Roger Cotton
Luke Weaver
The 2017 Memphis Redbirds have one more regular-season home stand (August 28-31, when they host the Iowa Cubs). Consider it a victory lap. These record-breaking Redbirds clinched their division of the Pacific Coast League on August 13th, with 21 games left to play. Should they finish 20 games ahead of the second-place team in the league’s American Southern Division, they’ll be only the third PCL team to do so since the league split into divisions in 1963. They’re in position to become the first PCL team to win 90 games since 2006.
Under first-year manager Stubby Clapp, the Redbirds have won consistently despite the promotion of key players — Carson Kelly, Paul DeJong, and Luke Weaver, to name three — to the parent St. Louis Cardinals. In May, they set a new franchise record by winning 11 consecutive games. Defying the law of averages, Memphis is 10-0 in extra-inning games and won or split an astounding 27 consecutive series.
The Redbirds will likely face Colorado Springs (Triple-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers) in the first round of the playoffs, with the first game in their best-of-five series scheduled for September 6th at AutoZone Park. Here’s a look at the franchise’s four previous postseason appearances:
• 2000 — With the back-flipping Clapp manning second base during AutoZone Park’s inaugural season, the Redbirds won 83 games (until this season, a franchise record) and beat Albuquerque, three games to two, in the first round of the playoffs. (Memphis was down to its last out, trailing the Dukes in Game 4, before rallying and then winning the decisive fifth game at AutoZone Park.) After taking a two-games-to-one lead in the championship series against Salt Lake, the Redbirds were forced into extra innings in Game 4 at AZP. In the bottom of the 13th, Albert Pujols drilled a line drive just inside the rightfield foul pole to win the championship in walk-off style. (Pujols has since won a pair of World Series and three MVP trophies with the St. Louis Cardinals and hit more than 600 big-league home runs.)
• 2009 — The Redbirds left no doubt, sweeping both Albuquerque and Sacramento for their second PCL title. David Freese hit home runs to win both Game 3 of the opening round and Game 1 of the championship series (each by the score of 1-0). Evan MacLane hurled eight shutout innings in the clincher at Sacramento. Five members of this team went on to win the 2011 World Series with St. Louis: Freese, Allen Craig, Jon Jay, Jaime Garcia, and Fernando Salas.
• 2010 — The Redbirds won 11 of their last 14 games to take their division and swept Oklahoma City in the opening round. (Lance Lynn struck out 16 RedHawks in the Game 3 clincher.) In a scheduling oddity, all five games of the PCL championship series were booked for AutoZone Park, as the Tacoma Rainiers’ stadium was undergoing renovations (that apparently couldn’t be scheduled for a week later). The home comforts didn’t do Memphis any good, as Tacoma hit 11 home runs in three games to sweep the series.
• 2014 — The Redbirds were in last place (38-46) on July 2nd, then tore through the season’s final two months with a record of 41-18. Led by three future Cardinals in the outfield (Randal Grichuk, Tommy Pham, and Stephen Piscotty), the Redbirds won nine straight games to tie what was then the franchise record for winning streaks. But with the team’s top RBI man, Xavier Scruggs, sitting on the bench after being promoted by the Cardinals, Memphis fell to Omaha in a four-game opening-round series.
