By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– After a three-year hiatus, the Wellcare Dodger American Legion Baseball team are American Legion Triple-A State Playoff bound.
And to accomplish the feat, they had to beat the Mid-Coast Dungies of Newport twice on Tuesday at Sprague High School in Salem. The Dungies took Game 1 of the Area-3 series on Monday 6-2, and the doubleheader portion of the League series was setting up to be a defensive battle with it being scoreless through the first two-and-a-half innings.
Jaxson Redel got the nod to start on the hill and the Olympian-grad delivered with a 13 strikeout performance and came within one out of a Complete Game. His offense backed him up too thanks to a six-run third inning en route to a 7-2 victory to even the series.
“I had to set the tone for the team. We needed two wins coming into the game, me on the mound was the best opportunity for that. I had a great defense to counter that and we got the win today,” said Redel. “You need the momentum to win in baseball and we grabbed it early and we got the win. This team hasn’t been to State in a long time and I’m just proud that I’m a part of this team.”
With that win, Game 3 of the series made it all more interesting. With the Top 2 teams making it to the State Tournament automatically, a win by either Mid-Coast or Wellcare would send them to the Postseason and leave the loser looking to fight their way into the bracket via the Play-In next week.
Both teams battled out of the gate in the second game of the doubleheader with Wellcare leading 4-2 after two innings before they started to pull away. The Dodgers scored four of the game’s final five runs to punch their tickets to the State Playoffs for the first time in three seasons following the 8-3 victory.
The energy from the first game carried over to the second as Damon Lawerence (Sweet Home) led the Dodgers with three hits and drove in two runs. Preston Bryan (Lebanon) anchored the defense by going five innings and striking out eight batters before Brandon Rowell (West Salem) closed out the game in the final two innings of the game.
“It was a whole lot of momentum. It was the dugout energy, we all were super hype, super pumped. Jaxson threw a really good game and Preston in the second game, he was solid. It was really dugout energy and momentum,” and Lawrence.
It’s been a long time coming for the Salem squad this season. A program that has been always in the State Playoff contention every year, the last two years have been really tough. But the Dodgers have really pieced it together this year.
They snapped a 62-game losing streak dating back to their last playoff appearance in 2023. They picked up their first league win since that 2023 season too as now they look to have returned to the Legion promiseland of the postseason after some lean years. The little things of learning the game and coming together as a team, it showed glimpses for sure, but it definitely paid off in the clutch when they needed it the most.
“Winning a doubleheader is not easy, and you saw through the day that our guys are going out there…they were running an offense, they were strategically playing the game and that’s something we’ve been grinding into them because it’s something you have to do to win baseball games and be great,” starts Dodger Head Coach Easton Bennett. “It’s crazy that we got it back to this point I’d say, but it’s not crazy too much because we’ve definitely put in the work this year.
The Dodgers will head to Medford this weekend for the annual Medford Tournament before heading back to Southern Oregon for the State Tournament that starts on July 25.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
