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Champions! Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp win International League baseball title
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- Champions! Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp win International League baseball title
(This story has been updated to add new information and to add a photo or video.)
It took the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp six months and 152 games to reach the International League season finale.
It took only one inning to start them on the road to end the city's 57-year wait for a Triple-A league championship.
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The final strike. The champagne. The trophy. The exultant ballplayers on the Florida grass. At long last, crustacean jubilation.
"Being able to be a part of this is just incredible," designated hitter Matthew Etzel said.
Unleashing a batting barrage in the first inning and withstanding a nerve-racking rally in the last, the Jumbo Shrimp sealed Northeast Florida's long-awaited Triple-A trophy, beating the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders 7-4 in the deciding Game 3 of the International League Championship Series on Sept. 25 at VyStar Ballpark.
Adam Mazur delivered a sterling start and Etzel added to his postseason highlight collection with three RBI, one day after his homer and double in the backs-to-the-wall Game 2 helped Jacksonville keep its season alive.
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Already victors in the first-half season standings , the Jumbo Shrimp now make way for more hardware in the trophy cabinet within the club press box: the city's first International League championship since 1968, when the old Jacksonville Mets won it all.
"To be able to do this on our home field was incredible," manager David Carpenter said.
JUMBO SHRIMP ROCK ROOKIE
In Jacksonville's biggest ballgame in two generations, the Jumbo Shrimp lit up the scoreboard before the sun fully disappeared behind the stands along the third-base line.
Against 22-year-old Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, a pitcher long on arm talent (selected this week by Baseball America as the New York Yankees ' minor league pitcher of the year) but short on high-minors experience (one career Triple-A appearance), Jacksonville rolled out a five-run flurry.
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"There were certain parts of the plate that we wanted to work with," Carpenter said. "He was walking us and we were taking good pitches, putting up really good at-bats."
Rodriguez-Cruz yielded four hits and two walks, threw 38 pitches and couldn't make it out of the first, setting the stage for a parade of six visiting pitchers.
Designated hitter Etzel got the ball rolling with a two-run double to the right field gap, Jared Serna legged out an infield grounder to bring home another run, Jack Winkler brought home two more on a crisp single and in the blink of an eye, the Jumbo Shrimp had placed a 5 on the left-field scoreboard.
"I was a little tight, a little bit nervous the first game," said Etzel, who packed a 1.154 OPS for the series. "But I just went out and played loose, to have fun, to stick to my approach."
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MAZUR MAGNIFICENT
That early explosion was all the support needed for the Jumbo Shrimp's Mazur.
Mazur started against Scranton and is now No. 1 in the league game that mattered most thanks to five excellent innings, limiting the visitors to three hits and two walks. He struck out three in his first game without allowing a run since June 24 against Nashville.
Newly returned to Jacksonville after a month in the majors with the Miami Marlins , Mazur picked the perfect time for his first win since July.
With help from a 5-4-3 double play here or a Jared Serna diving stop there, the right-hander mowed down the RailRiders. He hit choppy waters only in the first but escaped, forcing the visitors to strand runners on the corners.
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"I was getting myself in good spots, getting ahead of the hitters pretty quick tonight and putting them away when we had a chance to," he said.
TENSE FINISH IN NINTH
Jumbo Shrimp catcher Joe Mack (8) lifts the championship trophy after the game of Game 3 against Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Up 7-0 in the final frame. Easy victory, right? Wrong.
The RailRiders, who mustered only three hits in the first eight innings against a near-flawless relay of Mazur, Dale Stanavich, Christian Roa and William Kempner, almost derailed Jacksonville's hopes at the end.
The second-ranked IL club in team OPS rallied for four runs in the ninth against reliever Freddy Tarnok : Double, single, single, walk. Then, after a pair of outs, another single and two more walks. Suddenly, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's potential tying run occupied first base, with No. 3 hitter Jose Rojas at the plate and the 6-7, 240-pound Spencer Jones on deck.
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But 25 years after ninth-inning heartbreak in the Double-A Southern League playoffs against West Tenn, Jacksonville survived this time. Josh White fanned Rojas to cue a night of celebration at the ballpark for the home crowd of 4,540.
HISTORIC ANNIVERSARY
The Jumbo Shrimp's triumph marked a historic anniversary on the diamond, 63 years to the day after Jacksonville last held a winner-take-all home game for a league championship.
On Sept. 25, 1962, the Atlanta Crackers denied the Jacksonville Suns 3-1 in Game 7 of the International League finals, led by a five-hitter from the battery of future big leaguers Ray Sadecki and Tim McCarver. This time, the winning finish belonged to Jacksonville.
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One more goal remains: As International League champions, the Jumbo Shrimp travel to Las Vegas for a single-game overall class championship at 10 p.m. Sept. 27 against the Las Vegas Aviators, champions of the Pacific Coast League.
"Incredible win all the way around," Carpenter said. "Can't wait to take this one to Vegas."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp win International League baseball title
