It was good and bad news for Gate City Tuesday night.
The bad news was that it saw a season-best four-game winning streak snapped after a 15-7 loss at Hyrum.
But the good news was, the Grays are still headed for the postseason full of confidence.
They’ll be the No. 4 seed in the Northern Utah League playoffs. Gate City (12-12) will open it up with a best-of-three series against The Lab out of Logan, Utah. Game 1 gets underway at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Halliwell Park.
“My dad has the saying, ‘Everybody’s 0-0 when the postseason starts,’” Gate City coach Rhys Pope said. “Anything can happen. The one seed could fall to the last seed or vice versa. I think our guys feel confident going into it and us as a coaching staff feel really confident going into it.
“This is the best time of the year. Playoff baseball is the most fun.”
The Grays weren’t having too much fun 111 miles down the road in Utah during Tuesday’s regular season finale.
They were looking to maintain a recent hot streak that had put them over .500 for the first time all season. But that was quickly squashed.
The Hornets batted around, racked up 10 of their 19 hits and scored six runs in the bottom of the first inning alone. So by the time the third inning rolled around, Gate City was already in a 10-0 hole.
“We just got down too big too early,” Pope said. “Hyrum’s a good team, so if you go down big early, it’s tough to come back like that. It was just two bad innings. But after that, I thought we did really well.”
The Grays did outscore the Hornets 7-5 the rest of the way. They also held them to just five hits during the final five innings.
JD Gunderson continued his hitting streak. The Pocatello High alum and current Oregon Tech star put up his fifth consecutive multi-hit game to go along with an RBI.
Easton Watterson also tallied two hits and drove in a pair of runs. Rogelio Gonzalez had two RBIs in the loss, as well.
The 12-12 mark is the worst record the Grays have had going into a postseason in Pope’s fours years at the helm. That was largely due to a 2-6 start and just four wins in the month of June. They also sat at just 8-11 following an 11-6 loss at The Lab on July 22. It was their fourth loss in the last five games − the first time that had happened all year.
“Everybody was kind of scratching their heads going, ‘What the heck is going on?,’” Pope said. “We were way more talented than what our record showed. I think we were down there in the sixth seed.
“But our guys have never given up. It just took us a little while to click and come together. And I think as soon as we found that, we’ve done really well.”
Gate City, which advanced to the semifinals a year ago, went 3-1 against The Lab this season. The Grays won their first three games against them by a combined score of 24-16 before the loss on July 22.
“We definitely feel good,” said Pope about the matchup. “But we can’t use that 3-1 and think that we can walk through them because they’re a good team. They’ve been playing well as of late. They beat us two weeks ago. So they’ve kind of turned it around as well. So it should be a heck of a matchup and some good baseball. We just need to come in ready to go and I think if we do that, hopefully we end up on top.”
Gate City will be looking for its fifth title overall and first since 2018.
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