Kernels rally to the Midwest League championship

CEDAR RAPIDS - Jake Mauer's trip to the big leagues is officially delayed for another week, and he's totally cool with that.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

'That's absolutely fine with me,” the Cedar Rapids Kernels Manager said, after his club rallied past Peoria, 5-4, Sunday afternoon to win the Midwest League Western Division championship. 'I'll get up there hopefully after we win this thing.”

That'll take three more victories. The Kernels are in the league finals for the first time since 1994, also the year of this franchise's last championship.

Cedar Rapids plays either Lansing or West Michigan in a best-of-5 series that begins somewhere in Michigan on Wednesday night. Game 2 is Thursday night, with things moving back to Memorial Stadium for Games 3 through 5.

Game 3 is Saturday afternoon at 3:35. If Game 4 is necessary, it'll be Sunday, Sept. 20, at 2:05.

A winner-take-all Game 5 is slated for the next night.

'It feels amazing,” said Kernels shortstop Nick Gordon, after a beer-soaked team celebration in the clubhouse showers. He's only 19 and wasn't drinking, by the way, just dousing everyone else and getting doused himself.

'This just show how much heart we have,” he said. 'It's been a long season, been tough, but we come out and give everything we have. These last couple series we have been battling ... We know what we're capable of. We know that if we give 110 percent, it's going to be tough to beat us. If a team does get us, they get us. We know it's going to be tough to get us twice.”

No one has gotten them thus far in the playoffs. The Kernels took out Quad Cities, the team with the best regular-season win percentage in minor league baseball, in two straight in the first round and swept Peoria here.

If you didn't hear, Mauer will join the parent Minnesota Twins for the remainder of their season, whenever the Kernels finish. It's a reward for a job well done.

'They continue to fight,” Mauer said of his team. 'We've had a lot of different names and faces, but they just keep putting their best foot forward. You can't really put your finger on it. It all starts with pitching and defense, and we keep finding ways to score runs.”

Peoria scored four unearned runs in the third inning against starting pitcher Randy Rosario to take a 4-1 lead. Rosario appeared to have pitched his way out of a bases-loaded jam, but third baseman T.J. White bobbled a two-out chopper, then rushed and threw past first base to allow a pair of runs to score.

A balk and RBI single followed. That was the first - and only - error Cedar Rapids has had in four postseason games.

'Everybody was walking through the dugout saying ‘Hey, you're good. You're good. We're still going, still going.'” White said. 'We had people in there like Nick saying ‘We're going to win this.' So from the start they were picking me up. They picked me up today. We come back and win by a run, and that's great.”

The Kernels chipped away at the deficit, scoring once in the fourth and again in the fifth. Gordon poked an opposite-field single to left against Peoria reliever and loser Sasha Kuebel (a former Iowa Hawkeye) leading off the seventh.

He was bunted into scoring position by Edgar Corcino, when a wild pitch on ball four to White moved him up to third. A passed ball scored Gordon to tie it and sent White to second.

With two outs, Chris Paul greeted reliever Jerry Then by rolling a two-strike pitch just through the left side to score White and give Cedar Rapids the lead.

'I was sitting offspeed, trying to get a good pitch,” Paul said. 'He threw some good pitches, but finally I got one with two strikes that I put just enough wood on to get it through. That was awesome to get that run in.”

Yorman Landa took it from there, striking out the first four batters he faced and getting a brilliant defensive play from Gordon in the ninth to end it. With the tying runner on first, Steve Bean hit a hard grounder to Gordon's left that appeared might get through for a hit.

But the 19-year-old rising star fielded it from his knees on the dive, flipped to second baseman Rafael Valera, who relayed to first for an awesome, game-ending double play.

'Nick made a hell of a play to end the game,” Mauer said.

'I definitely knew I had a chance to get it on a short hop,” said Gordon, hitting .412 in the playoffs. 'I knew I wasn't going to catch it in the air. Once I got it, I knew we were going to have the double play there.”

Reliever Michael Theofanopoulos got credit for the win.

'We didn't quit, and that's the biggest thing,” Mauer said. 'They scored four runs that we gifted them, but they didn't stop. Randy recovered and was able to give us some quality innings. Theo was good out of the pen, and Landa was lights out. Very impressive.”

Yep, very impressive. A championship performance.

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