Winner take all: El Paso Chihuahuas get ready for quick, strange Triple-A playoff

History awaits the El Paso Chihuahuas in several different ways this weekend in Las Vegas.

A Triple-A playoff tournament literally like no other in history begins Friday night against Reno and for the Pacific Coast League East Division champion Chihuahuas, it will either be over a few hours after the first pitch or two days later.

The playoff, which marks the first Triple-A postseason since 2019, is a format largely unheard of at this level of baseball, essentially a four-team, single-elimination tournament.

The neutral-site PCL and International League championships will be one game each, with Reno and El Paso playing at 8 p.m. Mountain time Friday and Durham taking on Nashville on Saturday night for the International League crown.

The winners play at 5 p.m. Mountain time Sunday for the Triple-A championship. The Las Vegas Aviators will host all three games, which was announced in May. El Paso lost the Triple-A championship game in 2016 after winning the PCL playoffs.

Up until 2019, the PCL had four-team, two-round playoffs with each series being a best-of-5, so an almost two-week postseason ensued. The Triple-A championship between the PCL and IL, which dates back to 2006, has always been one game.

Affiliated minor league baseball did not take place in 2020 because of COVID and the 2021 Triple-A "postseason" was incorporated into the end of the regular season in 2021.

"I was in the Triple-A National Championship in 2017 and ‘18 with the Durham Bulls, so I have experience in a one-game championship," Chihuahuas manager Jared Sandberg said on a zoom call before his team finished the regular season Wednesday in Albuquerque.

"It is different, unique. You’re not playing a series where you can make a mistake and still have a chance to overcome that. You’re trying to play some clean baseball in a one-game, winner-take-all. We’re going to have our entire pitching staff, all hands on deck ready to come out of the bullpen."

Playoff format change

Minor league baseball underwent a substantial revamp coming out of COVID and this quick tournament is an upshot. The Triple-A regular-season was expanded from 142 games to 150 and with more bye dates, the regular season now ends three weeks later than last season.

Also, Major League rosters no longer expand to 40 in September, the roster size is now capped at 28. That lessens things like what happened to El Paso in 2019 when star Ty France, who was batting .399 for the Chihuahuas, was called up with a week left in the Triple-A regular season and El Paso tied for first. The Chihuahuas ended up second.

The current format also minimizes travel and personnel expenses for the parent clubs.

Sandberg thinks this is here to stay.

"It used to be September 5 or 6 the season would be over and the playoffs would start, you’d have a couple of three- or five-game series," Sandberg said. "The Big League rosters expanded on Sept. 1 to 40 players, now the roster is expanded to 28. You have to keep a group of players still playing.

"That’s one reason the season has been expanded through September. I assume this one-game format is going to continue. The most important thing would be making sure players are available and ready to go up to the Major League roster.

"Playing all the way through, as long as we’ve played, it’s great for baseball, it’s great for players, it’s great for the game. A one-game playoff is tough after competing 150 games, but if that’s the way they are going to go, I’m OK with it."

'Been a group effort'

Sandberg is in a good mood in general right now. The Chihuahuas spent much of the year in second in their division, then starting in September, reeled off 14 wins in 17 games to take a one-game lead on Oklahoma City going into a six-game set with the Dodgers last week.

El Paso lost the first game 16-1 as Oklahoma City caught them in the standings, then fell behind 7-1 in the second game. The Chihuahuas rallied to win, starting a four-game streak that clinched the postseason. El Paso has an 85-65 record going into the Reno game after leading all of the full-season minor leagues in runs, hits and batting average.

"That OKC series was fantastic," Sandberg said. "We knew what would happen going in if we could win the series. Losing that first game like we did and getting down 7-1 the next game, then coming back and winning a couple of games in a row to clinch, it was fantastic. For us to clinch that way was awesome.

"The players we’ve had that impacted us this year, the list is long. From a veteran guy like Robinson Cano coming and playing for us, being a leader and showing young players how to prepare, was fantastic. There was a two-week period where we had (Esteury) Ruiz and CJ Abrams at the top of the order, that was electric. The long list of names goes on.

"It’s been a group effort."

That group has one or two games left this season with a chance to make some history for El Paso.

Bret Bloomquist can be reached at 915-546-6359; bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso Chihuahuas get ready for quick, strange Triple-A playoffs