Brilliant pitching from a nineteen-year-old and a grand slam gave Pensacola’s Blue Wahoos an 11-4 victory over the Chattanooga Smokies and their second Southern League championship.
Why this matters: The Marlins’ Double-A affiliate’s championship tops off the team’s 10th anniversary season. The victory came 16 years after city voters passed the referendum to build the Community Maritime Park.
Over the past decade, the Blue Wahoos have been to the post-season six times with three affiliations. They became the Miami Marlins Double-A affiliate in 2021. Manager Kevin Randel won a championship as a player in the Marlins organization and now did as the Blue Wahoos manager.
Smokies and Blue Wahoos were co-champions in 2017 when weather concerns wiped out the championship series.
Dig Deeper: The game began with an incredible start from Blue Wahoos star prospect Eury Perez. The 19-year-old Perez tied a Minor League Baseball record by striking out the first eight batters he faced.
But he ran into trouble with two outs in the third as the Smokies took a 3-2 lead, causing Perez to throw 40 pitches in that inning and requiring the bullpen to be summoned earlier than hoped.
The Blue Wahoos regained an emotional edge two innings later.
Nasim Nunez led off by hitting a grounder that Tennessee first baseman Nelson Maldanado mishandled for an error. Will Banfield followed with a walk, and both runners advanced on a wild pitch. With one out, Griffin Conine checked his swing on a 3-2 pitch, and the umpires agreed to load bases.
That moment became pivotal.
The Blue Wahoos got a grand slam from infielder Cobie Fletcher-Vance to turn the game when he blasted the first pitch he saw from reliever Blake Whitney over the left field wall, just inside the foul pole and above the fence line.
The team expanded the. 6-3 lead with a four-run seventh inning. The first five batters reached on hits, including Fletcher-Vance, who drove in his fifth run in the game with a bases-loaded single. Pinch-hitter J.D. Osborne followed with a two-run double. The fourth run scored when reliever Riley Martin failed to catch a throw from his catcher Harrison Wenson after a pitch.
From that point, the bullpen finished it off. Sean Reynolds, the reliever star of back-to-back wins against the Montgomery Biscuits in the South Division series, recorded the final five outs to celebrate again with teammates.