Nothing was resolved during the final regular season series for the Amarillo Sod Poodles against the Midland RockHounds at Hodgetown this past week, especially over the last four games.

That will come starting this Tuesday.

Since Thursday, the Sod Poodles and RockHounds have been certain of their destinies at the end of the regular season, and their paths will cross again (assuming they diverged in the first place) this week in the Texas League South Division Championship. They’ll stay at Hodgetown through Tuesday, when the teams open a best-of-three series at 6:35 p.m. before heading south to Midland on Thursday for game two and game three if necessary Friday.

What happened in the series after the Soddies won 4-0 on Wednesday to clinch the TL South second half title became a moot point. MIdland, who won the TL South first half crown, managed a split in the series, as the RockHounds won a very Hodgtownish 14-10 series finale on Sunday.

This made the last series at Hodgetown a playoff dress rehearsal where both teams made good cases for themselves as to why they should advance to the Texas League Championship series the following week. By the end of next week they’ll know practically everything about each other, if they didn’t already.

“I believe we’re going to fight all the way to the end and it’s going to be a great battle,” Sod Poodles manager Javier Colina said. “I know we’ve seen each other enough to find our weaknesses and we just have to play good baseball. That means pitching the right way and playing good defense. The offense is going to be there.”

It certainly was to end the series, as the winning team scored at least nine runs over the last four games, and Sunday’s game was an archetype of a Hodgetown showdown. There was a total of six home runs and both teams hit a grand slam.

After the Sod Poodles (39-30 in the second half of TL play) took a 5-2 lead into the fifth, the RockHounds (27-42) used two big innings to take control of the game. They scored five runs off Soddies reliever Nate Savino, capped by a three-run homer by Brayan Buevlas to go up 7-5, a lead Midland never relinquished.

The Sod Poodles cut it to 7-6 on a solo homer by Jose Fernandez in the sixth, but in the seventh, Midland jumped on Soddies reliever Eli Saul to go up 13-6. Clark Elliott’s grand slam was the big blow in the inning.

Not to be outdone, the Sod Poodles gave the home faithful hope that they could go home happy to end the regular season. Ryan Waldschmidt hit his second homer of the day, a grand slam in the eighth, to cut it to 14-10, the final regular season runs in Hodgetown for 2025.

The slate will be clean Tuesday despite the past recent history between the two teams.

“I don’t think we’re going to approach it differently from the regular season,” Colina said. “We know what they’ve got and they know what we’ve got. The short series for me is more about pitching and execution.”

Going small

Execution was on display Saturday night, when the Sod Poodles clinched the series with a 9-8 win. The game started out fairly typical for Hodgetown, only enhanced, as the RockHounds hit four homers off Soddies starter Avery Short to take a 5-0 lead.

Not surprisingly, the Sod Poodles answered back to tie the game in the bottom of the inning, capping the inning on J.J. D’Orazio’s two-run homer to tie it 5-5. In the bottom of the third, Jack Hurley gave the Soddies the lead for good at 7-5 with another two-run homer.

The Sod Poodles led 8-7 going into the bottom of the eighth when they went small to get some insurance, thanks oddly enough, to their catchers. D’Orazio, a catcher who was the designated hitter, led off with a single and stole second with Gavin Logan batting, which was unusual enough in and of itself as it was D’Orazio’s first steal of the season.

“My last stolen base was in 2023 so I was very happy to finally get another one,” D’Orazio said. “There aren’t many opportunities. It was supposed to be a hit and run, then it was a great job by Gavin getting the bunt down.”

D’Orazio went to third on Logan’s sacrifice bunt, which brought up Jean Walters, who pulled off a flawless suicide squeeze bunt to score D’Orazio, which provided a much-needed insurance run.

“I was talking to Jean and he was supposed to present the bunt a lot earlier,” D’Orazio said. “I was already running home so I was very scared. He got it done his own way.”

Playing small ball to score runs hasn’t been a trademark of the Sod Poodles, especially at Hodgetown. It can be just as prudent to play for the three-run homer, especially with the wind coming out of the south.

