Brewers complete sweep of Yankees

The Miller Lite Brewers only needed three games to take down defending champion Northern Yankees in the finals of the Saipan Major League at Francisco M. Palacios Baseball Field, and they finished them off in a one-run thriller.

The Brewers got another complete game out of pitcher Roy Celis, but the rocket wasn’t as untouchable as his Game 1 performance. Celis gave up 10 runs off of 16 hits, and two walks over nine innings of work, but this time he had plenty of help from his offense.

Second baseman Jess Mesa went 4-for-5 at the plate, scored two runs, stole two bases, racked up an RBI, and reached base on each of his appearances. Left fielder JR Suel went 2-for-2, scored three times knocked in a run and was walked before being pulled in favor of Mel Teregeyo in the seventh.

The only team that was able to beat the Yankees twice during the regular season was the Brewers, and they appeared to have momentum on their side going into Game 3. They got started by scoring a pair of runs off of pitcher Elmer Sablan in the first inning when Jester Garcia crossed the plate courtesy of a single by Tony Celis. The Brewers third baseman would later score off of a past ball.

In the second inning, the Brewers added to their lead via gift-wrapped home plate for Suel and Mesa with poor throwing in the field.

“Errors, that kind of killed us tonight, yes. Our bats were on, we had like 10 runners left on base. We were hitting tonight, we were hitting Roy, it’s just that our defense hurt us. Look at the score, 11-10, if it wasn’t for those three or four unearned runs, this was our game. That’s what I saw. It was a long break, all of that rain, playoffs,” said Yankees third baseman Mel Sakisat.

The Yankees weren’t the only team with difficulties on defense, as they cut the lead to 4-1 off of a Brewers mistake in the bottom of the second, but they certainly weren’t helping themselves very much.

Sablan got his walking papers when the blue and gold had a series of four consecutive hits that yielded four runs in the third.

“I just didn’t have it tonight,” said a disappointed Sablan.

Everette Ngardong came in to supply some mid-relief and allowed a pair of runs off of five hits to help his team, but by the time he checked out, the score was 10-5 Brewers. The Brew crew scored a pair in the top of the fifth, but the Yankees answered in the bottom with a trio of plate crossings to chip away at the lead.

Jonathan Jones came into the game for the Yankees in the top of the seventh and pitched a strong three innings, holding the Brewers to just one run off of four hits, and fanning four. The offense seemed to feed off of his energy and scored another three runs when Sakisat, Chris Camacho, and Jesse Jones found their way home to cut the lead to 10-8.

Bruce Norita scored the eventual game winner for the Brewers in the eighth when Manny Sablan tripled him in, but the Yankees provided the late-game drama as they closed the gap to one run before it ended when Bansil hit into a double-play.

Yankees manager Tino Camacho believes in the players on his team, and vowed that he will make no roster changes before next year’s SML season.

“This team will be back next year, the same faces.”

There’s no question that Francisco M. Palacios has been around the sport of baseball for a while, and the fact that the stadium is named after him should clear up any doubts. The man who has lifetime statistics on just about every ball player in the CNMI said that the championship series didn’t breakdown the way that he expected.

“I’ll have to check, but I think that in the past three years, this was the first time that one team has swept in three games.”

Palacios added that he was surprised that the Yankees fell behind by so many runs with all of the talented players on their roster. They dug themselves an eight run hole that seemed almost impossible from which to escape, but that’s almost what happened.

After the game, Brewers manager Tony Rogolifoi explained what was going through his head toward the end of the game, and why he stayed with his ace.

“Well, the boys performed pretty well, but I almost changed Roy. I knew that Joe was ready, but I also knew that Roy could pitch the whole game. It’s just that he was giving up a lot of hits, and all of those pitches that were over the plate in the latter part of the game. They were good hits by the Yankees, who were able to hit him, but we had the support of the entire Brewers crew to win the game. It’s teamwork, that’s the name of the game.”