Winter Park Diamond Dawgs playoff bound after comeback win

UPDATE: An earlier version of this story had the Thursday game location set for Winter Park's Alfond Stadium. It will be played at Lake Brantley High School.

The lone run in the game had stood since the fourth inning, just one man to have crossed the plate that seemed too much for the Winter Park Diamond Dawgs to surpass. By the top of the eighth, the game seemed a foregone conclusion. Held to only four hits, the Dawgs were about to be knocked out of the playoffs in their first game. There was already an out, and two strikes on Tyler Homer, when he put one into the outfield. The comeback was on.

The Dawgs would come away with a 2-1 win on a seven-strikeout, seven and two-thirds inning start by Cameron Hanes. Eliot Shapleigh, who set up both runs with his two-out double, crossed the plate with the winning run. Daniel Woodrow provided the firepower for the single.

The Dawgs (14-22) had struggled to break free from a traumatically bad start to the season until a one-game playoff against the Deland Suns (20-19) forced them into a must-win.

In the two halves of an inning left to stop the Suns after their big comeback, the Dawgs would prove masterful, giving up a single before shutting them down completely. Mike Gaughan came in for the save and struck out three of the four batters he faced, including a slash through the full count against Brad Gresock to end it all.

The win turned around a season on a downward slide. The Dawgs had struggled to find a way above fourth place in the FCSL ladder after the first two weeks of the season. In July they had plunged to just above the league basement, their fall only cushioned by a Winter Garden Squeeze team that failed to win more than five games until the final week of the season when they went on a tear and ended up with eight.

With a playoff win under their belts, the Dawgs headed to Sanford on Wednesday night. Behind the upstart Altamonte Springs Boom (25-14-1) the entire season, the perennially competitive River Rats (26-13-1) caught up in the final week and a half, edging them to the end of the season by just one game.

Now after a 4-0 shutout loss to start the playoff series, the Dawgs will have to hope that's not a harbinger of a quick end to come.

The Rats enjoy a record of 6-2 against the Dawgs this season, having thoroughly dominated them in one of the biggest blowouts of the season, bringing on a mercy rule in a 10-0 blasting June 23 that featured three stolen bases by Rats shortstop Aaron Palmer alone.

The Dawgs will have to turn the tide in a big way to make it to Tropicana Field, which awaits the winner of each of the two Florida Collegiate Summer League playoff series going on this week. They’ll play the Rats at home in game two of the series, which starts at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, at Lake Brantley High School. Both times the Dawgs defeated the Rats this season they did it at home.

If necessary, game three is at 7 p.m. Friday at Sanford Memorial Stadium.

In the other series, Altamonte Springs hosts the Leesburg Lightning (22-19) in the battle against the No. 2 and No. 3 seeded teams in the playoffs. The winner of that series will face either the Rats or Dawgs under that big dome in St. Petersburg.

At 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the championship game will play ball after the Tampa Bay Rays take on the New York Mets at 1:10 p.m.