That ability to manufacture a run is something that RockHounds will have to consider when the teams meet again as part of the Soddies’ offensive arsenal.

“I want to put the players in the best position for them to be successful if we have to play small ball,” Colina said. “I know this park it’s hard to do that because more than one run can make the difference, but I want to see what we’ve got and send a message that we can do everything we can to win the game. The boys executed and did the right thing and that was the difference in the game.”

Logan proved especially adept at executing small ball, as he had two sacrifice bunts in the game.

Remembering 2023

When it comes to trips to the playoffs in their short history, the Sod Poodles have definitely made them count. In their inaugural year of 2019 and in 2023, they not only made the Texas League playoffs, but ended up winning the league championship.

D’Orazio is one of the players who remembers, as he was called up late that year and got a championship ring. This is a very familiar look to him.

“I’m not going to lie, I’ve got the exact same feeling I had in 2023,” D’Orazio said. “I didn’t have the chance to play that much in the playoffs but hopefully I have that chance this year. The chemistry of this team is really, really good and I’m going to be ready for anything.”

Representing Mickey

Saturday night’s theme at Hodgetown, as well as being the final fireworks show of the season, was Happily Ever After, a Disney-themed night where Sod Poodles employees and several fans came dressed as their favorite Disney character.

This theme stretched to the field as well, as the Sod Poodles dressed in jerseys with Mickey Mouse on the front. That was just fine with Colina, who got a chance to relive his childhood.

“I really love Mickey Mouse,” Colina said. “It’s my favorite cartoon character ever. Comin from Venezuela everybody was talking about Disneyland. I went to that place and I went to Orlando at Disney World and it was like a dream come true for a kid. 

“It’s crazy because the players surprised me one day and got me a $450 belt and they put “Mickey Mouse” on the belt along with my name and the Venezuelan flag. I’m keeping this jersey.”

Colina jokes that he’s occasionally a “Mickey Mouse manager” when he makes a decision which doesn’t work, such as sending a runner home from third base who gets thrown out. 

“We’re trying to figure out if he’s the one who came up with these things,” Sod Poodles third baseman LuJames Groover said. “We won in them, so I like them. I’m all for them if that happens.”

Taking the hill

Colina said that the pitching rotation for the first two games against Midland has been set. Left-hander Mitch Bratt is slated to throw the first game Tuesday, and right-hander Jose Cabrera, whose nine wins this season is a franchise record, will go Thursday in Midland. If the series goes to a third game Friday, Colina said he hasn’t decided on a starter.

Groover wins Texas League batting title

Groover went into Sunday’s game with a chance to etch his name in the Sod Poodles record books. With 145 hits on the season, he needed two base knocks to tie the single season franchise record for hits established by Owen Miller during the Sod Poodles inaugural season in 2019.

However, Groover went 0-for-5, as Miller will keep the record of 147 to himself for at least another year. Groover did earn quite the honor for his incredible season winning the Texas League batting champion with a .309 average on the year.

Hodgetown provides a power surge for RockHounds

In general, the Sod Poodles are glad to return home after a road trip, or at least the position players are. If a player has been struggling at the plate, Hodgetown is the perfect slumpbuster for someone looking to improve their power numbers.

That can work both ways, though. While the Sod Poodles are happy to open the playoffs at home, the RockHounds might be happy to be spending another two days in town.

After having several key players called up to Triple-A by their major league parent club Athletics (currently playing in Sacramento), the RockHounds suffered a bit of a power outage. From Aug. 1 up until coming to Amarillo last week, they had hit only seven homers in that span.

The RockHounds showed signs of breaking out of that funk in the first game, a 6-5 win, by hitting two homers off the RockHounds. They were shut out in the Sod Poodles division clinching win, but after that, they took advantage of Hodgetown’s hitter-friendly confines.

Thursday and Friday they scored 12 runs apiece (alas, they split the two games), and in Friday’s 12-6 win Midland hit six dingers, as Clark Elliott and Leo DeVries each hit two apiece. Over the final four days at Hodgetown, the RockHounds hit 15 roundtrippers, more than twice what they’d hit in the previous 37 days.