Bowling Green Hot Rods

Over in the South Division Series, it was a nail-biter.

The Winston-Salem Dash defeated the Bowling Green Hot Rods 9-8 in 10 innings in Game 1.

That's the South Atlantic League.

The Northwest League, the final high-A circuit.

Do tell.

So the low A and the high A team, the Gold- Bowling Green Hot- Hotrods and the Charleston RiverDogs both had their first playoff games yesterday.

Both of them were 5-0 ahead, you know, early in the games.

Both of them ended up with a 9-8 score [laughs]

So if Frederick still wins the second-half title, Greensboro, the Pirates affiliate, would go in their stead if they can hold off the Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Washington national system.

And then in the south, the team that could match up with the Bowling Green Hot Rods is Winston-Salem.

Winston-Salem currently has one game lead over Bowling Green and a one-and-a-half game lead over the Greenville Drive.

Bowling Green and Greenville play each other this week, so that'll be interesting to see as those two jockey for position.

He's 8-3 on the year with a 3-2-9 ERA in 22 games, striking out, hear this, 118.

Fellow Gulls alum Nathan Fuelling is still putting up some big numbers with the high-A Bowling Green Hot Rods.

The NSVL native had a bit of a rough month in August, though.

He's still hitting .242 with 21 homers, 66 RBI, and 8 stolen bases in 104 games.

Today was a real bummer.

Drew McDaniel making his second start against the Bowling Green Hot Rods, the Rays' advance day team.

And they have played – so they had an interesting little blurb on the game today, Andrew and his partner earlier, that they had – split once, lost 10 times out of the series that they've played against that team.

So they've never beat them.

They moved the course a little bit, um, this past year.

They used to finish in WT's football stadium, um, and now they start and finish at the Bowling Green Hot Rods stadium.

Um, but I think it's a faster course than it has been in years past, and so, um, excited to go down there and just, like, start up rip a 10K.

I've not put together a good 10K in probably three years, so.

In this week's show, we'll meet up with another one of the newest Rays, catcher and first baseman Liam Hicks, and we'll talk to the Canadian backstop about growing up in Toronto, giving up hockey to pursue a career in baseball, and how he wound up south of the border in Missouri and Arkansas.

Then we'll get together with Rays prospect Ryan McCoy, who was named the Rays Minor League Player of the Month in July with an outstanding run of form for the High A Bowling Green Hot Rods.

Finally, we'll have an engrossing conversation with Kevin Bowles, the manager of the Rays AA affiliate, the Montgomery Biscuits, who are trying to get back to the postseason for an 11th straight season.

But we begin today with Liam Hicks.

Awesome.

Thanks for having me.

And we will go to our first break, but when we return, we'll talk to Rays infield prospect Ryan McCoy of the High-A Bowling Green Hot Rods, and then we'll wrap it all up with the manager of the Montgomery Biscuits, the AA affiliate of your Tampa Bay Rays, Mr. Kevin Boles.

That's all coming up next on the Rays Baseball Network.