A great regular season behind them, Cedar Rapids Kernels shoot for a championship

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids Kernels are rockin’ it old school for their Midwest League playoff series this week.

The club returned home Sunday night from a six-game road trip to Wisconsin that concluded the regular season. There was an optional workout Monday morning at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

Team buses (there are two of them for every road trip now) take off Tuesday morning for Peoria and will promptly return to Cedar Rapids after Tuesday night’s Game 1 against the Chiefs. Wednesday’s an off day, with the best-of-3 series shifting to Memorial Stadium for Thursday night’s Game 2 and an if-necessary, winner-take-all Game 3 Friday night.

Since Major League Baseball has taken over operations of the minors, commuter trips like this have become strictly verboten. Even when the Kernels and Quad Cities play, the visiting team holes up in a hotel for an entire week instead of driving back and forth the 90 miles.

This is a rare exception because of the circumstances.

“I think some of us are actually happy that we have an off day (Monday) to kind of decompress a little bit before we start this journey,” said Kernels catcher Andrew Cossetti. “I don’t think this is a problem at all.”

Not much has been a problem this season for the Kernels. Despite losing the final four games at Wisconsin, they finished 82-50, winning both halves in the MWL’s Western Division, their .621 overall winning percentage tops in all of full-season minor league baseball.

This has been among the most successful teams in Cedar Rapids history, one that has had some good players and prospects, obviously, but one that has developed a strong camaraderie to go with it.

“Obviously it’s a very talented group, but I think more importantly we have guys who wanted to show up to the field every day,” Cossetti said. “We’ve all connected on a level I don’t think any of us would have expected. Because of that, we want to show up to the field every day, we want to keep our season going.”

“It’s been a good year. A good year for the team, a good year for the guys,” said Kernels shortstop Noah Miller. “We’ve had, I don’t want to say the whole team here most of the year, but a lot of the same guys. Then there were the guys that came in about halfway through. It’s just been a good mesh the whole season, a good team the whole year.”

Miller is among a core of position players who have been here from start to finish this season. That core played together last season for Fort Myers in low-Class A and was a playoff team.

The pitching staff has experienced the most turnover, with all three expected starters in this series (Andrew Morris, Cory Lewis and C.J. Culpepper) being midseason additions. Yet, as Miller, said, everyone old and new has continually pulled on the same rope, so to speak, and there have been wins aplenty because of that.

“One-hundred percent. Good team chemistry, that’s what you need to make it far and win that many games,” he said. “Finishing (32 games over .500) is unreal, that’s hard to do in the minors because the rosters are changing a lot. But every guy that came through was a good addition. Tough losses, obviously, with the guys that went up, but we filled the spots, kept playing well. That’s all it was. Guys getting along. That’s how you win ballgames right there.”

The Kernels went 40-26 in the first half and 42-24 in the second. Peoria qualified for the postseason by finishing second in the Western Division, six games behind Cedar Rapids.

The Kernels won the season series between the teams, 15-6. Great Lakes and Fort Wayne square off in the MWL’s Eastern Division finals.

Cedar Rapids hasn’t won a Midwest League championship since 1994.

“I think we’re all excited,” said Kernels pitcher Kyle Jones. “We’ve had a great year so far. We’re just looking to keep it going and trying to get that ring.”

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