Champions! Recapping the Woodpeckers’ Title Run with Andrew Chapman

Andrew, you indirectly answered the last question we have on our doc.

It was about Colin and bringing him down and getting to have him back in the in the booth for that game.

And I'm glad you talked about the drought there because the start of the season, it looked like it was going to continue.

You start the year in the first half, three and twelve.

That was a one hundred ninth.

Yeah.

119th best record in his 120 teams in the minor leagues.

And it kind of just shows you where this team, you know, turned around.

And of course, you know, the way that the roster is built then is not the same as it was near the end of the season, especially for single A. I mean, you're seeing guys come and go every other week, every week.

And what point in that second half, maybe even during that win streak, did you think, wow, this is possible that this team could win the second half and make the playoffs? Was there like a certain inch, you know, one of those games within that win streak, at what point did you kind of realize, hey, this team's got it?

Yeah, definitely during that 13-game winning streak.

I'll flashback, like you mentioned, to the first half where we were 3-12 to begin the year, and you think it's another one of those losing seasons because over the last five years, we've had a couple of 55-75 type years, and you think, all right, maybe we're – We're gearing up for another one of those.

And the Riverdogs were also the team that we can pretty much thank for being sub-500 for the first month and a half of the year because they beat us in 10 out of 12 regular season games.

So we were looking at a potential playoff matchup this year, a championship matchup with either Hickory, the hottest team in our league in the second half, or Charleston, the team that destroyed us in the first half.

So it was two ugly matchups that we were facing going into the postseason.

When you hit that 13-game winning streak and you're just rolling over everybody, you're sweeping the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, you're taking five of six from the Fredericksburg Nationals, who were the best team in our division in the first half.

You say, wow, this team's really putting it together.

And then you factor in that it's all these new draft picks that came in.

You mentioned how much the single-A roster changes over the course of the year.

You have your first-half team, and then you usually have a completely different team by the second half with the draft.

And I think the advantage goes to the team that is playing the best baseball in the second half with their new roster.

And that happened to be us this season.

We've never had a draft class that has had five plus hitters hitting over 300.

I mean, every single guy that... that was a sign of the Woodpeckers out of the draft this year was finding a way to get on base.

Logan Hughes, 20-game hitting streak, just crazy.