SACRAMENTO — In the end, the streaky 2007 Salt Lake Bees finished the season headed in the wrong direction. The Bees, after winning the first two games of their best-of-five PCL Pacific conference championship series, dropped their third game in a row on Sunday afternoon to Sacramento River Cats.
Sacramento's 4-2 win propelled it to the PCL title series against New Orleans beginning Tuesday. Salt Lake's season, meanwhile, is over after an entertaining series that saw the winning team come from behind in all five games.
The Bees' losing three in a row shouldn't have been too unexpected. All season long they were a club that would go on good runs followed by bad ones — like the time they lost six games in a row right after finishing a six-game winning streak.
"It's been an up and down year for the team," admitted Bees manager Brian Harper. "We played real good at times and we played bad at times, but it just seemed that we always won the games that we needed to."
Until Sunday — but it wasn't for a lack of trying. Nick Green, 23-year-old pitcher, made his triple-A debut in the intense, do-or-die game for the Bees and was outstanding. If not for one bad pitch — that went for a two-out, 3-run home run to Sacramento's Daric Barton — Green would have been the hero and the Bees would have been headed to New Orleans.
Green, who spent all season at double-A Arkansas before getting called up just prior to the playoffs, went seven innings, giving up seven hits with six strikeouts. He threw 105 pitches, 76 of them for strikes. Chances are the young major-league prospect will be on the Bees roster next season.
"It was my first triple-A start, but I just wanted to treat it like it was just another baseball game," said Green. "There was a lot on the line, but I like that. I like when the pressure is on. The main thing I wanted to do was get ahead (in the count)."
The Bees scored a pair of runs in the top of the first inning when Terry Evans doubled home Casey Smith and Mike Eylward. Salt Lake then chased River Cats starter Bobby Cramer after only two-plus innings after he walked the first two hitters of the third.
But Sacramento relievers Shawn Kohn and Jerry Blevins were lights out, pitching seven shutout innings. Blevins struck out the side in both the seventh and eighth innings, in fact.
Salt Lake still led 2-0 heading into the bottom of the fifth inning and even had two outs before the River Cats scored all four of their runs. Lou Merloni hit a run-scoring single, followed by Barton's three-run homer.
The Bees, meanwhile, had just one hit in the final five innings and never really threatened to score after the River Cats had taken the lead.
While the Bees clubhouse was somber, there was also some satisfaction after their long, division-title winning season and a down-to-the-wire playoff series.
"There were five good games," said Elwyard. "We just ended up on the wrong side on day five. . . . It was an awesome year."
Bees veteran outfielder Nick Gorneault agreed.
"We had a team goal this year. We had our sights set on winning the whole thing," Gorneault said. "Unfortunately, we came up a little short. But it was a successful season."
Sacramento, the PCL champions in both 2003 and 2004, will next face the New Orleans Zephyrs in an attempt to win their third title in five years.
It's hard to believe that their next series will be as entertaining for the River Cats, however. Three of the five games were won on the last crack of the bat. All five were competitive and won by the home team.
"They've got a great team over there," said Sacramento manager Tony DeFrancesco of the Bees. "They battled (in Salt Lake) and beat us in the last innings there. We were lucky enough to come back here at home and get some big hits and some big wins. ... It was a great series."
BEES WAX: After the game, Harper, the team's manager the past two years, said chances were "probably not real good" that he would be back next season to manage in Salt Lake. He would like to have a job that would keep him closer to his home in Arizona while his son finishes his final two years of high school ... Infielder Brandon Wood and outfielder Terry Evans were both called up to the parent Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim following the game ... Salt Lake is now just 3-8 in playoff series since triple-A returned to Utah in 1994 ... Saturday night was the first time all season the Bees had lost a game on a walk-off home run.
E-mail: lojo@desnews.com