Severino was going to start against Durham and Yankees rehabbing late-inning specialist Dellin Betances was scheduled to follow him to the mound. They were both detoured by Dorian and wound up pitching in a Double-A playoff game for Trenton instead.
The RailRiders never felt sorry for themselves, though.
Sometimes, there’s not much teams can do about such obstacles, and talk only about building character.
Sometimes, when ominous situations start flooding the clubhouse, you roll up your sleeves and build a bridge.