Watertown Post 17 Legion team is ready for the stretch run; other WBA squads seek strong finishes

The good news for Watertown Post 17's American Legion Baseball team is that it's the final month, not the first two months, that's going to determine how successful their 2022 season is going to be.

A key home doubleheader for Post 17 against Huron on Tuesday night was washed out by the rain and now will be played Wednesday, July 13 starting at 5 p.m. at Watertown Stadium.

Watertown (14-31 overall and 8-22 in South Dakota Class A play) is currently 12th out of 16 teams in the state's Class A power points standings. Rapid City Post 22, the host team for the state tourney July 27-31, will automatically qualify for state and 14 of the other 15 teams will meet in best-of-three state qualifying series on Friday and Saturday, July 22-23.

"It's definitely been a learning curve for us and we knew that was coming," said Post 17 head coach Ryan Neale. "Still with everything that has happened, we've been able to learn and continue to get better. It may not show in our win-loss record, but as coaches we feel we've gotten better from May 1 through July 5."

Likely hitting the road for the postseason

As mentioned, the rained-out doubleheader with Huron could be an interesting one. Huron is currently the 13th seed in the power points standings and two losses for Post 17 could prove disastrous.

Neale admits, however, that a number of the state's teams have more power-point games remaining and there's really no accurate way to tell who is going to end up where.

It's likely Post 17 will still qualify for a state-qualifying series, but it's nearly guaranteed that Watertown will play that series on the road.

Last summer, Post 17 defeated Rapid City Post 320 2-0 in a series played at Watertown Stadium.

Based on standings early this week, Watertown would visit No. 5 Brookings.

"We're hoping the learning curve will continue the last three weeks of the season and help us get ready for the postseason," said Neale.

What's left on the regular-season schedule?

Watertown is scheduled to head to the Twin Cities this weekend for the Gopher Classic. Post 17 will play at Victoria (Minn.) and has scheduled games against Wayzata (Minn.), Papillion (Neb.), Rapid City Post 315 and Maple Plain-0rono (Minn.). Pool champions advance to bracket play starting on Monday, but Post 17 has a scheduled doubleheader that night at Marshall (Minn.).

After hosting Huron next week, Watertown will head to Fargo (N.D.) for weekend doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday and will also host Sioux Post 15 on Wednesday, July 20 as a tune-up for a potential state-qualifying playoff series.

Post 17 dropped eight-straight games and 13 of 15 at one point, but had a nice 2-4 trip to Omaha for the Creighton Prep Tourney.

"We played very, very well overall in Omaha and we're literally an inch away from going 3-3," said Neale. "We played well and we competed well. We definitely saw some flashes of improvement, which is good against some high-quality opponents."

A lot of parity in South Dakota Class A baseball

Some very talented pitchers across the state graduated last year and aren't playing this summer and that's created some parity across the state. The parity may not show up in win-loss records, but it has in competitive games.

That's good news for Post 17, which has been competitive in most of its games this summer. Last week, Watertown took No. 1-seeded Brandon Valley to extra innings in the first game of a doubleheader at Watertown Stadium.

Neale said his team's pitching staff, which has fashioned a respectable 5.40 earned-run average, has been strength of the squad. The team's offense has also showed some signs of life in recent games.

"We've shown we can compete with teams and that minimizing mistakes has been the key for us in order to do that," said Neale.

Post 17 is still hopeful of putting some things together down the stretch and finding a way to make some noise in the postseason.

"The common theme talking to coaches before games is that everybody is 100 percent in agreement that this is going to be a unique postseason," said Neale. "It's just been a whirlwind of a season. It's wide open and there have been competitive games played across the state night in and night out."

What about the other Watertown teams?

This is also the final month of the season for the Watertown Post 17 Junior Legion team as well as the Watertown Baseball Association's Class A Red Sox (U16), Black Sox (U14), Grey Sox (U13) and White Sox (U13-14) teams.

The Post 17 Junior Legion team, which includes a number of players who played on the state championship teams for the Black Sox in 2021 and the Grey Sox in 2020, are currently 25-12 overall and seeded second Class A power points.

The qualifying system for the Class A Junior Legion state tourney (July 28-31 at Sioux Falls) will also feature best-of-three qualifying series. Watertown is expected to host the qualifying series on Thursday and Friday, July 21-22 at Watertown Stadium.

The Red Sox (4-21-1) will host the state Class A U16 tournament July 28-31.

The Black Sox (20-6), Grey Sox (21-5) and White Sox (5-13) also have state tourneys the last weekend in July. The U14 state tourney runs July 28-31 at Pierre, U13 state July 28-31 at Brookings and U13-14 state July 29-31 at Harrisburg.

This article originally appeared on Watertown Public Opinion: Watertown Post 17 Legion team looking for strong finish for the summer