The Gateway Grizzlies finished off their 2022 Frontier League season with an 8-2 win over the Lake Erie Crushers, Sunday night at GCS Credit Union Ballpark. (Photo: Thomas Grove)
| Final | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lake Erie Crushers | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 1 |
| Gateway Grizzlies | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | X | 8 | 13 | 0 |
Torrance Terrell
Staff Writer
Sauget, IL — The Gateway Grizzlies put the final wraps on the 2022 Frontier League season, Sunday night GCS Credit Union Ballpark, with an 8-2 win over the Lake Erie Crushers.
Gateway, which won all three games of its final series of the season, closed out the year with a 47-49 record — the team’s best mark since 2014. Lake Erie, which could’ve earned a playoff spot if it had won all three games, finished the season with a 49-47 record.
The Grizzlie offense was led, as it was all season, by centerfielder Isaac Benard and catcher Kevin Krause. Both players smacked two-run homers on Sunday.
Krause’s came in the bottom of the first inning, and was his 10th of the season, while Benard’s blast came in the sixth, and was his team-leading 23rd of the year.
Shortstop Abdiel Diaz also homered on Sunday. It was his fifth homer of the season.
Starting pitcher Carson LaRue also had a magnificent night for the Grizzlies. The veteran righthander from Dewey, Okla., tossed six innings and allowed just one run on six hits, with one walk, and six strikeouts.
A crowd of 6,751 fans, which came to celebrate Gateway’s “Greatest Night in Baseball”, saw the Grizzlies end its season by winning six of their final seven games. Sunday’s crowd pushed Gateway’s home season attendance to over 75,000 fans this season, which was another number the club hadn’t topped since 2014.
The Frontier League playoffs will begin on Tuesday, with the Evansville Otters playing the Schaumburg Boomers in the West Division Wild Card Game. The winner of that contest will advance to the West Division Championship Series, where it will face the Washington Wild Things.
The East Division Wild Card Game will be on Wednesday, with the Ottawa Titans playing the New York Titans. The winner of that matchup will face the Quebec Capitales in the East Division Championship Series.
The winners of the two divisional championship series will meet in the Frontier League Championship Series, a best three-out-of-five matchup, that will begin on September 14.
Schaumburg won the league title in 2021, after defeating Washington in a thrilling five-game series that gave the Boomers their fourth championship in 10 seasons as members of the Frontier League.