Royals Minor League Playoff Update – Omaha Advances

Good news: The Omaha Storm Chasers will play for the Pacific Coast League Championship.

The Bad news: Northwest Arkansas and Kane County have been eliminated.

After getting past the Burlington Bees in the first round Kane County hosted the Quad Cities River Bandits. Cardinals prospect Trevor Rosenthal shut out the Cougars, throwing a four hit complete game shut out.  Leondy Perez took the loss, surrendering four runs in four innings.

In Game 2, the Cougars traveled to Davenport, Iowa and took a 5-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth.  Antonio Cruz surrendered a walkoff homer to Nicholas Longmire, spoiling an eight inning start by 2010 draftee Jason Mitchell, who struck out nine and gave up two runs (one earned).  The loss swept the Cougars out of the Midwest League playoffs.

Down south, the Northwest Arkansas Naturals fell short in their attempt to repeat as Texas League champions, falling in the first series to Arkansas.

After a win on Friday kept their hopes alive, the Travelers put up too much offense in Game 4, scoring six runs off starter Jeremy Jeffress and never looking back.  The Naturals pulled to within 7-5, but Arkansas added two runs to clinch the series and advance.  Paulo Orlando went 3-4 and scored twice in the game and hit .333 for the series.

On the bright side, Omaha took a 2-1 series lead against Round Rock to Werner Park and after some extra inning heroics, pulled out the series win, moving on to the Championship Series.

In the bottom of the tenth, Triple A legend Kila Ka’aihue homered to break a tie game, giving Rangers prospet Tanner Scheppers the loss and allowing Omaha to move on to face Sacramento.

Lorenzo Cain hit .474 and had a 1.184 OPS in 19 at bats in the series.  Ka’aihue’s homer was his second of the series and the winning runs were his fifth and sixth RBIs.  Omaha plays Tuesday night in Game 1 where they’ll send PCL Pitcher of the Year Luis Mendoza to the mound.